Tag: jumper

Year of Projects 2021/22: Week Thirty

I’ve finally finished the man socks of doom! Well, one of the pairs. The simple pair. Thankfully he didn’t want them to be too long so that saved some work on the leg. I much prefer the EoP heel on this version of the Vanilla Sock. Even simple socks seem a bit much in size eleven! I loved this Malabrigo yarn though.

Vanilla socks in Malabrigo

I’ve also picked the Ogopogo socks back up. I’d forgotten how fiddly cabling on socks can be but I really like this pattern and it works so well with this yarn. These are going to be a very slow progress but it’s nice to have something like this to pick up for a few rows on an evening. Weirdly these socks seem very long compared to the Vanilla ones above. They are so weirdly long looking I keep making my partner try them on, but they definitely fit.

Ogopogo

To offset the fiddly cabling I have cast on Boxy. I’ve been looking for a nice slouchy loose jumper to use up some of my fingering weight yarn and this looks a good choice. It’s bottom up which is a first for me in terms of construction. I’m about two inches into sixteen inches of body.

Boxy

Because I like to throw caution to the wind I cast on first, then I read about the yarn, and then I did a gauge swatch. The yarn is Malabrigo Mechita in Eggplant and reviews suggest it grows quite a bit with blocking but I didn’t notice this too much on my samples. I didn’t quite make gauge but as it’s coming up smaller I don’t think that will be a problem given the pattern. One day I’ll be less reckless in my knitting, but not today!

I’m still working on my 12 days spinning project and planning my next project. I have a lot of fibre in stash that I’ve been acquiring for a breed study so I might start looking at that. I also want to finish my HTC gradient sweater spin.

In not yarny news I’m starting to get down to making plans for the garden. I’m at my favourite point in the gardening calendar where I have seed catalogues, paper charts and a cup of tea in front of the fire. I get less enthusiastic when the action moves outside! My audio book at the moment is Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson and he writes a lot about Da Vinci’s endlessly enquiring mind and his inability to see most projects through to completion. I like to think I’m modelling myself on a genius!

Finished Object: From Fluff to Stuff

Two weeks after finishing it I’m finally getting around to posting my Mothed FO. I struggled to get gauge with this so I knitted the large hoping for a medium(ish) (why yes, I am terrible with gauge and just hope for the best). Then lockdown happened and I wished I’d knitted the next size up 😂. Still I’m nearly back down to my pre-lockdown weight so hopefully I’ll get some autumn wear out of this. I want it to hang loosely and it fits a little too well at the moment.

The yarn is a Fellview Fibre spin from a few years ago in the colourway Jet Powered, which I think was a merino/silk blend. The yarn was a traditional 3-ply with the rolags as one ply, and then one ply of a camel/silk blend and one of yak/silk.

I was pretty happy with this spin at the time, but finishing up this project a couple of things strike me. The first is that my spinning has really improved over the last few years. I’m still far from perfect, but I spin much more consistently now and my yarns are softer. The second is that Yak is not a fibre for me. I’ve tried it a couple of times and it always seems to come out a little over plied. Still it’s made for a jumper with a nice lightness and drape to it that I think will make good autumn/spring wear.

Despite the two years it sat in a cupboard (a lot less than I thought) this is actually a pretty quick and easy knit and I think I’d use it as a template for another jumper in the future, probably with a slightly thicker yarn or one with less drape and more ‘spring’.