Now that I have finished Ryan’s socks I can turn my attention to the sweater design that is brewing in my head. My original plan was to use this beautiful plum-coloured lace weight alpaca yarn from Misti Alpaca. I had never used lace weight yarn before so I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go. So on Friday night I got a chance to sit down and start a swatch with my 2.25 mm needles. Result: yuck! Speaking as someone who generally has very good tension, it is damn-near impossible to do so with tiny yarn and tiny needles. So that idea was scrapped.

Then I got to thinking, if I’m going to knit a sweater for a toddler then the yarn definitely needs to be strong, and it needs to be superwash. I also want it to be fingering weight yarn. What does that leave me with: sock yarn! I didn’t have anything on hand that was appropriate for this project so I just had to head to The Loop and pick up something pretty. I ended up with the most beautiful teal Cascade Heritage sock yarn, 75% superwash merino, 25% nylon. Perfect!

I started my swatch and really like the look of it in stockinette stitch, but the lace pattern I picked out just wasn’t going to work on a toddler shirt. That, coupled with the fact that Pippa screams like a banshee any time I try to put anything hand-made on her lately, may mean that this turns into a sweater for me. While I don’t relish the idea of making an adult sweater with fingering yarn, I think it would be very pretty and appeal to a wider audience. There will be more swatching tonight so we will see.
Also, I was a jelly-making machine today, pounding out a batch each of mint and jalapeno jellies. Stay tuned for jelly-post-palooza.