I'm proud of myself for two things regarding this sweater. The first, I swatched not once but three times, four times if you count the cable pattern I had originally wanted to do.
And the second thing is that I finished this in exactly a month. My first two sweaters took me well over three months each to knit. I think this has to do with the fact that I took time to swatch, measure a sweatshirt that I wanted to mimic the size of and then planned out every step. That way, when I got to the armhole and shoulder shaping I didn't have to stop and do calculations. Or what happened in the past, I didn't get to the shaping and put off doing the calculations for months. It was just smooth sailing.
Like I said before, I originally wanted a super intense cabled sweater from a vintage pattern, but after swatching the cable pattern, I decided it was just more than I wanted to take on right now. Even though I've knit two other not so simple sweaters, I'm still not overly familiar with sweater construction. And although the cable pattern was fairly easy to follow, I knew I'd abandon the sweater once it came time for the shaping.
Now, I have a sweater that I love, and a ton more confidence in my sweater knitting. For the sweater I followed instructions for the gauge 5, 32 inch bust in The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns by Ann Budd. It's a great book and I made very few changes to the original instructions. Mostly, I just knit the body a bit longer, put some length in the armholes and added a bit more shaping to the sleeves.
Instead of knitting the sleeves flat, then setting them in I followed the tutorial on By Gum By Golly for set in sleeves from the top down. They were super, super easy the only thing I did different was used German Short Rows instead of the Wrap and Turn shown. I do wish I had remembered to go down a needle size when I worked flat, my flat gauge is significantly different from my in the round gauge.
Overall, I'm really happy with the results. I would maybe knit the body a tad bit longer as well as the sleeves. I'd also maybe knit the bottom ribbing a little bit longer closer to two inches instead of the one inch I did. With that said, it's already proven to still be totally wearable as is though.
The yarn I used was Knit Picks City Tweed DK in the Habanero colorway. There's been quite the debate around the house about what the actual color of this yarn is. Some members of my family say it's brown and I had always thought it was orange. I've decided it's an orangey brown, so I dubbed this sweater my Cinnamon Muffin sweater. Whatever color it is I love it, but don't love that I can't figure out how to photograph it correctly or consistently. Any tips?
I'm really super pumped about having an everyday sweater to wear instead of my stranded Christmas themed ones that I wear once a year. I already have so many outfits planned for this sweater and I can't wait to wear them. How do you guys style your favorite handknits?
For more detailed information, check out my Ravelry project page. And as always follow me on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest for work in progress pics and to see what other non-knitting things I'm working on..
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