numbers and letters...

My not-so-little-anymore grandson, Nathan, had his eighth birthday a few weeks ago - he’s figured out that N and the number 8 make his name - the kids at school and his Dad call him Nate, so he’s cool with that. He even made a new label for his lunch box.

I wanted to make him a hoodie with the N8 thing on it and as usual, I got carried away...my first idea was just going to be an intarsia logo either on the chest or a sleeve, then I got the bright idea of doing his name like in a crossword or word search grid and I’d put that on the hood, with maybe the logo on the front...of course, I could put the name grid on the pockets too...

I’d been checking out the hoodies he currently owns and they are mostly all black or grey, quite dark, the odd bit of red and maybe a bit of graffiti or something to make them cool - not just plain. The designs are kind of random, not symmetrical. I’ve been working on the stitch pattern, off and on for a while, revising and whatever - so, let’s get down to the reality of knitting.

The word grid is a huge file - I was kind of going for 200 sts X 200 rows and it’s close to that, based on my calculations for the size of the hood. I knit a swatch in fairisle just to see and it’s okay for the hood like that because I could line the hood with a layer of plain stockinette to hide/protect the floats - on the bought hoodies, mostly the hood is heavier or thicker or doubled anyway.

When I decided to have the pockets with the word grid, I swatched again using semi-jacquard (see KW#44, Making a Theme Sweater) - I had every 4th (because every 12th stitch was the vertical line in the grid, every 4th needle seemed a good option) needle working on the rib bed, knitting only every other row - it was a bit more work even though the yarn changer was doing most of it, but the result was stiff and disappointing - while I was doing it, thoughts of making the hood in this manner went out the window! Back to plan B and knit it in fairisle. For the pockets, I latched up the long floats as I was knitting - the blank squares have 11 stitches of background (grey) between the red grid lines so that whole square gets latched. The squares with letters are mostly okay, with two to 3 rows above and below that needed latching - not a big deal and it went pretty quick and is quite suitable for the inside of the pockets. OH, BTW, I’m using the pattern, ‘little scrapper’ from KW#51, making the largest size, using same yarn, Yeoman’s Panama, so the other pieces of the hoodie, I’m working on auto-pilot. On the sleeve, the intarsia logo turned into a band of N8 fairisle - there are no long floats and it was easier than worrying about tension changes for the intarsia. Just have the hood to do now, and of course, find a zipper...

I'm pretty sure N8 will model the finished thing for us, later in the week!