Asbury

This project was born out of necessity. I was making a fair isle sweater for a young and beautiful woman and after my success with the ElkMeadow pullover was feeling unreasonably self confident. I decided to re-knit a pattern that I made almost 30 years ago from an old French magazine, this one, remember?

And I picked the blue women's sweater:

According to the pattern it is knit bottom up in 4 parts with a round yoke at the end. I decided to recalculate everything and make it from the top down with short rows (Japanese short rows of course, because I LOVE how they look). So I was working on it like crazy, calculating and recalculating, trying it on myself (even though its future owner is taller than me), making sure that it is not too tight and you can move your arms up and down. 

Finally, I divided the work in 4 parts and started working on the back, because I wanted to keep the seems (the yarn – Rowan Pure Wool 4 ply - stretches a lot when worked in the round). And that was the moment when I finally realized that my jog - the place where one row ends and a new one starts - is right on the front. Oops!

It was supposed to be at the back, I swear! I planned it all carefully and it was supposed to be at the back. Yet, lo and behold, here it was, on the front of the sweater that I wanted to give away.

What would you do in a situation like this? Cry? Yell at yourself? Unravel the whole thing and start all over?

Well, I did none of the above. I started a new project instead.

My goal this year is to use up as much yarn as possible from my stash. For the yoked sweater I was using the leftovers from Juno, Sunshine, and Blue Improvisation. For my new project I decided to use up some leftovers of Rowan Fine Tweed.

By the way, the wooden bowl on the picture is made out of a tree fallen after the hurricane Irma. Isn't it beautiful?

You can see the bowl better here.

I call this cardigan Asbury because I incorporated the colorwork pattern from Martin Storey’s  short feminine cardigan from Ravelry (it is a free pattern, go and download!). What I liked about this cardigan from the very beginning was a successful combination of a traditional colorwork pattern with a modern silhouette. At first I wanted to make it for myself, short, and with different colors (and I might do it one day).

Yet, desperate times – desperate measures. I needed to start something that I’d be able to finish before our departure from Florida and I needed it fast. The future owner of this cardigan is an extremely practical person with a traditional taste so from the start I knew that my cardigan had to be longer, preferably with pockets and v-neck. Then I looked at my stash of Rowan Fine tweed. The only color that could be used as the main was light blue (Nappa): there were 10 balls of it. Since I had just few balls in other colors the cardigan simply couldn't be done all in fair isle, the sleeves had to be knit in one color.

Playing with colors and choosing the combinations was the best part, so much fun! I changed the colorwork pattern a little bit: started and finished every stripe with two, not one, row of the main stripe color. And I added one row in the middle of the brown stripe because I wanted more of the greenish-blue color to be seen.

All that settled I started working and promptly finished it.

The whole process was a lot of fun. This cardigan was made flat, without steeks, to avoid excessive bulkiness, especially in the armholes.

I documented my work in minute details because I am thinking about making one like this again in different colors and with different colorwork pattern since I still have quite a bit of Rowan Fine tweed leftovers and they work perfectly for it. If you want to duplicate my experience (and for additional pictures), go to my Ravelry page where I wrote down all the numbers.

Meanwhile, I finished one more project that I haven’t written about.

Probably, because there is not much to write – no drama, no big mistakes, or huge disappointments. This one – Reflection by Kim Hargreaves - was done mostly while knitting in public or watching TV. It is all plain stockinett st. Again more pictures and details on my Ravelry page.

I had the same yarn as in the book so I just followed directions. The result is lovely and I highly recommend the pattern. As for the yarn - Rowan Alpaca Merino DK - the jury is still out. This yarn has an uncanny ability to snag and becomes exceedingly stretchy when wet: I had to be super accurate while blocking the sweaters parts so I wouldn’t get the final product 2 sizes bigger than needed. Unfortunately, I still have quite a lot of this yarn in my stash (remember, last year I bought all the yarn that I could get?). We’ll see what happens with it.

And what happened to the yoked pullover from the beginning of this story? So far, nothing much.

Desperately seeking a solution for my jog problem, I joined a knitting group on Facebook. There you can ask a question and then get answers for one hour (after an hour the group admin closes the comment section). And I got a lot of comments from other knitters – who would have thought this group is so popular?! All comments could be divided in three categories:

1.The jog is almost invisible, don’t fret, just finish. Easy solution, I might follow this path eventually. Yet, I don't think that this sweater can be gifted as is and I doubt that I'll ever wear it myself knowing about its imperfection.

2. A list of videos and tutorials of how to knit an invisible jog. Yet, my problem was that I already had a jog and wanted to disguise it somehow so to follow this advice I had to unravel the whole thing, watch the videos/tutorials, and start all over again avoiding making a jog.

3. Some clever recommendations on how to cover my mistake: wear a scarf strategically on one shoulder, put some buttons on the jog, do double stitch over etc.

Which solution is the best? What do you think?

For now, I just moved on to my next project. I need some time and space to decide what to make with this one. Stay tuned.

Best,

Anna