While we were traveling, I brought a skein of Stonehedge Fiber Mill's "Almost Handspun" yarn (the label has the name of the animals it came from on it!), hoping to turn it into a sweater for Gram. The pattern I used is the Fisherman's Pullover by Veera Valimaki. A few times while I was knitting, Gram would ask me what I was doing, and I'd tell him I was making a sweater for him. Each time, he'd say: "I hate sweaters! Stop knitting!" A sweater vest I made for him last summer has a too-small neck opening (another vacation knitting project, but completed without a ruler), and I fear the difficulty of getting it over his head has ruined sweaters for him.

Well, I'm not one to stop working on things I know my children hate (see last night's dinner).

I finished the sweater about a week into our trip. Luckily, my daughter loves sweaters and she's wonderful about wearing things I've made, and I'd knit a size 4 thinking it would be best for Gram next winter. The sweater fits her perfectly right now, and the thick yarn is great for spring. She loves to shed her coat as soon as possible, so I'm guessing this sweater will get a lot of use on the playground in the next few months.

Hopefully my boy will be over his sweater aversion by next winter.

Previous Project: Selvedge Denim Ipad Case

Hey look! It's another Woodcraft post not written by Wood. . .

I know you probably come here because this is the last place on the site where you can escape my constant drivel. But she's been incredibly busy with work lately, trying to catch up after we were on vacation and making up for the fact that I was out of town last weekend.

About a year ago she started knitting seriously. In addition to that first sweater, she's knitted the girl a beautiful dress, a pair of felted slippers, two pairs of mittens, a pair of gloves, a sweater vest for the boy, and a blanket that's still not quite finished. I wish she'd be better about documenting the process and results of her efforts, and frequently complain that she's being too modest. So today I wanted to share the beautiful back-to-school sweater she knitted with yarn that the kid picked out at the Stonehedge Fiber Mill (she chose the buttons as well):

The girl has worn this every day since it was completed.

I asked Wood to send me an email about the sweater, reminding her that she while she claims she doesn't have time for a post, she probably sends about 100 emails a day, so I was pretty sure she could find the time to write me one about the sweater. Here's what she wrote:

I knew that I wanted to knit Juniper a sweater, and I knew that a cardigan would be best for her because she constantly fights with me in the mornings before school about wearing enough layers. A cardigan is so low commitment -- easy for her to take off if she gets hot -- so she is more willing to wear them. 


Her new favorite color is orange, and she picked out this beautiful yarn herself. It's called antique rose, but it isn't pink so much as it is coral. Up close you can see that orange and pink strands were spun together. I could not possibly love this pattern more. It's the small version of the Tea Leaves cardigan, and the directions are easy to follow, it is fun to knit, and it comes together beautifully. I think I'll be making more of these. 


I started knitting this sweater while we were at Squam Lake, and spent most of our afternoons and evenings by the fire working on it. Even though it's only been three weeks since we got home from our trip, it already seems like it was years ago. The combination of being very busy at work and the kids going to school (and the crazed, very early mornings that come with it) makes it feel like our relaxed lives at the Rockywold-Deephaven Camp were in a different life. My days are desperately missing the calm that I felt there, but every time I look at this sweater I remember working on it in front of the fire with Gram in my lap or at the lake while Juniper learned to knit next to me, and tell myself to relax just a little bit. Everything is going to be okay.

I am really going to make an effort to get Wood to share more of her projects. She is getting together with a group of women here in Detroit who all want to learn to knit, and because she's only been at it a year she'd love to have an online community of folks knitting with them. Any readers out there want to learn to knit? Leave a comment with an e-mail and we'll get a ravelry group together.

Previous Project: Naptime Quilt

After I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to learn to knit, a kind reader commented: "If you're serious about the knitting thing, send me an e-mail - I can give you lots of good tips on which books to buy (and not) and what type of yarn/needles to start on. There's a lot of variety out there and it can seem veeeerrrry intimidating."

Of course I emailed her immediately, saying, "Yes, I'm serious! I've been taught the basic stitches a few times and even made a scarf once, but it never stuck and the knitting needles always ended up stuffed back in the closest. Any tips you have on where to start would be really appreciated, since all the choices are overwhelming."

The kind reader -- DW -- wrote me back an 800+ word email. She told me everything someone in my position would need to know about knitting. She told me which books to buy (this one), what websites to check out (ravelry), and what to stay away from (synthetic yarn, overly complicated lace work). She suggested that I find a simple, small project to start on, and most importantly offered to do a knit-along with me, walking me through a project and helping me interpret the knitting instructions. I told her I wanted to make Gram a sweater, and she suggested that we knit Joelle Hoverson's Child's Placket-neck Pullover Sweater, from her book Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

DW sent me a shopping list, and I bought everything I needed and started watching youtube videos explaining how to cast on, knit, and purl. My first knitting projects were a few 6-inch squares for a local fundraiser (the squares were sewn together to make large blankets).

After a few dozen of those, I had the stitches down and DW prepared an instructional PDF explaining how to start the sweater. Seriously, can you believe how nice that is? She even took pictures of herself doing each step, and broke down the knitting instructions into plain English. Then, magically, after I'd completed the first step, she sent me the next installment. My sweater started to take shape:

Over the course of a month, I knit a sweater. Here is the final result:

And here's the best part: she took every one of our emails and every one of the instructional pdfs she made (there are 9!) and put them up on her own blog. You guys: she is so awesome. If you ever wanted to learn to knit, and if you happen to have a child you could make a sweater for, you really have no excuse now. I tried to learn to knit twice before, and failed both times. In the summer of 2001 I was in China, and one of my major goals that summer was to learn to knit from one of the countless old ladies I saw knitting every single day. One was kind enough to try to teach me, but I think she'd never encountered someone with fingers as giant and clumsy as mine. Despite her kindness and multiple attempts to explain knitting to me, I couldn't even cast on. A few years later, when we were living in San Francisco, I paid a fair sum of money to take an introductory knitting class at a gorgeous independent yarn store in Hayes Valley. After spending all that money on the class and expensive yarn, all I had was a pretty goofy looking scarf with lots of gaps and holes that I never wore.

But, as DW has pointed out to me, my conversion to a knitter is now complete. I have totally joined their club, and as evidenced by my tendency to buy yarn and expect my husband to engage in a conversation with me about how beautiful it is, and how awesome it is that its from a Michigan fiber mill. He refuses to talk about yarn, and luckily for me, DW has not stopped answering my emails yet. He is also a bit annoyed because now when I sit next to him on the couch I knit rather than scratch his head or rub his back. Tough luck, dude, scratches don't keep your kids' hands warm (next project: mittens).

I think the reason I finally learned how to knit this time is because I made something I really wanted to make, and something that Gram needed. It is cold here, and wool sweaters truly keep babies much warmer than cotton or acrylic ones. I loved the design of the sweater, and I was thrilled to see it take shape before my eyes. DW breaks the pattern down into easy steps, and the process was so satisfying that I started on another project the same night that I finished the sweater.

(If you use DW's instructions and make a sweater, please email me! I'd love to hear from you and see the final product.)

[EDITED TO ADD: The comments weren't working, so that's why they are turned off. It's not because I don't want to hear from you -- I totally do. Email me, or leave a comment on DW's site. My user name on ravelry is sjwood -- you can also contact me there.)

Previous Project: Halloween Costumes 2009