FO Friday – Little Thun Sweater

If you need a quick baby knit, this is the pattern for you! As always, here are the fun details first:
Pattern:Little Thun / Emily Franck aka The Blue Mouse
Yarn: agirlandherwool / DK base / Strawberry Shortcake and Mint Chip
Needles: Size 5 (body) and Size 4 (hem)
Cast on: 2/23/2020
Cast off: 3/1/2020
The pattern page on Ravelry can be found here.

Again, I started this project to be a shop sample because I had an upcoming trunk show and wanted to show some knits in my DK base. This pairing has been popular in the shop and I thought the two colors would be fun to use for a baby knit. I decided to knit this pattern because I primarily wanted something to show off the colorways and also to be a quick knit. I think that when I pick shop samples, it’s important to think through that people might want to knit exactly what you are showing and that means making sure I have different level of difficulties in the projects. The other projects I have to show have a lot of patterns in them and so having a simply stockinette sweater seemed like a great idea. This pattern is available in multiple children sizes and there is even an adult version as well.

This was another quick knit, but I do want to talk through a couple of things that happened while I was working on it. First would be the color changes for the stripes in the body. Keeping in mind that I was knitting this pattern for a sample, I wanted to make sure it looked nice. Maybe that sounds weird, like I wouldn’t have wanted it to look nice if it were meant to be worn, but let’s be real. A kid’s sweater doesn’t have to be perfect. Really, none of our handknits do. In any case, I was knitting the stripes and the beginning of the round is on the back of the sweater. I’m more used to it being in the side right under the armpit. It was starting to bug me that the color changes would be in a more obvious spot and so instead of creating a seam where I was carrying the yarn, I decided to cut the ends and weave them in. I figured that would be a better way to do it. It actually made it messier though because of the holes left behind when you switch yarns. I know I could have done this better, especially when weaving in the ends, but I didn’t and it’ll be fine. After blocking, it’s noticeable to me, but I think the sweater does its job of showing these colorways.

When I knit the arms, I just carried each color through the stripes and allowed for a seam to show. It’s underneath the arms though, so to me it’s fine. If I were to knit it again, I would move the beginning of the round to the side of the sweater and just carry them down and not care about the seam. For all I know, the pattern did have that direction in there and I missed it.

The other issue I had is that at first, I didn’t go down a needle size for the hems. I mostly chose not to out of laziness (I would have had to go to another room to get the needle, sheesh) and quickly regretted it. I felt like the larger hem looked sloppier and again, this was to be a shop sample and I wanted it to look nice. I ended up ripping back the hem and reknitting it at a sit and stitch. It sounds worse than it was, because remember, this is a 12 month old size sweater. It really wasn’t that much knitting to redo. I also went down a needle size for the cuffs and it looks very cute and neat.

Overall, I’m sure I’ll reknit this pattern again. It’s a simple raglan and if you didn’t do the striping, it would be very straightforward. The stripes do add that bit of helping along in terms of feeling like you make progress.

I spent a lot of time before knitting the pattern deciding which color to use at the main color. Strawberry Shortcake is a variegated and speckled yarn, which means it’s busier than Mint Chip, which is more of a semi-solid. I kept going back and forth about which one would be better to highlight as the stripes. In the end, I went with my gut and I love the combination as it is. I bet if I did it the other way, I’d be saying the same thing. I don’t think you can go wrong either way if you do have one more colorful yarn than the other. It’s without a doubt a good pattern to play with color on.

The other fun bit of information is that the name is pronounced “Toon” not “Th-un.” When I was telling my sit and stitch group about the pattern, they were looking at me like I was crazy. I headed to the pattern to see the story behind the name and learned the correct pronunciation.

Check out the pattern on Ravelry. If you like this pairing of yarn, check them out in my shop. I’ve set up a coupon code for these colors and my blog readers. Use code “BLOGREADERTHUN” at checkout for 15% off these colors. The code will work for one week only, until April 10th, 2020. It is available for Strawberry Shortcake and Mint Chip as individual skeins or in their pairing. Let me know if you have any questions!