Saturday, May 27, 2006

Icelandic Pullover



Be warned, this post is a bit rambling. I ran across a photo CD with pictures of an incomplete (at the time) sweater. Since I couldn't get to the gardening project I had planned, I decided to turn my blog space into a knitting blog. We’ve had two weeks of dismal, dreary weather. Lots of thunderstorms, non-stop rain, a few tornado warnings. I shouldn’t complain because we didn’t have much snow this winter, and the lakes’ levels have been steadily declining for several years. We do need water, whether in the form of rain or snow. Nonetheless, it can be a bit gloomy with grey skies constantly on the horizon, and with the furious onslaught, the earth doesn’t really get a chance to soak up the water. We have been spared flooding, but others haven’t been so lucky.

Around six years ago last February (yes, six years), I started this uber warm pullover. It was a relatively quick knit thanks to the bulky wool and well written pattern. I had just finished a small child’s gansey for one of my nieces (one of Beth Brown-Reisel’s patterns, modified with fair-isle color), had a pair of socks, an afghan, and a vest on the needles, but was looking for something new. I suppose it’s that nagging urge to begin another project once one was completed . . . you know, something different—different colors, different yarn, different pattern, different challenge . . .

I had a bunch of Cleckheaton, Lamb’s Pride, Classic Elite's Montera (lots of orange, some fuscia, 50% Llama and 50% wool), and Peace Fleece in my stash but no immediate plans.

See part of stash here:





Like many of you out there, I prefer to knit in the round because a.) it’s faster, b.) that's how I learned, and c.) I hate seaming (which, by the way is quite odd, as I am an excellent seamstress and much prefer sewing—but this, too, is for another blog). I also love color, so I was interested in something colorful, especially since the next project was for me. I looked through my books and decided on the Fair Isle Pullover by Kristen Nicholas from Knitting the New Classics (Elite). I think it took less than one month, and it turned out quite lovely although I have yet to weave in the loose ends (WTF-can’t even force myself to do that much finishing?!@!!!).

Two drawbacks: I wish I had made the sleeves longer; it was hard to judge how long they would be once attached to the sweater, and I would not use the Montera with the Lamb's Pride—a bit too soft with the stiffer wool, especially around the bottom and sleeve edges. I think the softness comes from the llama, which makes the yarn heavenly to knit with.



The sleeves look pretty short here compared to the sweater’s body, but that is partly because I knew I wanted a longish sweater to wear over longish skirts and partly because I couldn't accurately judge the length of the sleeves until they were attached to the yoke. Ideally I would like to make the sleeves about two inches longer. I have been toying with the idea of adding to the cuff — enough that would afford me the extra inches, but I'm a bit afraid of the way the Montera holds up compared to the more sturdy Lamb's Pride. I’m also afraid of having a 14 inch cuff. I think the sleeves would look a bit silly — almost like ¾ length sleeves with really long cuffs — what would be the point of that?

The cast-on point of the sleeves was at the lower edge of the orange working towards the shoulder, which was why I couldn’t accurately judge their length. I didn’t know how much the yoke would droop off the shoulder adding to the sleeves’ length. Although I tried the partially completed sweater and sleeve on, the roughly 150 stitches of the yoke were all bunched together on the 16” circs, which made it impossible to tell how much everything would relax once off the needles. Yes, I could have waited and put some of the stitches on another needle to try to put the whole thing together, but I still didn’t have a good idea of how much fabric would be created from the bottom of the yoke to the top of the shoulder. The lesson learned: impatience is never well rewarded.

The other option would be to cut (good lord!) or unravel the ends of the sleeves and somehow Kitchener stitch or graft stitches to the lower end of the purple and work my way in the opposite direction to add length. In theory this should work. But I don’t have that much courage yet. I’ll save that challenge for another day.

(By the way, the beautiful quilt under the sweater, overexposed by the camera's flash, was handmade by my mother. It consists of blocks, all sewn by hand — not machine, made as a rough-draft/trial before the *real thing.* In other words, these were practice blocks that she made while experimenting with quilting patterns. She had them in a basket and was going to (gasp) dispose of them. I convinced her to slap 'em together into an exquisite sampler quilt, which now covers me every night.)



Back to knitting. As you can tell from the bottom of the sweater, I have changed the color design of the original pattern. The pattern’s waistband is the same color as the body. It's also likely that I changed the yoke pattern, but I haven't looked at the original in quite some time to know for sure. The finished sweater has a lovely, long turtleneck. I traditionally loathe anything around my neck (with the exception of a nice piece of jewelry), and rarely wear turtles, mock or otherwise. It’s a bit ironic that this pullover has such a neck, but 2000 must have had a cold February.

Project details:
Pattern: Fair Isle Pullover by Kristen Nicholas from Knitting the New Classics (Elite)
Yarn: green and purple: Lamb’s Pride Bulky (100% wool); orange and fuscia: Classic Elite Montera (50% Llama, 50% wool) from a previously frogged sweater and vest respectively
Needles: addi-turbos (circulars for body) #9 US; Brittany New England White Birch (dpns for sleeves and collar) #8 and 10.5 US.
Time: approximately one cold, frigid month in February (minus of course, weaving ends)

For those of you who are into memes, there is an old one below that you can recycle if you want. I won't tag anyone.