Knitted girl sweater

Arne and Carlos restarted my knitting activities, but after Christmas I did not want to make more tree ornaments. Although the tree was far from full, creating Christmas decorations looses its charm if you have to wait 11 more months before you can use them again. So, I needed a new project.

I had some green yarn lying around, which was already waiting for years to get some purpose. I had bought it probably ten years earlier but never came around to use it. I felt that I had to use the old materials first before I could buy new ones (another habit that I got rid of for which re-installment wouldn't hurt).

Around the time I bought the green yarn I also had a subscription to a knitting magazine. I kept all the magazines and after browsing (through the seemingly very old fashioned models) I found one I liked. I did not feel up to knitting an adult size sweater yet, so I knitted one for my eldest daughter.

The green yarn I had was really very green... so when I finished the sweater I felt it needed some extra color to spice it up. I decided I wanted some light green accents and some crocheted flowers on them. I had never crocheted a flower, so thank god for the internet! Flowers really are a great, very small scale crocheting project. They only take a few minutes (not counting the hour you need to finding out what single, double and triple stitch are...).

Forgive me for the extremely poor quality of the picture. This is the only picture I have of the sweater. The yarn I had was 100% polyester and I really did not like the feel of it, so after lying on the shelve for a year I just threw it out. Although I do not have a garment to show for it, I did learn a very valuable lesson from this project: always use good materials which in my case means cotton. I realize this is not a universal lesson for everybody, but I love to knit with (good quality) cotton. If you decided to try out cotton start with Phildar cotton 3. It really has every color you can imagine and it has a nicely woven threat. The sweater also steered me onto the crocheting path, so all in all a very successful sweater I would say ;)