Happy New Year! Best wishes from Florida!
This post is solely about my last finished project of 2017 –
Birkin by Caitlin Hunter. I know that I promised a post about gauge and how to
deal with it when it is different from the one in a pattern but I’ll do it next
time.
First of all, why did I pick this pattern? Sure, it looks amazing
on everyone who made it (look it up on Ravelry – there are hundreds of finished
Birkins and they are all gorgeous) but it is a top down and seamless.
And I don’t do top
down seamless garments, at least not for myself. And I’ve been rather vocal
about how poorly they fit me and how quickly they become shapeless after
washing. These are not my only reasons to avoid top down round yoke sweaters. In
the past, I had problems with their construction. A knitted garment with a round
yoke must fit around shoulders without constriction, rather loosely, so it
would not restrict the arm movements and won’t look like a strait jacket. At the
same time a round yoke (especially a colorful one) makes shoulders look broader
and must be compensated somehow (by the sweater length or width) as to not to
throw the overall proportions off balance.
My last reason to avoid making sweaters like Birkin was its
gauge. It is designed for 26 sts per 4 inches gauge on small needles. It means
that every row will be endless and painful (remember the colorwork part?) and
the whole garment will take forever to finish.
As you can see, I had quite a few reasons for not making
this jumper, so why change of heart? What made me do it?
The main reason was the yarn. I had 2 full skeins of Swans
Island Merino fingering plus some leftovers from the Moonshine cardigan and I
wanted to use this yarn on something for myself. If one day you try this yarn,
you’ll understand why: it is incredibly soft, smooth, and light, and it knits
up with perfect stitch definition. My biggest concern though was that I might
not have enough yarn for the whole garment.
You see, just before Birkin, I almost made this cardigan from Kim Hargreaves’ last book but ran out of yarn in the middle of the second sleeve. Imagine that! It hasn’t
happened to me for a while and, obviously, I became reckless and didn’t pay
attention to the yarn requirements for the pattern. Anyway, after a major blow
like this I needed to be completely confident that there was enough yarn.
Obviously, my first thought was about a top down sweater. And Birkin was the
one that came to my mind, because I loved it the moment I saw it with its
intricate colorwork and a flattering a-line shape.
My gauge was even smaller than in the original pattern – 28 sts
per 4 inches so I knew this project will take me a long time to finish. But at
least I could be certain that it would be finished because when you make a top
down you can stop whenever you ran out of yarn. Isn’t it great? Yet, my children
were coming for Christmas and I didn’t anticipate having a lot
of time for knitting.
I didn’t even consider using several colors for the fair
isle pattern at the yoke – with this gauge it would take me forever and my plan
was to finish the yoke before children’s’ arrival and have only mindless stockinette knitting
for the holidays.
After several tries I decided to go with dark blue cashmere
yarn from Colormart. It made enough contrast with the main color and had the
same gauge. The fair isle pattern for this sweater can be easily transformed
for two colors so there were no problems there.
My main question was – what size of the written pattern
should I use? Thanks to all the Ravelers who had made Birkin already and wrote
about the process I figured out that the best size for me would be
L. Yet, I picked up stitches for the biggest size – XXXL – to be able to get my
head in and out of the sweater without any problems, and picked
up stitches after ribbing for size L. If I make this sweater again one day, I will probably
use a provisional cast on instead and do the ribbing at the end, after finishing
the whole sweater.
Making the yoke took a while but when I tried it on the fit
was perfect, with the exact amount of ease that I needed.
For the body I used smaller needles (US 0 - 2.00 mm, for the yoke I used US 1 1/2 - 2.5 mm) and made only 9
rounds of stockinette before dividing the stitches in 4 parts. Since the beginning I decided that I will make
this sweater with seams – to avoid excessive stretchiness and to keep its
shape. All parts after the yoke were made in stockinette knitting back and
forth. For all parts I picked up 9 stitches at both sides, knit straight, and
finished with ribbing for the body; and made decreases 8 times in every 20 row
for the sleeves.
I used up all the Swans Island yarn that I had, didn’t even
have enough to seam the parts together. And I am in love with the finished
sweater. It turned out exactly as I wanted and is comfortable and beautiful at
the same time. What I like the most – it doesn’t look too “handmade”. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes handmade
clothes look a little bit too amateurish for my taste. Well, this one doesn’t. More pictures on my Ravelry page.
And now I am busy finishing other warm knits in anticipation
of our trip to New York City. Yes, we are going there pretty soon and I’ll need
as many wooly clothes as possible so I won’t freeze to death. That is why my
post about gauge has to wait. Probably till spring. But I promise to write it…
eventually.
Stay warm,
Anna
