santa's little helper

I said I was not going to stress myself out with "holiday knitting." I said something about the rewards not outweighing the sacrifices and how it's my hobby and I can be selfish if I want to and some other dumb melodramatic stuff and and yet somehow I find myself ordering yarn and picking out patterns to begin knitting Christmas presents. Maybe I was just in a bad mood when I went on and on about NOT knitting a bunch of Christmas presents this year. Or perhaps I am afflicted with some sick compulsion to knit for others when the mercury drops below 45 degrees. Who knows?

Well, I don't think I've gone overboard yet. I'm not knitting something for everyone, but I have decided to knit a sweater for my dad. A top-down raglan of my own(ish) design. You can't really call it a design since I'm using a top-down raglan formula created by someone else and cable patterns that I picked out of books and websites. I guess I'm assembling it, more than designing it. I wanted to make it a total surprise, but it's hard to be discreet and/or sneaky when trying to get an accurate measurement of someone's NECK, for example. So I just asked my dad for his measurements and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the whole thing will slip his mind by December 25th. The odds are in my favor. I've already ordered some Elann.com Peruvian Sierra Aran in "oak." I just have to decide what cable patterns to use. I wanted a larger, more complicated one down the front, with smaller, coordinating ones on the sides of the body. I was going to use the Enclosed Cable from the Vogue Knitting reference, and just do basic cables on the sides of the body, but then I took a look at some of these aran diamond stitch patterns. I really like the Interlocking Diamonds pattern for this project, but I'm just not sure what kind of stitch I could do on the sides to go with it.