My third finished sweater of the year, and the third grey one in a row at that. I’m sensing a pattern!

Pattern: Coronis sweater by Emily Ringelman
Yarn: GGH wollywasch 

This pattern was originally featured in Pom Pom quarterly issue 10, which I purchased a couple of years after its release and specifically with the goal of making this sweater in mind. I instantly knew the sweater was very ‘me’, and I’d want to wear it all the time. With me being very busy recently, it was a perfect easy sweater to have on the needles.

For yarn I used the new to me ggh wollywasch, a 100% wool blend yarn from a german manufacturer. To me, this relatively no frills sweater goes oh so well with this no frills yarn. The charcoal has a bit of a tweedy look to it, and this perfectly affordable yarn comes in so many colours. I would most definitely recommend this yarn for sweater knitting!

Now for my next garment I will honestly try my best to make something less moody-coloured 😀 Something I know the emerging spring weather will certainly be helping with.

I have been knitting pretty monogamously lately, partly because work has been busy and multitasking multiple projects was too draining, and partly because I was involved in a game of yarn chicken. With this sweater to be exact. And there is some part of me that truly feels like I’m in a race whenever I start to feel I might run out of yarn. As if, when I’d just knit fast enough, surely I’ll beat the yarn to it. Well, maybe it is true, because I totally managed a full sweater with the yarn I had.

Pattern: Piece of Silver sweater by Veera Välimäki (featured in Laine Magazine issue 1)
Yarn: Marianthi yarn in Merino fingering extra soft, in the Opal colourway

This is one of those patterns I have been meaning to make for ages, and the yarn had been in my stash for one year already. I am so happy I finally cast on. The yarn is so so soft, and so much fun with the subtle speckles in many different colours throughout.

This sweater pattern is incredibly beginners friendly. The knitting is basically a top down raglan, and there is no shaping whatsoever in the body. I had no problems following the pattern and the finished product is incredibly light-weight and comfi.

But in full honestly, I will show this picture of the back of the sweater as well. I think I have been seriously knitting for 5-6 years now, but I am very far done from learning. I often find that if I am not very good at a technique, I will avoid it. Which is truly a shame and stops me from knitting all the patterns I want. One thing that often holds me back is alternating skeins when knitting with hand-dyed yarn. I’m much more prone to do this when I know my sloppy alternations are easily hide-able in the button band of a cardigan for example. With sweater I’ll often only alternate for the body, and not for the yoke part where it would be more obvious to see. For this sweater I did alternate throughout, with the exception of the turtleneck. For the yoke the alternation happened on the back, for the body I alternated on the side, where it looks like a seem. And is my alternation on the back neat and invisbible? Hell no, you can definitely tell. I know a lot of knitters would probably run away screaming from a sweater with such an obvious ladder in plain view. But honestly? I don’t care so much. It’s a learning process, at least I did not shy away from it this time. I’m sure in the future I will do better, and until then, I will be wearing this sweater with pride. Imperfections and all.

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 😉