Freckles & Yarn

This Christmas story started last year when I found a knitting set for a child’s Christmas jumper. My son really liked the picture on the pattern of Rudolph so I purchased the set. I haven’t done colour work with such a lot of colour and a picture on the front of the jumper before. This was going to be a big challenge for me. Now when I started this jumper I didn’t really think about the floats at the back of the work. My first attempt I didn’t catch them and they all hung down and pulled strange. I hadn’t done much when I decided this wasn’t working and ripped it all out. Casting it back on I forgot to change the size of my needles so now I’m just going with knitting the body all in size 4mm needles. Then when I worked the floats I tried to catch every single stich and the three colours of wool where getting all tangled into each other. What a mess! I just put it all in the bag and forgot about it.

This was until last week when my son asked about it. I gingerly pulled it out of hibernation and looked the destruction. I am too stubborn to rip it out again so I untangled everything and decided I would catch the floats after every fifth stitch. I lay my wool out in front of me on the kitchen table and as I started knitting I moved the balls of wool over or under each other. This has worked really well as it has stopped them from getting tangles again. Now the wool has been sorted time to concentrate on the chart.

The chart is in colour but the squares are small. I haven’t worked from a chart like this before but I seem to be getting on ok. Progress is slow and I’m not sure I will get it finished for this Christmas. I need to though otherwise I’m not sure my son will fit the size I’m making next year.