FO: Oranje

My fair isle obsession continues.  This has been the winter of colorful colorwork for me, with nary a cable or lace to be seen.

I liked the idea and look of a more modern take on the traditional fair isle yoke sweater- something with a bit of shaping and more modern looking yoke motifs- and I've been wanting to cast on for the Oranje cardigan for a while.  I originally thought I would work this monochrome- black, grey, white- but got inspired and replaced the black with the most insanely shocking pink I could dig out of my stash.

The yarn was sport weight, so it took quite a while to get knitted up.  It was pretty boring until the yoke, and then it got colorful and a bit complicated with all the braids tangling up the yarn.

I finished the knitting, then butchered it.

Ha ha, kidding, I machine-stitched neat lines on either side of the steek, and then split it from navel to throat like the barbarian that I am.  Pullover become a cardigan, presto changeo!

 Oh and I did try it on before I sliced this- I was happy with the fit.  Then I washed and blocked it, and wouldn't you know it?  That son of a bitch grew and grew and grew.  Behold the wonders of superwash wool.  I blocked it a bit smaller, with some success.

Behold.

It is now a too-large cardigan.

I put in button bands, but no buttons or zippers yet as I give this some thought.  The cardigan is in time-out while I decide what to do with it.  I had made the Medium size- 40", wanting something that wasn't skin tight.  Unfortunately, if I would have made the next size down, I would have gotten a much better fit.  So it sits, folded in the corner, waiting for divine inspiration or someone slightly larger then me to be in want of a sweater.  

I love the details- the short rows to build up the back of the neck:

The neatly turned hems:

The colors I chose, and the braids that added texture and gave it a more modern look:

Alas, none of this will make up for the fact that it's about two sizes too big.  It's just way too much fabric for me to swim in!  I did want a relaxed cardigan, but this much ease is just unflattering and unkind to the curvy.  I'm trying to decide if it is worth it to tuck in the button bands and attach a zipper- it would lop off about two inches that way.  I need to somehow get rid of six before I felt like this was a good, flattering fit.

It's not a complete loss: It was fun to knit.  But you can see perfectly in the photo below that all the extra fabric is just hanging out.

But the yarn, ooooh, the yarn.  That touch of cashmere makes it so lush.

Sigh.

I used 2 skeins of Sanguine Gryphon Bugga in Tulip Tree Beauty (grey) and most of one skein of Devil's Flower Mantis (pink) plus a skein of undyed yarn.   I DID SWATCH and yes, I did get gauge.  It's just bad judgement on sizing and yarn drape on my part really.

If anything, this cardigan has taught me to doubt myself a bit more and to take my self-confidence down a few notches.

I did make some modifications: the original has 3/4 sleeves and a high turtleneck that reaches the chin.  I lopped off the turtleneck once I finished the short rows, and added inches to the sleeves.  Having a winter sweater with 3/4 sleeves just seemed silly.

To be continued...

FO: Riddari, with an acceptable amount of buldge

I have spent way too much time on this beast.  

The actual knitting took me no time- maybe two weeks start to finish?- and it looked just dandy until I took the scissors to it.

The idea of it was an Icelandic-style jumper done in 100% British Wools:  it was fascinating to combine these wools, to get a feel for each one.  The Black Welsh was the roughest to work with- it's rustic and full of lanolin, but it will look like new forever.  The grey Suffolk was a bit softer, but I obsessively picked wires of guard hairs out of it.  The moorit Shetland, lovely and lofty, the BFL silky and soft.  Each is their natural color, making a nice sample of the natural variety of colorful sheep.  I dubbed this "the Cod Wars" sweater- the UK had a series of bullying encounters with Iceland over fishing rights in the rich waters around Iceland, and from the 1950's to the late 70's, the UK would send trawlers there under the protection of warships to fish around Iceland.

 Like I said, the problems started when I took the scissors to the front.  See, the pattern was written for a much lighter weight yarn, but I loved the yoke pattern so much that I did the math and followed the instructions for a child's extra small size knit in a rather tight gauge.  The fabric is dense and impenetrable to wind and water, but perhaps a bit to warm for anyplace but Iceland.  A bit of air conditioning was in order and I decided to run a crochet steek up the front, snipped it into a cardigan and installed a vintage brass zipper.  That's when I started having big problems.

The zipper would not lay flat, creating big lumps and bumps up the front.  Huge ones.  After twice hand-picking and trying to ease the lumps out, frantic calls to tailors and friends were made.  I debated trying to sew it back up and save it as a cardigan, but the colorwork would have looked all wrong.  I decided to outsource, and took it to Susan at Sharpworks down in Herne Hill.  Susan wouldn't do it for me, but advised me to take out the crochet steeks, which was adding a tight line of stitches and extra fabric that was distorting things.  She also advised me to stretch the fabric taught along the zipper to minimize the zipper tape bunching.

I went home, took out the crochet steeks, and eased the zipper in one more time, trying to stretch out the lumps without turning it into a dress.

Ta dum!  An acceptable amount of bulges!  Since I had to stretch the fabric, it's a bit longer then I intended- I could have stretched it more and ended up with a dress.  It's not perfectly flat, but it doesn't look like a tumor is growing under there either.  Oh!  and it's warm enough to be outerwear.  And you know, now that I've been struggling with this for more than a month now, I've noticed that a fair amount of commercially made zip-up sweaters have zippers that don't like perfectly flat as well, so instead of drowning in a river of tears of frustration, I said this is good enough and walked away.

The kicker?  No way no how are Icelandic Lopapeysa traditional to Iceland.  They were developed in the 1950's to make use of the abundance of Icelandic wool, and they are based on styles of traditional knitwear from far-off places suck as Turkey, Sweden, South America, and Greenland.  They quickly became a favorite of tourist and locals alike.

 I do need to clean up my edges a little bit more- I don't have a perfectly clean line running up the front.  What's a few more hours with needle and thread?  I promise you I won't un-pick the zipper again.  Part of the raggedness around the edges are due to the fact that I've tinkered with this way too much and edges began to fray at the same rate as my temper.      

 It's not going to get cold enough here in the South of England to ever need something this fantastically wooly.  A trip to Iceland is in order, or perhaps, one day, a Maine winter will be endured.

The pattern is Riddari.  The yarn is Rowan British Sheep Breeds Chunky, a yarn much bulkier than what was called for in the pattern, but I've been determined to knit down my stash instead of reaching for my bank card every time the urge to knit a sweater hits.