Tabular
Wool:
Jamieson & Smith Jumper-weight
MC 203 (light grey); CC1: 134 (aubergine); CC2: FC7 (salmon/orange marl) CC3: FC50 (light pink Purple mix
Needle: 3mm
Size made: 4 / 45″ (2 inches postive ease at chest)
Okay, friends, buckle in. This is a tale of a knit that took a long time, that I’m unsure if I like, but I have a lot of things to say about it!
I have wanted to knit this since Pom Pom 23 dropped on my mat back in winter 2017. The unusual modular construction of the front really appealed to me – fast forward around to December 2020 and I decided to make this one of my Boxing Day cast ons with yarn I had in stash (oooh there’s a sentence that gives me that special feeling to say!). I bought the MC a few months before as I had intended to make Gudrun Johnston’s Yokey Dokey (and I will, one day, make that!), but someone it wanted to be this instead. So, cast on on Boxing Day 2020 I duly did and I finally cast off in…October 2021. Sheesh! I’ll tell ya, this was a labour of love, cos there was not a lot of laughing at making parts of this sweater. Is it still a labour of love if you’re not 100% sure you love it? *checks* …I think its just a labour!
Notes:
This sweater starts with the central triangle of the front detail in cc1 and then you pick up and add the second colour around this. You then add your MC and work the front, down in a V shape. The front, back and sleeves are all worked separately, flat…although I did not knit the sleeves flat.
So the first thing to say about this pattern is that the biggest size is 49″ chest and that’s meant to be with 3 “of positive ease. I would love to see this design include more sizes.
Secondly, one of the reasons it took me so long to complete is that there is a note in the pattern which tells you where you can lengthen the pattern on the front piece, but it doesn’t give that information for the back piece. I am not the kind of knitter who can just see that in my minds eye. Some of us can see a project in that way, but not me! I need a little steer in the pattern, so it sat for a while. Anyway, for anyone else who needs to know, however many rows you lengthen by on the front (at end of section c), you add the same amount of rows to the first set of instructions for the back.
After the front and back were knit I added the pink part to the front detail. I picked up and knit these several different ways and I didn’t like the effect of any way, they all looked messy and bulky. Possibly my issue though, not the pattern, but though I do think a different stitch would attach better perhaps. It’s that awkward thing of attaching pieces knit in different directions. I daresay a more patient knitter might be neater.
Like I said, I knit the sleeves in the round until I got to the shoulder shaping and then knit that flat. The sleeves took forever! Whenever friends asked me on my progress I mumbles something about “effing sleeves” a lot! I like sleeves, but I don’t like knitting them. I know many of you feel the same!
Once it was sewn up I added the neck and hem garter and blocked. However, I just feel a bit indifferent to it. Love the wool and the warmth and the interesting construction, but something isn’t quite right and I’m not asking for advice, I just feel that it’s not quite right. However, I am going to re-do that cast off and then wash it again and BTF out of it (block to fuc£ – as my good friend refers to it) and see if that makes any difference to that thing that I feel. It could be that I just don’t like seamed knits! Seamless is my preferred method (See the bit about sleeves again) I know what seaming does for a garment though and I wouldn’t rule it out again.
I will update this post once cast it off again with a bigger needle.
Photos were taken today near the big Asda, where C has discovered this great colourful backdrop. Let’s not waste a good backdrop, even if we’re not sure about the sweater.
Some of the photos really make me laugh, such as….
Hello! It’s lovely to see you posting on WoolWork again 🙂
If I’ve struggled with a sweater and have ambivalent feelings about it, I find that if I put it away for a while (a few months or a year), when I come across it again I either have a “yay I did this” feeling or a “this is not for me” one. Don’t know if you’ll find this helpful.
The rainbow bridge is a fantastic backdrop <3
What a fab jumper! x