This was such a fun sweater to knit for my future grandson who is due to arrive in April. I hope he likes that wonderful kangaroo pocket as much as I do! I can imagine little fingers wanting to explore that muff-like space and find the other hand!

I started knitting this according to the pattern: flat from the bottom front up and then continued down from the shoulders to the bottom of the back in one piece with the collar worked midstream. I don’t mind seaming (in fact I kind of enjoy it now) but do note that the stitches of each side do not align with a one stitch seam allowance when knit this way.

Since the direction of the knitting is continuous, when I paired up the sides for seaming, I had to take 1.5 stitches from one side of the back and .5 stitches from the other side of the back seam so that there were whole stitches next to each other at the seam. Because of this, one side seam is slightly bulkier than the other and there is a tiny pucker where I transitioned from the garter stitch seam to the stockinette but at least the seams look correct. This pattern could easily be knit in the round.

After seaming the sides I picked up the sleeves and knitted them in the round from the shoulders down, modifying the short row shaping which was easy to do.

I used an applied i-cord edging for the pocket and collar ala EZ. I made a sample swatch of this edging since I wanted to see just how bad the blip of color would be on the traditional applied i-cord (top of swatch photo) vs. Joyce Williams’ version (bottom of swatch photo) that adds a YO to hide the blip of MC. I felt the YO added bulk to the edge so I worked the i-cord from the back side (with the smaller needle) which virtually hides the blip inside the pocket and underneath the collar. Before I started the i-cord, I did a thorough inspection of the contrast yarn so as not to be caught with a knot or a short end mid way through!

I do not really know why this blue is named Miro…was that artist known for using this color? The color in the photos of the finished garment as pretty close to reality.