Tintin Jumper
This was a special surprise birthday gift for my nephew Kurt, who is a big fan of Tintin. I used the pattern for “Jumper with Raglan Sleeves” from Panda Handknits #204 (“11 Handknits for Kids”). I noticed that in many of the illustrations of Tintin he’s wearing a sky blue jumper, so that decided me on the colour. Ma Snook provided me with a picture of Tintin and Snowy, which I transferred to knitter’s graph paper in Photoshop. The main areas of colour were knit in intarsia, but the smaller details (Snowy’s tongue and nose, and the black outlines on their faces) were embroidered on after the fact. I also decided to put “TINTIN” in block letters down one of the sleeves, just to keep it interesting. It was a fairly quick knit, and the only annoyance was weaving in all the ends and sewing it together. (I normally like to knit in the round, but the intarsia in this case prevented that.) I knitted it out of Filatura di Crosa Zara, and I probably used 9 balls of the blue and 1 of the white. (I used scraps of random 8ply for the other colours.) I used 4mm needles and finished it in just over a month. He and his parents are coming over Friday for dinner… I hope he likes it! (Ravelry details.)