A Monster Ate My Time

With the fiasco that was yesterday (the closet has been repaired and the clothes have all been put away), all my plans for the weekend went out the window. I even forgot about Saturday Chatters (a Ravelry group based on a web chat I was involved with a few years ago… if you’re on Ravelry, feel free to check it out; just search for the group “Saturday Chatters”).

I had intended to bake some more of the 5 minute Artisan bread with the intention of blogging about it, but got caught up with knitting instead. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter saw a pair of knitted monster pants on Pinterest  (you can see them on this board) and asked me if I could knit a pair for Ethan, her 3-year old son. I’m sure you’ve seen them; they’re knitted pants (kind of like sweatpants) with a monster face on the bum.

Really?? Seriously?? She insisted he would LOVE them!

The more I thought about it, though, the more fun they seemed. I finally gave in and ordered the yarn (the yarn shop didn’t have the colours I wanted); it came this past week. I cast on almost as soon as I got home.

This was yesterday. I was almost finished with the crotch shaping at this point. The knitting went really fast! It’s mostly mindless stocking stitch worked in the round so it’s no surprise that it went so quickly. The mouth is made up of short rows, which also gives the bum shaping.

As of last night, I’ve separated for the legs and have started working down the first leg. What I really like about this pattern is that it’s top down and seamless.

The legs will be worked in stripes of the main green and a darker green. Once the pants are finished, I’ll be using duplicate stitch for the eyes and teeth of the monster.

All in all, it’s a pretty good pattern but there are a couple of problems. At either end of the mouth, there is a hole because there are two rows of red worked across the back without joining to the green (does that make sense??). A little suture will fix it but I found that a bit odd.

Also, the numbers in the pattern do not add up. When you cast on 160 stitches and work 4 increases per row for the crotch shaping (one stitch on either side of the center two stitches front and back) 9 times, you add 36 stitches to your total, making it 196; the pattern says there should be a total of 184 stitches. Then, for the legs, because that total stitch count is wrong, the leg stitch count is wrong. The pattern says 92 stitches per leg; there are actually 98. I’m going to continue the shaping as per the pattern but will be ignoring the stitch count.

It surprises me that no one who’s knitted these (as per the Ravelry project page) has mentioned this. I’ve gone over the pattern numerous times and I’m pretty sure I’m not reading it wrong. Oh well, they’ll still work out just fine, I’m sure.

Back to the monster pants… I really want to see how they turn out!