luci's birthday sweater

Six months almost to the day from when I started it, I finally finished Luci's birthday sweater. It's a hybrid of two Veera Välimäki patterns, the Still Light Tunic (an adult pattern) and Gathering Stripes.  I'll spare you the long, drawn out saga (you can read it here on my Ravelry page if you really want to), but suffice it to say, it was quite a process, and I felt quite hopeless about it for a while and set it aside when it was all but done, for about two months.  When I finally went back to it, I was surprised and thrilled to find that it fits her perfectly.  I just needed to weave in the ends and find the perfect purple, polka-dot buttons, and Voila!  I love this on Lucia.  She picked the color herself and I think it's gorgeous on her.  I am so proud of the end result.

Sadly, these pictures show the only time she has actually worn this sweater.  Everytime I suggest she wear it, she says 'no.'  It's a little painful for me, I have to say.  I just hope she'll change her mind about it before she outgrows it.

It makes me wonder if I should continue to knit for her.  It's certainly not worth the expense and effort if she's not going to wear it in the end.  The thing is, I really really like knitting for my kids.  They make everything I knit look so good and it gives my heart a little zing each and every time I see one of them wearing a garment that I've made for them.  I love it.

Moreover, my attempts to knit for myself have been less than successful.  Last week, I knit myself another hat that was, to put it nicely, a failure.  It looks and fits awful. Bleh!  I think that's three or four hats now that I've knit myself that I will never ever wear.  Perhaps hats are not my forté.  Then again, knitting a sweater for myself takes much more time and a lot of yarn (i.e. money), but I think I'm going to go for it.  I've got a lot of ideas percolating and I've learned a lot about knitting since the last time I attempted it.  I'm going to keep percolating for a while, but I am done with my knitting rant for now.  Thanks for listening.