Sweater – Hopefully Creative

Thin Stripes Sweater

Spiral striped sweater with a hint of yak.

I saw the # 18 Top down Pullover by Lana Grossa as free pattern on Ravelry and immediately fell in love. Too bad the free version was only in German and this pattern was quite difficult to understand. I became so obsessed with making it that I went online to find an English version of it and ended up paying for a whole stack of printed paper of all the patterns in the magazine it was published in. We’ll see if I make any more of the included items.

One dark gray skein, two gray skeins and two white skeins.

For the yarn, I dyed some MCN DK, a dk weight yarn with Merino, Nylon and Cashmere in a grey/brownish tint. I also used two more skeins of that yarn but undyed and two skeins of Tibetan DK, with Merino, Yak and Silk for the thin stripes and hems. I purchased the yarn bases way back, based on their listed gauge, before I even got hold of the English pattern. That’s how much I wanted it.

When I had my pattern and my yarn, I got to work. I believe I followed the instructions pretty faithfully up to the transition from dark to thin stripes. I messed up a little there but I think I managed to hide it pretty well. The pattern uses spiral stripes to get those thin stripes, which is such a cool technique. It did take me a bit to figure out how it worked though, so there are some increase errors in one of the raglan areas.

Thin Stripe Pullover neckline view on mannequin.

Thin Stripe Pullover dark gray to thin stripe transition.

I followed the pattern until separating the sleeves and even a bit further, put it on and thought it looked like a tent. So I frogged a whole bunch (also super interesting with spiral stripes) and separated for sleeves a lot sooner. I also didn’t add as many stitches in the underarm and I decided to continue the one raglan pattern p, k7, p down the body and the sleeves. I thought that was a fun little detail. Then it was on to a whole lot of stockinette knitting, three at a time. The separate balls of yarn were in the sweater which was held closed with safety pins. This worked really well.

Thin Stripe Pullover front view on mannequin.

Thin Stripe Pullover back view detail of white cross marking on mannequin.

For the bottom, I chose to do a 3×1 rib so I didn’t have to do a fold-over hem. I didn’t have enough yarn to make it in the same colour as the top, so I used the yak yarn for that. Seemed like a wiser choice than white cuffs, especially for such a klutz like I am. I did hours and hours of research on bind-offs, chose one, did it wrong and decided I liked it better than what it was supposed to be, so I left it. The final touch was hiding all the ends and stitching a little cross in the neckline to mark the back. I don’t own much brown clothing, but I do really like this thing. I hope it is as soft to wear as it is to touch!

Impromptu Sweater Dress

From flat fabric to dress in less than a day.

This morning after slowly rolling out of bed at 10:20, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my day. So I did some hula hooping as a form of exercise and decided that I wanted to wear a sweater dress. Small problem, I don’t have one of those. However, I do have the Lekala Tunic Pattern nr. 4742, the Pattydoo Nelly sweater pattern and a large fabric stash.

I pulled out this sweatshirt type fabric with a soft grey fuzzy backing and got to work. First, I brought the Lekala pattern back to its original state without the shortening required for the flamingo sweater. I grabbed the hood pieces from the Nelly pattern and pinned it all to my fabric. I added a little length to the bottom of the dress pieces and cut it all out. Sewing it went smoothly, only one unpick where I put the center front hood facing bit in the wrong way round.

Hood of sweater dress with gray fluffy inside

Inside of the sweater dress, gray en fluffy

Around 16:00, I had a full dress together and was trying to decide what to do with the sleeve ends. I didn’t really feel like hemming them and then I remembered that thumbhole cuffs *exist*. So I made some of those, following some tutorials on YouTube. The bottom of the dress was hemmed and then I had to mend a tiny hole on the front. 17:15 and the whole thing was done! Less than a working day to finish this thing. It’s nice and warm, just in time for summer (not), and I am yet again certain that I will never participate in a speedy sewing competition…

Batwing Knit

A vintage knitting machine pattern in some muted fall colours.

The booklet that came with my knitting machine also had a pattern for a striped ladies pullover with V-neck, DP 2219. This seemed like a fun thing to do with the knitting machine that wasn’t a rectangle of some sort, so I set out on a quest to complete the pullover. This started with dyeing yarn. I chose upcycled quarter round yarn, a sock weight with 425 m/100 g and tried to dye it in the colour scheme of a picture I found on the internet.

