After getting stuck for a while with a double case of Second Sleeve Syndrome, I finally finished the nieces' superhero sweaters. Niece the Younger wanted a Superman sweater, while Niece the Elder wanted Wonder Woman.
Both the sweaters were made from free patterns. The Wonder Woman sweater comes from a full sweater pattern sized for adults, while the Superman one is a free colour chart knitted into a standard plain raglan pattern.
The Wonder Woman pattern calls for chunky yarn. I made it in DK and followed the instructions for a size large to get a sweater sized for a seven-year-old.
Both sweaters are made out of the same yarn (Mary Maxim's Ultra Mellowspun). I thought it was interesting how the yellow and red looks softer against the steel blue of the Superman sweater, as opposed to the royal blue of the Wonder Woman.
Speaking of colourwork: for the record, these were all done in intarsia, using full balls for main colours (the blue on the sleeves, for instance), and lengths a metre or two for details (like the stars). So yes, there were a lot of ends, but I never find darning in ends that onerous. For one thing, I started darning in as soon as a piece was done, instead of leaving it until the bitter end. For another, ends has the fun of strategy to it. For example. a lot of the ends on the Wonder Woman sweater were left until after the seaming was done, so that they could be buried inside the seams instead of in the main fabric itself. Maybe it's just because it's something I learned how to do when I was about seven, but doing ends on colourwork always feels like a game.
The yarn is a nice, soft synthetic, and remarkably cheap, which is just as well, because I still have this much yarn left:
That is easily enough for another child's sweater. I have looked around my patterns library, and have a few candidates for a multicoloured sweater. Something to do when I take time off at the end of the year, I think.