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Tweed Pullover

Pattern: Tweed Pullover from Cables Untangled by Melissa Leapman

Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool – 10 balls (give or take)

Needles: size 5 and 6 Crystal Palace Bamboo circs

Knit: 6/2-9/25/2007

Mods: A slight tweak of the neck which will be discussed below

I couldn’t be happier with how this came out! It’s a teensy tiny bit long in the body, but as a tall girl, I really don’t mind. The sleeve length is just perfect, which is something I always find a bit difficult to get right. I was worried after getting some better measurements of myself recently that I had made the wrong size, but I think it turned out pretty well. I mentioned previously that there is a lot of talk on the ‘net about how this yarn grows when it hits water. While I was a good little knitter and washed and blocked my swatch, I think I blocked the actual sweater a little more aggressively than the swatch, but in this case it paid off!

For the most part, I found the pattern to be well written and error free. The charts were easily read and well done. I’ve said this before too, but if you decide to make this sweater I would really recommend starting with the sleeves. You will develop a really solid knowledge of the main motif, and when that motif is repeated on the front and back of the sweater and interconnected, you will understand it so much more than if you started with the front or the back. I think that knowledge would help the knitting move along more quickly as it has some fairly complex cable crossings.

The one place the instructions tripped me up was knitting on the turtleneck. First, the instructions indicate that the sleeves should be sewed in but that the back seam of the left shoulder should be left open. Then you pick up stitches and knit the neck. The only problem with this for me was that I forgot that there is a saddle to the sleeve and therefore part of the back must be left free to sew to the saddle after the neck is finished. I picked up stitches all across the whole top of everything, and then wondered why it was so difficult to only put 101 stitches into the neckline! ::slaps forehead:: So, I would *highly* recommend pinning that last shoulder seam together before you do the neck to show where you should NOT be picking up stitches.

Also, the chart for the neckline had the cables being twisted on a wrong side row. That made absolutely no sense to me, so I did them on the right side, just like the rest of the sweater. It also still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me why the neck couldn’t be knit in the round. It would have been easier to knit and one less seam. But, as illustrated above, sometimes I’m not so smart, so perhaps I am missing something important here. I did the neck as instructed otherwise, because I did not want to rip it out *again*.

The yarn for this project really grew on me as I worked with it. I think it really worked well for this sweater and makes it lightweight, but quite warm (I couldn’t wait to get it off after this photo shoot as it was not exactly wool sweater weather at the time!). I did notice that it feels a slight bit on the itchy side around the neck, but I’m hoping another wash before I wear it “for real” will help with that.

I have a ton of yarn leftover from this project, probably about 6 skeins. If anyone wants to make a trade, let me know! I’d love to make something else with this yarn, but in another color.

Believe it or not, there’s another sweater in the works right now and I’m thinking (dare I put this on the ‘net?!?) that it too may actually be ready for Rhinebeck! More on that next time!

Related posts:

1. The Rhinebeck sweater that didn’t make it
2. Rhinebeck sweater?
3. Never knit your man a sweater
4. Rhinebeck wrap-up

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 6:19 am and is filed under Tweed Pullover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.