The Very Hungry Caterpillar - in jumper form

After all of those birthday shrugs I was glad to knit something different.
This project has been in my head for a long time, and I am so glad I finally got to knit it for my own little boy. I present "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Jumper".

I was inspired at first by this cardigan on Ravelry (and I later on found this fab cardigan too) but also by the most perfect Very Hungry Caterpillar coloured yarn - Dream in Color Classy in Happy Forest. This is the yarn I knit my Vine Yoke cardigan from, and I had a spare skein which I had been saving for this imaginery jumper.

I started with a jumper pattern I had knit before, the Catch Sweater from Louisa Hardings "Miss Bea's Playtime". However like last time, I knit in the round up to the sleeves and then knit the back and the front separately.

I grafted the shoulders, knitted the neck band straight onto the jumper and then picked up stitches and knit the sleeves in the round. I am sure I should probably use short rows to shape the top of the sleeves, but it looks fine like this to me. Instead of plain stocking stitch arms I added a row of purl stitches every 9 rows to make them more caterpillar like.

The jumper came out slightly smaller than the pattern because I used worsted weight rather than aran weight yarn. However as these Louisa Harding sweaters are always massive it doesn't matter too much.

The caterpillar was knit on the fly - after several attempts I finally cracked it. He is worked in garter stitch. I cast on at the tail and used short rows to shape it. I found the best way to define the different sections was to cast off 2 stitches on one row and then cast on 2 using the backwards loop method on the next row. Increasing and decreasing didn’t give enough of a defined shape. The head was knit in stocking stitch and shaped using normal increases and decreases.
The eyes were knit and appliqued on, as was the nose and the feet. The Antennae were crocheted.
I attached the caterpillar to the jumper with bondaweb. I tried adding the caterpillar's hairs but decided it was just too much.

I am so pleased with the finished jumper:

A caterpillar close up:


I think someone else liked his birthday jumper too: