Since joining a knit group in the neighborhood a few years back, I have gotten to try out some patterns and techniques that I never thought possible! One of those being a sweater!
While chatting with someone on Instagram about a pattern to knit for a first time sweater, the Flax Light Sweater pattern by Tin Can Knits came up time and time again as being a great one to start with.
After looking over the free pattern, I decided I could give it a shot! My tactic with patterns and techniques that I’m unfamiliar with, is to take it literally one step at a time. I’ll deal with learning the technique once I get to that step! I also had confidence that if I ran into issues, I could easily get some in-person help from someone in my knit group! (Which I did several times.)
I decided to start with the 0-6 months sized sweater, which is the smallest size offered in the pattern. Since I’ve never knitted a sweater before, and I’m currently pregnant with my first baby, it seemed appropriate. It also felt less intimidating to make a baby sized sweater to begin with and I figured that if it had some knitting mistakes, at least the baby wouldn’t mind! 🙂
The pattern overall is very well written and fairly easy to understand. The little graphics and pictures help a lot!
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
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Materials: (follow for your size, but the 0-6 month size are as follows)
- Flax Light Sweater Pattern
- 1 skein of fingering weight yarn from Breaking Yarn (I used the Breaking Violet colorway)
- 16” circular knitting needles in size 5 (3.75mm)
- 16” circular knitting needles in size 2 (2.75mm)
- Scissors
- Yarn needle for weaving in ends
- Stitch Markers
The Pattern and some notes:
Garter Panels:
Make sure you use stitch markers on the garter panels. I thought I’d be able to tell where they were, but since that part of the yoke is growing every other round, it was shifting and it was getting hard to keep it straight. The pattern suggested this, but I’m suggesting that you listen to it! 🙂
I would also suggest taking your time to make sure when you continue to work the panel down the sleeve that you take your time to make sure your stitches are aligned. I was 1 stitch off on one of my sleeves, but again I’m not worried that the baby will mind.
Picking up stitches:
Picking up stitches under the arms probably aren’t difficult for most people, but I had trouble with them. A friend in my knit group showed me an easy way to knit it with just your fingers instead of using your needles and that helped a lot. I was able to do the second sleeve on my own.
Decreases on the arms:
I decided not to do the decreases on the arms of the sweater. I didn’t really understand the pattern in this area and maybe since I was doing magic loop instead of DPNS, that made it more difficult? I’m not sure, but it was only a 6 stitch decrease at the elbow on the smallest size, so I didn’t worry about it.
I forgot to switch to smaller needles:
At the end of the pattern, you’re supposed to switch to smaller needles for the ribbing on the arms. I forgot to do this, but I’m actually glad that I didn’t switch them because I have a hard time casting off loosely anyway. It just gave the sleeve a little extra room to slip over the baby’s arms.
I would definitely recommend this top-down knit sweater for the first time sweater knitter! It seems to be a great pattern to start with and I’m so thrilled that I made a sweater!!
Without further ado, here are my reveal photos of the sweater (and some baby bump shots!)
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