A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of a
WIP
I was tentatively calling
Puppy
Sweater
.  It’s a good thing I didn’t commit to that name because it
turned into an ABC sweater:

In this case, "C" is for Charlie, who turned one on January 23.  While I
did pay attention to gauge, it did turn out rather large for a one year-old, but
I figure that means he can get a year of wear out of it, at least, even if it
comes down to his ankles now.  I’ve still got some weaving-in-of-ends to
do, but by and large, it’s finished. 

Unfortunately, my dog Stuart was really looking forward to the puppy sweater,
and was none too happy when he saw the alphabet sweater:

Since I’m not up to pattern making snuff, I can’t post a
pattern, but here’s how you can make a similar sweater:

1)  Choose a basic child’s pull-over sweater pattern that you like. 
The one I picked is from Hollywood Knits: Thirty Original Suss Designs.

2)  Design your letter on graph paper.  You can make it as big or
as little as you want. 
This site
has some good examples, including the alphabet, of how this works,
and if you’re still desperate to knit a puppy sweater (I know I am), they have
some charts with dogs on it.  The navigation on this site is not the
greatest, but it does have some good content, so look around.

3)  This is
how
to read a chart
, though presumably you already know how to do that if you
completed step 2.

4)  Knit the sweater!

Just to get you started, here are a couple of links to some free patterns for
children’s pullovers which you could probably modify to make this sweater:


http://www.straw.com/cpy/patterns/baby-child/tucson-sunset-child.html

In this example, you would probably knit it all in one color instead of the
stripes if you wanted to add a letter.


http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/keri.html


http://margarethubertoriginals.com/newpage1.htm

I’ve said before that designing my own knit patterns is a big priority for
me, but I’m just not there yet.  I know these aren’t great instructions,
but hey, if I could figure it out, so can you!

One Reply to “Children’s ABC Sweater”

  1. Antoinette says: February 5, 2007 at 8:46 am

    VERY cute! I could never make anything that detailed. Were you origionally thinking of doing a paw print instead of a “c”? I like the “c”. Great color choices too. It looks so soft.

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