It didn’t turn out the way I hoped, although I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for. However, once I started knitting it up, I knew it didn’t really fall within the colours I would love to wear. Still determined to see if the pattern would work, I continued. I made one major change, by decreasing the depth of the v-neck, but apart from that followed the instructions. I finished knitting the front and back, and blocked them. Then I lost motivation and it sat in a bag for a while until I met up with a friend. These colours suit her much better, and I knew I needed some sort of external motivation if I were to ever finish it, so I asked if she might be interested. She was.

Batwing knitting machine sweater on a dress form, front

Batwing knitting machine sweater on a dress form, v-neck detail

So I knit the neckband and after some cursing and annoyance managed to get that installed in a way I liked. It’s probably not the way the pattern intended, but it’s on there now, so it’ll do! The sleeves and bottom still rolled quite badly, so I decided that it needed cuffs. I first knit some in a mock rib on the knitting machine and had them attached before deciding that the join was too awful. So I ripped it all back, cast on ribbing and knit it by hand, both around the cuffs and the bottom.

Batwing knitting machine sweater laid on the floor, front up

Batwing knitting machine sweater laid out on the floor

I think I probably asked before summer whether my friend was interested (providing no guarantees on when it would be completed) and it still took me until September to get it finished, but it is done! She enjoys it, I’m happy to have made something out of the yarn that I wouldn’t use for myself, I liked testing the pattern and doing something different on the machine. A bit delayed, but still a win in the end!

Roxy Blues!

All the blues in this sweater

Browsing Ravelry a while ago, I found a pattern that I really liked, called
Roxy Sweater by Lucienne Tricote. I even added it to my Queue on Ravelry, not an often used feature for me. To make it a reality, I needed a yarn that wasn’t too stripy, but I also didn’t want a solid colour sweater. So I decided to use multiple dyes to create a variation of shades of blue. The most accurate colour is in the final image of the post.

So I dyed some Gold Sport 300 yarn by putting four skeins into my chafing dish and adding different shades of blue over the top. I chose the Jacquard dyes 621-626, Sky Blue, Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Blue, Turquoise, Royal Blue and Navy Blue. Then I added a little 637 Gun Metal. The gun metal didn’t do much apart from somehow producing a few green spots? I decided not too care too much about that.

For the body, I cast on in twisted German cast on on size 3.75 needles, but this seemed tight. I knit the rib section and up to the row of eyelets. Then started the sleeves by casting on the stitches on size 4.5 needles (I think), this felt a lot better, much stretchier. Once the sleeves were done, I continued with the body until the point where the sleeves were supposed to be connected to the body. This was the single most boring knit I’ve ever done. I was so frustrated with the absolutely endless stockinette that I almost wanted to chuck it into a corner for a century. I did, however, persevere!

Once I had the body and sleeves at the right length, I decided that I hated the body cast on too much, so I cut it out. It was replaced by a much stretchier cast off. The body and sleeves were attached together and that marked the start for more interesting knitting, with the raglan sleeve decreases, the eyelet section and the garter stitch bit. I had to redo the neck section four times, too tight, too low, too stretchy, etc. I’m happy with what I ended up with though. The finished product is a little shorter than the pattern calls for, because I wanted to wear it with my dark dungarees. This is now my favourite outfit even if I will try to avoid endless stockinette handknitting with yarn this thin for a good long while.

Anna Crop Top

All the greens in a little crop sweater

I was looking through Ravelry again, as I sometimes do, and found a crop top sweater that looked really cool. It was the Anna Crop Top from Wiam’s Crafts and I decided that I needed one. So I grabbed some of my Ultra Aran and put it in the chafing dish. The sprinkle effect was created by putting 5 dye colours and citric acid in a little salt shaker and just shaking it all over the yarn. The colours were Jacquard Acid Dyes Spruce, Kelly Green, Chartreuse, Teal, and Emerald. In total, I dyed 4 skeins for the project.

