As the weather cools off, I find myself picking up my knitting needles. I’ve always wanted to make a fair isle sweater, but I don’t currently have enough yarn to make one for myself. So I made one for one of my dinosaurs instead.

Yes, I’m crazy. I didn’t realize how crazy until I was working on this thing. It took much longer to make than I predicted, mainly because I kept making mistakes. My first attempt at the body didn’t work because there wasn’t enough contrast between the background colors and the black pattern.

I got through the second body piece without too much trouble. But the sleeves were a nightmare. I made the mistake of trying to knit two at once, thinking it would improve the chance that the sleeves matched. What it really did was confuse me hopelessly. On top of watching for color changes and decreases, I had to keep switching from one sleeve to the other. Since they had to be on double-pointed needles to do this, I would lose track of which sleeve I was on. I wound up making both sleeves at least three times. But I did eventually get done.

While I like this sweater, it didn’t turn out quite as I’d envisioned. I was imagining more colors, smaller patterns, snowflakes maybe, tiny knitted works of art, like the miniature sweaters Althea Crome makes. I’m wondering if I should try embroidery floss. (I did mention that I was crazy, right?) But I’m not sure I’m ready to knit with wire.

What was your craziest knitting project?