Stripey Love

My daughter is not even 10 yet, but there is already a teen spirit in her little girl body :). This means that she stopped caring about frilly skirts, pretty dresses, pink and purple, hair ribbons and even sparkles! She has completely abandoned her girly stuff and switched to hoodies, sweatshirts and - the horror - yoga pants!

So I decided to offer her a transitional option - a pretty multicolour sweater with a big heart on it - and she AGREED for me to knit it for her :).

I had lovely Caron Cakes yarn that I could not wait to put to good use, and I thought this project would be perfect for it. Because the original Verena pattern would be too big for my daughter, and because I'd have different gauge with Caron Cakes, I recalculated everything and basically ended with my own pattern.



I also resized the heart (otherwise it'd take most of the front!). To ensure the stripes on front and back weren't too wide, I chose to knit them both in a circular way without seams.



The stripes were manually adjusted to maintain the same width when I had to switch to knitting front and back separately.

 
I also implemented cables along the 'side seam' areas and as a part of the sleeves.




I used the 3-needle joining technique for shoulder seams. Don't they look perfect? :)



Some back and side photos:




Overall, I have enjoyed working on this sweater and am very pleased with an outcome. It took just two full-sized balls of Caron Cakes (which I bought half-priced) and a small leftover skein  (which I bought for almost nothing at Value Village). Not bad for a project with about $10 investment :).




But ... there is always something :). I planned the sweater to be a little roomy, so once it was assembled, washed and dried, it turned out too big for my daughter. I guess we'll have to wait for a couple of years - just hope her tastes don't change by then :).

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