Two days of knitting

I decided that the only way I could hope to get Libby's jumper done for Christmas would be to knit it in front of her. Fortunately, being four, she doesn't really have much idea of how knitting becomes a jumper, so she hasn't a clue that it's for her (I sowed a little disinformation by wrapping the back so far around her, to show it wouldn't reach all the way round, then wrapping it round her baby brother to show how much better it would fit him. I had to cheat slightly, there's actually only an inch difference in their chest measurements. As Jean Miles has often remarked, children grow upwards a lot quicker than they grow outwards).

So, after two days knitting (slightly interrupted by a small boy with a chest infection and a rocketing temperature, who just wanted to be a limpet), here is the progress:

That's just over 2/3 of the way to the start of the armholes on the back. Not bad going.

Liquorice Torpedoes asked what modifications I was planning, so for her sake and mine, here are a few notes. I'm knitting the 6-7 size, because although she's only just 4 she is tall, and I want this to fit for a while. It's knitted in seperate pieces then seamed, and I am preserving this because (a) I quite like sewing actually, and (b) I need to pick up an exact number of stitches at the top for the patterned yoke, which is most easily done if I've knitted the body and sleeves as the pattern told me to.

This is a Sirdar pattern, which means traditional English style pattern-writing. Specifically, this means there is no chart for the colourwork at the yoke. Because I hate knitting colourwork from a written-out pattern, I'm going to draw my own chart on graph paper. I'm also going to disobey the pattern instructions at this point - I'm supposed to sew the body and sleeve raglan seams before starting the yoke, but leave the left back seam open and knit the yoke flat. I'm going to sew all of them and knit the yoke in the round. I wouldn't recommend trying this without a chart - you can read a chart whichever way you need to, written out instructions take a lot of work to reverse.

Because I'm drawing my own chart, I can alter the design to make it a bit closer to Katie Morag's jumper in the books. At the moment I think I'll just add a solid blue line to the top and bottom, but I'll see how it looks on the graph paper when I get there.