First FO of 2019! Which feels like cheating because this sweater wasn’t even cast on last year, but the year before that.. Yes this is a remnant of the summer of 2017 and it was about damn time I finished it.

Pattern: Ondawa by Michele Wang
Yarn: Cascade yarns 220

This sweater is literally cables for days (many many days, that it took me to knit them). I actually think the front and back panels were finished pretty quickly, and then I stranded on sleeve island for about a year. Not sure why I stranded there for so long, but I think part of it was dreading having to seam the sweater together. And boy, do I hate seaming.

I made no modifications to the pattern, other than going for full length sleeves. In case the prospect of all those cables is daunting to you, I’ve seen a lot of projects on ravelry where on the back panels the cables were substituted with twisted rib, although honestly I would have found that much more tedious to knit.

The sweater initially started out because I had some skeins of Cascade 220 in my stash that were going to waste, and I wanted to find a good use for them. I ordered some extra skeins and the sweater was started. First time using this yarn for a sweater and so far I’m really happy with it, especially because you don’t need to clean out your bank account for a worsted weight sweater.

The fit of this sweater is definitely unlike anything I’ve ever knit before, and when I first tried it on I thought ‘oh my, I’ve knit a cropped cabled tent!’. Then, moving around in it I really started loving this quirky sweater!

I have one last FO to show from last year, quite literally finished within the last few hours of the year. This pattern was actually cast on on my birthday, which is December 1st. That day I made a visit to La Bien Aimee and came back with a nice bag full of this lovely orange yarn. Later that day the sweater was started. Precisely 1 month of sweater knitting later, and this is the result!

Pattern: Tuileries Pullover by Julie Knits in Paris
Yarn: De Rerum Natura Ulysse

The pattern is a very cosy, wide turtle-neck style sweater, which includes (fair warning) quite bit of twisted ribbing. The fit is loose and intended to be cropped, something I’m very much into lately. The pattern is easy to follow and great for travel/tv/meditative knitting. I was hoping to get a hug of a sweater out of this and that’s exactly what I got.

After a wash the yarn becomes lovely and soft to wear on the skin, so I wouldn’t worry about this yarn being scratchy on your neck. I’m super pleased with the fit on me! The only thing I’m still trying to figure out a little is how to ‘wear’ the collar. In the pattern images it’s held up by hand, and for me it doesn’t stay up on its own accord. Nothing wrong with that, but as the twisted ribbing is one sided, the way it falls on my neck always reveals a substantial amount of ‘ugly’ ribbing. So for now I like it best to fold the collar inwards and turn it into a wide turtle neck. There’s probably different ways to wear the sweater, and I’m still playing around with it to see which way I like best. Whichever way I wear it, I’m at least certain I’ll be comfy in this sweater for the rest of winter 🙂

I am loooving the current weather, and it’s driving me to knit knit knit. I have a couple of projects floating on my needles, but most of my knitting has been dedicated to this one project.

Pattern: Threipmuir by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Jamieson & Smith 2ply jumper weight

I’ve only ever knitted colourwork on small projects, such as socks and mittens, so this felt a little like a jump into the deep. The sweater photographs pretty well, but I’ll assure you when you get up close and personal you’ll find plenty of faults. At places my floats are either too long or too short, making for some overall wonkiness. I honestly couldn’t care less though. Finishing my first colourwork sweater felt like a victory in any case!

I’ve never worked with this yarn before, and despite it initially feeling pretty scratchy, I knew from my swatch that it’d soften up beautifully after washing. The texture is really nice and I feel like the yarn is very forgiving when it comes to colourwork. I was actually watching the Shining last week, which is the first time I realised the colours I picked matched the carpets in that movie pretty well 😀 Anyway, I LOVE the colours, they feel very me.

I was so excited finishing this sweater, I literally did a little happy dance. Pictured below is the evidence for that. I’ll leave it on the blog for now, but might change my mind about that later 😉

 

Another sweater fresh off the needles! You might remember this project as one of my holiday knits. I actually finished it up rather quickly, but noticed I should’ve alternated skeins (something I often find myself to lazy to do), and had to rip back part of the body to address an abrupt colour change. With the biggest part of the fresh finish adrenaline already out of my body, I left the sweater lying around for a while before getting round to doing this.

Pattern: Gran sweater by Dora Creadora
Yarn: Snailyarn Merino DK (I actually don’t know which colourway this is!)

I didn’t make any significant alternations to this pattern, yet it still looks slightly different than it’s supposed to. That’s for 2 reasons: firstly I realized I only had enough yarn to knit the pattern 1 size smaller than I’d usually need. Given that I was most interested in the cropped version that has a lot of positive easy, I reckoned I’d get away with it. Secondly, once I knitted it as cropped, I thought it was too cropped and added more length. So the Gran version I ended up with lies somewhere in between the classic and the cropped version.

In any case, the pattern is highly addictive. The repeat that runs over the body is easy to remember. It doesn’t make for the quickest knitting, but is highly meditative.

The yarn is absolutely gorgeous in my opinion. It’s a light grey with lots of purple speckles all over. I think it looks really special! It’s super soft and it felt really creamy while knitting it up. Allover pretty perfect for a sweater!