March 31, 2003. Minnie is finished! Here's the front:

and here's the back:

I'm really happy with how it came out, though by the end I was getting sick of all the polka dots. Though I do think they look awfully cute. And I'm a tad annoyed that the way the pattern works, the bottom buttonhole doesn't line up with the others.

I still have about two and a half skeins of this green yarn left, but I think I'll wait a bit before I make something else with it, so I don't get too sick of it.

March 10, 2003. Now the right front is finished too:

When I was spreading the knitting out to take this picture, I suddenly looked at the beginning of the buttonband and thought, "Oh no! There's a huge hole right there! How did that happen? How could I not have noticed?" Yeah. It was the buttonhole. Never mind. Not sure why the polka dots look much more neat and orderly on the right front than on the left front, but I'm not going to worry about it (they use different sides of the chart, so maybe it all looks better when both sides are put together).

March 7, 2003. I've finished the left front. This project is going pretty quickly. Here's how the left front looks.

Notice the stitches on the bottom there, waiting on a holder. They're going to become a vertical button band that is later sewn onto the body of the sweater. I think the pattern does this since the moss stitch border uses a needle size smaller than the one you use for the rest of the sweater, plus the moss stitch will all be facing the same direction.

I did have one minor setback on this where I did k2tog decreases for the neck shaping, forgetting that k2tog is right-leaning. I wasn't really paying attention, and suddenly looked at what I'd been doing and it looked all wrong. Luckily it was only about six rows (and only about 20 stitches to a row at that point) so it only took a few minutes to rip it back and correct (by using a ssk decrease instead).

March 5, 2003. This sweater is "Minnie" by Zoe Mellor, from Rowan Spring/Summer 2003. They have the sweater in baby and infant sizes in the magazine as well, and I'm making the 1-2 year size. I'm using yarn from my stash: Lane Borgosesia Knitaly in this strange minty seafoam green color. I have no idea what possessed me to get three skeins of this yarn in this color, but I must have known what I was doing, because I really like the way it looks now that I'm knitting it. This yarn is 100% wool, really soft, and machine washable, so I think it will be perfect for a baby sweater. I'm making the polka dots out of some cream-colored Plymouth Encore that I've managed to use little bits of for everything (including Peatie's wonton). The Encore is just a little thicker than the Knitaly, but I like the effect, since it's making the polka dots slightly puffy.

Here is the back of the sweater; I'm about 1/4 done with the left front now.