Knitting Project: Mini Nordic Sweaters

 Well the sweaters have been sent so I will now show (a bad picture!) them here on the blog.  These are a pattern by Arne and Carlos and were their Advent Calendar knitting for last year. I purchased the pattern in November 2021 and realized immediately these could not be gifts for Christmas 2021! Duh!

As I began the knitting I changed yarn and needle size.  The first yarn called for US size 0 and US size 2 knitting needles. I made Number 1 with those needles and directly gave up on that as it was just too taxing for my hands.  After another yarn purchase I used US size 2 and US size 4 needles and got along just fine.

While knitting these darling little sweater/gift bags I realized that there twenty-four members of our family starting with Dear One as Number One and me as Number Two SO...I made a chart as to when each person became part of our family and knit that number sweater for them. It was so sweet to be thinking about the person who was going to receive a particular sweater as I was knitting.

The actual yarn called for in the pattern is Rowan's Norwegian Wool yarn which was designed by Arne and Carlos.  It is available currently for $11.75 per ball.  If I remember correctly 18 balls are required for this knitting project.  That was a tad (well, a LOT) too rich for my budget so I chose some Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport weight instead.  The two yarns have the same yardage for the same put up in the balls--137 yards in 50 grams...so they were comparable.

The colors in Knit Picks were as close as I could get to the Arne and Carlos Norwegian Wool colors.  Most of them made pretty nice little sweater bags.

The original thought was to get some very nice soft-centered chocolates and put three of them in the sweaters (you started knitting with a closed cast-on--Turkish cast-on was what I did-so the bottom was solid) but I realized that the shipping stress would have smashed the chocolates to bits and destroyed the sweaters so I put a note into the packages suggesting the families could purchase their own chocolates and insert them.

The last thing before putting the sweaters in the packaging was to insert a Christmas tree hook into the back of the neck of each sweater.

This project took me six months and gave me such joy.  I hope the recipients feel that joy and the love with which they were knitted.

This is all the sweaters laid out on the guest bed (on top of a canvas drop cloth I got to cover the table at Church when I do little Gelli printing classes with some sweet children who come to our knitting group each week). The Upper left sweater which is red on white is Number One.  It is way smaller than the rest.  I did NOT re-knit it with the larger needles though some day I might when a few other started projects are finished.

This is one of the sweaters close up.  The original pattern has colorwork on the sleeves as well but by the time I did the first seven of them I knew it would be 2024 or 2025 before they were completed so I chose to knit the sleeves plain.

Merry Christmas!