Indie Design GAL 2014: Rudi

The Indie Design GAL on Ravelry (full details can be found here; note that you will have to be logged into Ravelry for the link to work) is a little beyond its halfway mark, so I thought I'd show you my latest knit for it, a new Rudi jumper for 2014.

My first Rudi jumper was knitted a couple of years ago for my son when a school friend suggested that we all wear 'awful' Christmas jumpers for our Christmas reunion dinner. As we were taking my son to the dinner I thought I'd play along by knitting him a super-cute Christmas sweater, and Rudi is what I came up with. It was my first attempt at designing a jumper, and I'm still really pleased with how it turned out.

A couple of weeks ago my son was looking at my designs on Ravelry, and asked me if he could have a new reindeer jumper. The last week in November is not the best time to receive a request for a Christmas jumper (even if it's worn every day in December, it still only gets 31 days wear; by January Christmas jumpers don't tend to get much wear, and he's growing so fast it won't fit next year), but how could I refuse such a request?

Having hunted through the stash and discovering that I didn't have several of the colours in the right weight a trip to a yarn store was necessary. As the yarn was for a children's jumper I didn't want to spend too much money, so took a trip to Boye's (a local-ish chain of hardware/haberdasher/clothing, etc. stores that sell a good variety of inexpensive yarn lines) with my son in tow. We quickly accumulated the yarn we needed, my son choosing a big ball of green as the main colour (I personally would have chosen something a bit brighter, but I guess he's growing up), and paid before I could buy anything else.

I love knitting with aran weight yarn, it seems to hit the sweet spot for my knitting and projects grow really quickly, and managed to knit the back and sleeves in one evening each. The front took a little longer as I had to incorporate the picture, but was still done in a couple of days, and whole jumper was finished on December 1st, just in time for my son to wear for his first nursery day of December.

The jumper is a hit, with my son wearing it three days in a row last week (admittedly it had to be washed twice during those two days, I was so glad I'd gone for some yarn that dried quickly!). I think I'll have to make the next size up for next year, but maybe I should start before the last week in November! Handily I have enough yarn leftover from this one that I won't need to buy any more for next year's.