When I started knitting this thing, I was extremely afraid that I’d run out of yarn. So I cast on two sleeves at the same time and hoped that it would work out. I did make a fair amount of changes to the pattern that led to both extra yarn used and less yarn used. In the sleeves, I started them with fewer stitches and decided to do gradual increases. But in the body, I added extra stitches to the bottom because it was very short.

When I knit the right amount of sleeve on both sides, I cast on the total number of stitches that I wanted to end with (a few more than per the pattern). Then some short rows to get the shaping effect. I tried doing the pattern instructions first, but it just turned into a lumpy mess so I gave up. One skein was enough for the full sleeve plus the start of the body. Then I attached another skein to one of the sleeve-body things and continued knitting the rest of the body, front and back. I didn’t want to join it in the middle but on one side, and used Russian Grafting to put it all together.

The join is nearly invisible on the knit side, but there is a little interest on the purl side, which is the side that is showing. Still, you don’t see if from any distance. I’ve not really worn it out yet. I tried it with a pair of dungarees that I recently made and am in the process of writing up, but it was still a little too short and I was worried about the cold. It might be more of a spring/summer thing than a winter thing.

For Those Prickly Days

If you’re grumpy and you know it, wear this sweater.

In May 2020 with Covid still locking everything down, the local market stall that sells pre-cut lengths of fabric, decided to do some online auctions. That meant that they showed their fabrics in front of a camera and people could buy those from their website. So I took that opportunity to purchase some fabric. Now without being able to touch fabric, I’m apparently not very good at picking out things that I want to use. I think this is one of the first lengths that I’ve actually sewn up from that batch. Since I was in a fairly prickly mood at the time with corona and other stuff, this cactus fabric really spoke to me. However, when it arrived, it was not as thick as I expected it to be, so it took a while for me to decide on a project.

After the batwing top partial success, I wanted to try a batwing with sleeves that covered all of my arms. So I set out to find another pattern and settled on the one from Sew Different. When comparing the shapes, this Sew Different one was fair bit wider and with deeper ‘wings’ – it was also a size L so that wasn’t too surprising. I decided to adjust it a little so that it would 1. fit on my fabric and 2. wouldn’t be quite as wide. I basically scooped the wings up a little so that it was less exaggerated and made it narrower at the bottom. I could also get away with shortening the sleeves a little as I was doing bands anyway.

The fabric is not as thick and warm as I would normally like, but I thought that with the summer heating up, it would be good to have a thinner sweater. It went together smoothly and actually is quite nice to wear. I might end up with a few more items with similar shapes, either in fabric or in knit.

Pizza Sweater?

The dyeing is just the first step, the next couple of thousands are knitting stitches and the end result is a pizza sweater.

After the New Year’s dyeing, I needed to use those freshly coloured skeins for a new project. I looked around Ravelry and discovered the Faverolle by Cirilia Rose that looked very interesting. This project by swhill80 was especially enamouring to me. So I set out to create something similar, if you want to read some of the ‘real time’ notes, the project is here. I showed the start of the project to a colleague of mine and she said it reminded her of pizza, so Pizza Sweater it is.

After casting on, I ran into difficulty with the thing being way and way too big. Took out some of the knitting but left the ribbing and started figuring out how to make this thing my size. This lead to the creation of a large spreadsheet that has just about every row in the project listed and the instructions recalculated. Following the spreadsheet worked well and knitting the body of the project was actually very quick. I got stuck a little with the sleeves due to lack of motivation and then got really bored knitting the collar insert. I did eventually get myself back in gear and once it got going, the collar was also easily completed.

The project has a saddle shoulder, which is not something I’ve ever done before but I quite like the way it turned out. What you might also notice is that there are two definite colour groups in the sweater. The sleeves and the collar inserts are more pink in hue while the body is definitely more yellow. This is to do with the different dye processes I used and I’ll definitely keep those results in mind when I dye again.

In the end, I do like this sweater and we will see how much use it gets. I’m not sure if the yarn might be a bit too scratchy or if it will be fine. The fact that the collar is relatively high is a plus because it should be nice and warm. I do think that I probably could have made it just a bit bigger than it turned out now, but my gauge apparently shifted throughout the project so it turned out a little tighter than expected. Luckily it is a knit and they are stretchy so it is probably not going to be a problem. I hope that finishing this project today will also spur me on to finish some of the projects that have languished in the box of shame… On to the future!

