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!

This little sweater has been all summer in the making, with a little knitting here and there. I’m pretty sure I finished all the knitting well over a month ago, but was too lazy to weave in the ends. To be fair, it was so incredibly hot I wouldn’t have worn it anyway. But now with the start of what appears to be an absolutely perfect autumn, I’m going to say the finishing time of this top is absolutely perfect.

Pattern: Tegna by Caitlin Hunter
Yarn: La Bien Aimee Tough Sock in the Yellow Brick Road colourway

One of the very first things I did after moving to Paris was pay a visit to the La Bien Aimee store, which is where I picked up the 2 skeins of yarn necessary for this top. At that time I might have been the absolute last knitter on earth that hadn’t knit a Tegna yet, so it was an obvious choice. It’s an easy and satisfying pattern that I would most definitely recommend!

I’m going to tell you one little secret about this top, which is that I nearly frogged it after it was blocked. I was having such a bad day and was feeling all sorts of bad about myself when I tried it on for the first time. In my mind this thing was hideous and unflattering and I just wanted to rip it out right there and then. I was feeling ugly, like a failed knitter, and in my mind this top was the culmination of all of that. I didn’t frog it, thankfully, and now wearing it I actually feel fantastic in this top. Just goes to show what kind of mean tricks your mind can play on you. I’m not sure what the take home message from this should be but I do want to tell you this; be kind to yourself. Give yourself a break. And let knitting be a positive light in this world that is all sorts of messed up right now. Oh, and never frog a knit in the heat of the moment!