I’ve had Pirate’s Cutie (Ravelry link) by Shiri Mor in my favourites for three years… Which suggests I bookmarked it when I found out two of my friends were pregnant, and I was forward planning what I’d make for their little ones in the coming years. Which makes me feel nostalgic and a bit emosh!
Anyway, with birthdays coming up, I felt now was the time for this pattern. I had a spot of bother with the Ravelry pattern link but found it on Vogue Knitting with only a little detective work.
The pattern is for a skull and crossbones jumper and stripey leggings. I noticed other projects incorporating stripes into the jumper sleeves instead (or as well) and wanted in on that action. I’ve had this variegated black/grey/white in stash for some time – into the project bag it went and I’ve used up every last bit of it! Success!
I started and restarted a lot of times. The pattern is for sport weight and I’m using DK so I thought I might have to go up a needle size, down a pattern size… but after many experiments I found that the suggested needle size works just fine. What a great use of my time that was.
Then I decided I didn’t like the variegated yarn as the hem colour. But at least I decided that before restarting for the umpteenth time.
Then I got as far as the start of the crossbones chart and realised that Past Me had been wrong when she thought she’d knit it in the round with stranded colourwork and just carry the yarn all the way round the back. Present Me was absolutely not interested in doing that, and unravelled everything, to remake in pieces (*which is what the pattern says in the first place* what was I thinking?).
After all of that, I finally got moving. I chose to make the back and sleeves first. The boring parts, basically – I’m motivated to get through them to get to the fun colourwork part. The back is complete, and now I’m doing the sleeves simultaneously on a circular needle. I kept getting lost as to which sleeve I should be working on until I added a stitch marker to the ‘start’, and began using two circulars. So now I know I’m finished one row of both sleeves when all my knitting is on just one needle. I just have the final shaping to do on them, so almost there.
The trouble with making the boring parts first is that the photos are similarly… lacklustre? But at least I can see it taking shape. Onwards!
I’ve added this post to the Unraveled Wednesday linkup, with thanks to Kat for hosting.
The Crafty Yarnster 