Posted on April 1, 2005 at 9:17 am
The aftermath of a house full of sick adults is not a pretty sight. There are paper bags of tissues by every couch, and the counter of the kitchen looks like a pack of marauding raccoons were here last night, rooting through the cupboards for something to eat, emptying boxes of crackers and Lean Cuisine, but left every bottle and box of cold medicine known to human kind as payment. 
Listless and unable to knit for a few days, I began to imagine what I might knit next. The Wonder Boy had said that he would like a sweater about a train, of course. I like the idea of a train across the belly, but he has several t-shirts like that. There is a pair of pajamas he favours that are orange striped, and he calls them his Daylight pajamas, after one of his favorite engines, the GS-2 that pulled the Southern Pacific Coast Daylight in the 30’s and 40’s. It was a beautiful train, with distinctive orange stripes down the entire length of all the cars. So I tried to imagine what I could do with stripes to best mimic the effect of the Daylight livery, and drew some sketches. As you can see, my process is hardly a refined one. I considered a raglan, especially since I like the way they fit, but I don’t think the way raglan shaping treats stripes is true to the effect I’m after. I’m currently considering the stripes along the shoulder seam, but for it to work, I’ll have to knit the sweater in one piece, and my Ann Budd reference doesn’t cover that. I also want to figure out a way to make the white pinstripes between the orange stripes pop a little bit, either by knitting into the back of the row two stitches below, or making the whole thing in reverse stockinette except those pinstripe rows. Naah. I’m still thinking. I’ll be pulling out some Cotton Fleece today to swatch, and chase down the right colours sometime this next week.
7 comments
Great idea for a clever variation on the train theme. I remember making some very elaborate Thomas the Tank engine picture knits, but the Wonder Boy is obviously far more sophisticated than that.
Knitting a sweater in one piece is easy, especially for a small person. I’d use a comfy sized sweatshirt for underarm. Measure length of sleeve, and depth/width of sleeve at armscye and wrist. You should then be able to calculate how many stitches to cast on for the sleeve, and over how many rows you want to spread the casting on to get the appropriate shaping. Graph paper is your friend at this point. I also like to graduate shape the shoulders with a few short rows, but I doubt if I’d bother doing that on a kid size sweater.
Your nose may be dripping but your brain is working well. Good luck, can’t wait to see what you end up doing.
My oldest son was the same way with respect to all types of “tractors”. We often found ourselves reading to him at bedtime from the heavy equipment catalogs that we could get from the lobby of a company in our city. He loved it. Many hours spent at constructions sites. Now he’s nearly 14 and just as entertaining, just in different ways.
Good luck! Your progress will be fun to watch. Keep chugging along :-).
Here’s a pattern for a raglan in the round. Granted the instructions aren’t all that clear and I had to fudge for the lack of row gauge, but overall it works well. Hope this helps!
Sorry, the link didn’t show up. Here it is: http://www.woolworks.org/patterns/raglan.html.
You should check out Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top. It’s a great reference for seamless raglans. It would work wonderful for what you are trying to do! Have fun!
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