Night Holly

That elation that you feel when you complete a 3 1/4 year long project and end up with a lovely night sky sweater.

I cast on my starry night sweater on the 22nd of May (2021) and finished it today! So about three months of intermittent knitting and a rush dye job in the middle and the project that got conceived in 2018 (backstory here) is finally done! Must say that it feels very rewarding to complete something that has been on the ‘to make’ list for such a long time.

The pattern I chose was the Holly by Anna Bell, which is out of print but can still be found on the internet archive. I chose to deviate from the original a little, mainly in the length and amount of stitches. My gauge was wrong so I recalculated certain bits to fit better with the gauge I was achieving. I started with the front and back at the same time so I could be sure they were of equal lengths. When both the front and the back had a complete ball in them, I started on the sleeves. To my surprise those also took a complete ball each. Cue some ‘waiting for another skein to be delivered’ (so frustrating) as I wasn’t sure I could make both the top of the front and the back and the neckline with the one ball and change I had left.

Turns out that that was a good choice because by the end I had 97 gram leftover. I’d have lost yarn chicken if I tried it. Waiting for the yarn to arrive when the sweater had been completely done would have been worse than in the middle of the project as it was now. I added a button to the neckline because it matched the yellow in my yarn. I think I probably added a little too much yellow while dyeing the yarn to achieve the exact effect I was going for, but I still really like the result and so far it’s been nice to wear for this afternoon. I think it will be a success!

Second Try Sweater

Sometimes you just have to give up and accept that some yarn will just not be for you. So I made my friend a sweater.

I started knitting a sweater called Fallen Leaves by Andrea Yetman in January, using some green yarn and some grey yarn. By the time I came to just below the leave pattern it just seemed very big. Since there weren’t any other sizes to really choose from, I decided to frog it. I had made the deal with myself that I could start knitting with my starry night yarn after I finished this green yarn, so I had to find another project.

So I cast on a new sweater, this time Cadence by Jordana Paige. I didn’t use the yarn specified in the pattern so I knit a larger size with smaller yarn, hoping that it would eventually fit me. By the time I had divided for the arms, I figured out that it both didn’t fit me and that I wouldn’t have liked wearing it even if it did fit. Almost off the shoulder just isn’t my jam. However, I wasn’t inclined to frog this again, because of that deal. So I asked a friend if she liked it so far and whether I could finish it for her. She did and so I kept on knitting.

I knit all of the body and then cast off but didn’t cut the yarn. I had her try it on and it was a little short, so I used all the yarn that was remaining to knit some extra length. I still like the idea of this, with the diamond shapes. I just couldn’t see myself wearing it at all, even if I had frogged it and made it smaller. Luckily, my friend is quite happy with the results of this project so that’s very nice. I’ve now cast on the starry yarn and am looking forward to finishing that sweater. Even if it will be very winter in the middle of summer.

House Bear

Made a cover sweater to fulfil my ultimate baby bear dreams.

My body temperature regulatory system is out of whack sometimes. That means that I’m cold, most of the time. You can regularly see me walking around the house in a second sweater. It’s large, beige, has thumb loops in the sleeves and a hood. It’s hideous but I love it. I decided recently that I needed another like it. Something fluffy, warm and preferably a little whimsical.

So I put a mat on the floor that I could pin into, put some pattern paper on that and grabbed the original. I spread the sweater onto the paper and started drawing the edges and pinning the seams of the pieces. It took a while, but I eventually got all that I needed. I cut those pieces from a black fleece blanket and freehand cut some ears. The pocket bags were cut from an old discarded jersey top. I sewed everything together by treadle and got out the overlocker to finish all those seams. That last step was very relevant because this fabric sheds like you wouldn’t believe.

The thumb loop and all visible edges were finished with jersey bias tape, same as the beige original. I discovered that sewing with the nap was so much easier, so I had to do some interesting manouvering to make that possible. Since I finished it about a week ago, it’s been in regular rotation as something to just chuck on. It might not be the prettiest, or most elegant thing I’ve ever made, but it perfectly does the job it was intended for. Time to live out my ultimate baby bear dreams!

Tag: Sweater