Little girls need handspun sweaters.

When I said I was feeling overrun by projects, I wasn't just talking about knitting. My crafting world exploded this summer with lots of sewing, a little embroidery, some spinning, but very little knitting. It wasn't until a cold front came through last week that I really started to get the knitting bug again.

I started spinning up Spunky Club's January '09 fiber, Twilight superfine merino. It had all of these aquas and purples that I thought would match Eliza's fall/winter wardrobe well. I wanted to make longies, but I was afraid the superfine merino wouldn't hold up well. She will be crawling soon, after all. So I Navajo plied it for durability. I also tried to remember to spin a little finer than I normally would for a worsted-weight 3-ply, because merino tends to plump up on me when I finish it. Except this one didn't. I ended up with about 300 yards of sport-DK weight yarn. It still matched Eliza's clothes, though, so I went looking for a sweater pattern.

The Audrey Hoodie in Vintage Baby Knits was cute, and it looked like I had just about the right amount of yarn, so I cast on. It's knit up from the back, over the shoulder, and down the fronts. If you were to knit it in a solid color, you'd cut the yarn and knit one front and then the other. My handspun was stripy, though, and I wanted the fronts of the sleeves and the cardigan to match, so I put in a steek for the neck opening and another down the front of the cardigan.

As it turned out, I didn't have enough yarn for the hood. In fact, I barely had enough to trim around the front and hide my steeks, so the sleeves didn't get any crochet trim. Which is ok, because the sleeves are the perfect length as is.

I think I'm going to continue in the moss stitch tradition and pull out my oldest UFO, the first thing I ever blogged about, and finish it up. Mommy needs a cardigan for winter, too.

And of course, baby still needs some longies. If you have reason to knit little people pants, feel free to join us at the Eco Friendly Family Ravelry group for our longies knitalong, which begins this Saturday.