Orange You Glad I Knit You a Sweater?

A recent splurge has become this: 

A top-down raglan pullover for my son. I've used tubular cast-off on the cuffs and waist, and TECHknitting's post on the subject is really well done. After having my son try on the almost-finished product, I abandoned the idea of also using this bind-off at the neck and instead just picked up stitches and worked a few rows of stockinette stitch for a nice rolled edge. I used a suspended bind-off that I've used before.

Knit 1, *slip st back to LH needle, k2tog through the back loop; rep from * until one st remains and draw end of yarn through last st to secure.

I knit the sleeves straight until just before the cuff, where I did a few rounds of decreases before switching to 1x1 ribbing. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred using paired decreases from the elbow to the wrist: next time, right?

Man on the Moon

I love to knit for my husband: searching for the perfect Man Hat pattern, knitting it in something washable yet soft in a deep green, or navy, or the orange and brown of his beloved pro football team. In the past year or two, when I offer to knit for him, he says something like, "I have so many hats. Knit something for yourself."  

As one might imagine, it was a mark-the-calendar day at my house when my husband requested a hand-knit sweater this spring. He, of course, had something particular in mind:

Andy Kaufman, of Taxi and Saturday Night Live, not to mention his comedy specials.

Yes. I was being asked to custom-knit Andy Kaufman on a grown man's sweater. I did a little digging on the internet, just in case something was already available. There are plenty of bizarre, lovely patterns available, and since there was actually a Big Lebowski sweater pattern out there, I thought there might be something  for an Andy Kaufman sweater. 

I did not find a pattern, but someone had already done the hard work of rendering Andy Kaufman in intarsia. The chart is from DomiKNITrix. (If you were so inclined to knit a Bruce Lee sweater, she has that covered, too.)

I bought ten skeins of worsted wool in a natural color and one in black. I used a basic (very basic) men's sweater pattern that I used many years ago for the second sweater I ever knit for my husband and added the chart. In hindsight, I should have moved the portrait up about two inches, but overall the effect is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

My husband swears this is his new ski sweater, to be worn all the time. All. The. Time. All I can say is, after this much stockinette stitch, someone had better get some wear out of it.