Forest Baby Sweater

Although I have a  long list of things that I want to knit (my current ravelry queue is almost 400 items long), every once in a while I get sucked into a test knit. There's a forum on ravelry for people who design their own patterns to request help from other knitters to knit their design, to check if the pattern is accurate (fit, stitch count, do the directions make sense?, etc.).

I recently saw a test knit for the Forest Baby and Child Pullover by Helen from NEEDdesigns (I'll add a link to the pattern page when it's posted). Helen has a whole bunch of really cute patterns that you can find on her ravelry page here. I especially love the Array pattern - I might need to make one for M. You can find Helen's blog here for more info. (An aside - Helen is also a paediatrician who also has four kids. I'm assuming that she never sleeps!)

I was sucked right in. It's a cute little sweater that comes in many different sizes. I haven't knit much for T, and he's now 8 months old. I think the reason is a combination of not having as many cute little boy patterns to draw from plus now having two kids, multiplied by a series of many half-finished projects around my house.

Anyway, I saw this little pullover and had to test knit it. The clincher was that it's knit with two strands of worsted weight yarn (for any non-knitters out there, the bulkier the yarn + the bigger the needles = the faster the project knits up).

I dug through my stash and pulled out some Berroco Vintage yarn, leftover from my July Heat Wave Ruffle Wrap. The colour is called Gingham and is a nice, soft blue. I had some other Vintage that I could use for the accents (the colours were Mochi and Chambray). Overall, I knit the 12 month size sweater in three days, although I could have done it in two if I hadn't run out of yarn (that's how the stash keeps growing - knit a project using yarn from your stash, go buy more to finish a project, end up with more yarn in your stash than when you started!).

T was nice and cozy in his new sweater. Pretty cute, isn't it?

I love being able to test someone's designs. It also really inspires me to get my act together and publish my own...goals for next week, perhaps?