The Flagstaff Jacket

To the end of our trip my traveling companions started to bore me (I mean the shawls, of course!) and I was ready for some new wool and project. Plus it was raining. We were in Flagstaff/Arizona.



Purl in the Pines! Another great name for a yarn store.



It had to be something for baby. I bought two books: 60 Quick Baby Knits and Clara's choice Amigurumi Two! I chose some red Cascade superwash yarn for a Raglan Cardigan. Not yet knowing the gender of the baby, this colour and pattern seemed to be unisex.

I cast on right away in the car on our way to Las Vegas. The rain stopped. It got hotter and hotter. 104°F/40°C.





Most of the cardigan was knitted in our very nice and spacious suite in Las Vegas. Watching Forrest Gump for the umpteen time (got very excited when I recognized Monument Valley where we had just been in one scene) and my favourite detective series Monk. And it was there with the cardigan on the needles, where I was really sure to feel baby's first kicks. So actually this cardigan should be named "The Las Vegas Jacket". But it doesn't look bling-bling ka-ching at all. Very decent mountain town like.



For your information: I also found a yarn store in Las Vegas (their website). An oasis in the heat of day.



The secret: air conditioning.



Super-friendly staff in both Flagstaff and Las Vegas - how can they be not? And also all over the yarn stores I visited: German knitting tools.





It was only back home in quality-knitting-tool-producing-Germany that this cardigan got finished. There was something very strange happening with the yoke while knitting. The number of stitches, the decreases, the way it looked in the book - it was not coming together at all... So after the Las-Vegas-knitting-flash (at least that was flashy) it took me a while to discover that it was not my knitting that was wrong, but the pattern. Internet, google, errata 60 Quick Baby Knits. The whole yoke section needed to be re-knitted (you still see the line in the photo where the cardigan had to the frogged, it is not blocked yet). Then it was easy and quick, two days of by-the-way-now-and-then knitting last week. I added three more buttons then in the original pattern, where there is only one top bottom. Ravelry notes here. The size should fit a 6-months-old baby.

So next summer we should really travel to some cooler mountain area, just to fit the knit.