spring robin

This is one of those garments that you love to wear despite knowing it is not necessarily that flattering nor well-made. Ha, I act like that's a common thing for other people, too. I dunno, dude, I'm just on a baggy top kick and I don't know what else I want to wear these days. There's something pleasant and comforting about dressing like a frump. Let's call it effortfully effortless, because a lot of effort goes into knitting a baggy sweater you can take a nap in.

This little mama is knitted from the Robin pattern by Josée Paquin. It's a striped raglan-sleeve sweater with a dipped hem, knitted in one piece from the top down. It's purposely slouchy, with VERY LOW armholes for a batwing look. Wait a sec... batwings. I think I understand why she called this the Robin pattern.

Another example of someone wearing something all the time despite it being unflattering.

I wanted a sweater that I can wear in the transition months between cold and hot weather and vice versa, so I chose to make this pattern using a cotton/modal blend yarn: Shine Sport from Knit Picks. I have leggings that are cotton/modal and are heavenly to wear, and this yarn is just as delightful. I spent a lot of time just squishing it against my face. I went with the cream and black colorways to keep it classic. I used about 9.5 balls of the cream and 2 balls of black. I eventually realized I couldn't make it all the way through this sweater with so little black, so I shortened the arms to 3/4 length which is fine by me anyway.

I bought size 3 circular needles specifically to do this project, but my gauge was too loose. Instead of buying MORE needles, I just knitted the smallest size in the pattern and hoped for the best. It ended up being the size I was expecting, sooo I dodged that bullet. The insane thing about knitting garments is that you have no idea if it's going to fit until you've already invested many hours over many days, weeks, or months. At least with top-down garments you can try on as you go, but it's not like I would know how to make mid-knit fitting adjustment calculations anyway. 

It's a cropped-head kinda day, folks.

Short rows are used to shape the neckline as well as the high-low hem. The pattern has you do yarn-over short rows, which I found I prefer over wrap-and-turn short rows because it's easier to find them when you pass over them again. I don't know if these things have technical names! For help with the YO short rows, I used this resource.

I don't know what happened with my tension while knitting... or maybe it happened while weaving in all the ends (which I always half-ass) or blocking (I dried it in the dryer!)... but my stripes are a bit wonky. You can tell in some of the photos where they look jagged. Some of the white stitches above and below the stripes were looser than others, causing the black to dip or raise in random places. In one or two places, a black stitch just disappeared. Ran for its wee little life.

I'm still a rookie, okay?! I'm not that upset. I should just probably stop switching between English and continental style knitting so often, but I get hand cramps if I don't keep it varied. 

All in all, this was a fun and relatively simple knit. I love the colors I used and find it cozy as hell to wear. As a seamstress, I appreciate that the stripes automatically match across the body to the sleeves. It's the little things.

I doubt I'd make it again (do people knit sweater patterns more than once?), but if I did I would raise the armholes by a lot and streamline the fit if possible. 

Ravelry notes here.

I guess I've accomplished two of my six handmade "goals" this spring: I made a bag and now a spring-appropriate sweater. I still plan to tackle the others, except maybe the shorts, but I keep being lured in other directions. I'm less confident about Me-Made-May this year. I've been wearing fewer me-mades recently because I no longer work in an office (uh, hallelujah), so all the business-casual dresses and skirts I've made over the past 2+ years are starting to collect dust. More baggy tops to make, I guess. Who's with me there?

rosemont and the wild ponies

Grandma bun and grandpa sweater. I am an old soul with a short skirt.

WHAT, pray tell, is better than wearing an enormous 100% wool cardigan that envelops you completely as you battle through a miserably endless winter? I can think of nothing else, especially now that I own one for the very first time. "Own" isn't even the right word, because it's not like I just plucked it from the gramps section of the thrift store and handed over $4 for it. This puppy was hand-knitted by yours truly, and it's astonishing to me that every fiber of its being has passed through my hands and grew before my eyes from a tiny little woolly sprout to this oversized blanket-with-sleeves that I never want to remove from my shoulders until Mr. Sun is back full-force on this side of the earth. There's something about knitting that feels much more involved and intimate than sewing (depending on the project, I guess), so I apologize for the sentimental maternal-like gushing that's going on here. Crafty high -- I can't think straight.

PATTERN: The pattern! It is the Rosemont Cardigan by Hannah Fettig, newly released in February 2014. It's a shawl-collar open front cardigan that's knitted seamlessly from the top-down. Being new to knitting, I still don't know where to start to look for patterns as I don't have any go-to designers yet. Ravelry is a wonderful resource but is absolutely overwhelming. Even if I filter by garment type, style, price, yarn weight, needle size, age/gender, and construction technique, there can still be hundreds of pages of patterns to sift through. And a lot of it is godawful. So, when I visited the blog of a local yarn company, Kelbourne Woolens, and saw they were hosting a knit-along for a new cardigan pattern, I jumped at the chance to have someone ELSE tell me what to knit. I liked that the Rosemont has no closures, is knitted with aran weight yarn, and is a basic, unisex style that's still pretty cute.

I'm grateful for the Ravelry group and knit-along because the pattern's wording for the raglan and neck increases was incredibly confusing to me (and others, thank goodness). If you decide to make this pattern, definitely consult this post first, which explains the logic and order of it all. I would have given up without that help, really. After that was all sorted out, I sped away from the group and finished the rest of the sweater within two weeks. The knit along is supposed to last two months! I am psychotic.

SIZE: I decided to knit the size that corresponded with a finished bust measurement of 39.5", with an added five inches of length to the body. It's the third smallest size out of 11 (eleven!) sizes, so I thought that even though 39.5 inches sounded baggy, it would be fine. The model in the pattern photos is wearing the 36.75" and she's quite slim, so I thought it'd be safe to go up just one size from her. Okay, wow, this cardigan ended up much bigger than I thought it would be, but luckily I'm a fan of oversized sweaters so I'm happy with it. I guess my row gauge ended up being way off because I even stopped knitting the sleeves a full 10 rows sooner than instructed.

YARN: The knit-a-long is using Terra yarn, which is a fancy baby alpaca/merino/silk blend that your girl here simply cannot afford, even if it would mean I could joyfully think of baby alpacas the whole time, whether or not that's what "baby alpaca" yarn actually means:

Cannot. handle. 

Anyway, for a big fat yarn-eating cardigan for an unconfident knitter, I went the economical route and chose Knit Picks' Andes del Campo in the color Smoulder Heather. I don't know what the public consensus is on the quality of Knit Picks yarn (thoughts?), but a 100% Highland wool yarn for $5.49/ball is hard to resist. I ended up using just over seven skeins so it's a relatively affordable sweater all things considered (not counting labor). It's pretty soft and not that itchy on bare skin. I think this is ACTUALLY the first authentic wool sweater I've ever owned and worn. I have a ton of store-bought cardigans that are either cotton or some acrylic cocktail mix.

The color is described as: ""Inspired by the warm glow of a bonfire, Smoulder Heather is a rusty burnt orange with mahogany undertones that is combined with heathered flecks of yellow, burgundy, and purple." It is definitely an autumn color, but it complements my coloring and it matches my boots, living room brick wall and hardwood floors so, you know, here it is in February. It looks toasty brown from afar but is actually quite complex:

CONSTRUCTION AND SHAPING: I taught myself how to do the knit stitch in continental style, which is SO much faster than English style, but I cannot for the life of me do purl stitches in continental style. I also can't knit continental on double-pointed needles, so my first sleeve felt like it took forever, especially since I always drop stitches accidentally on DPNs. I switched to the Magic Loop for the second sleeve, and since it was circular I could just knit continental nonstop without purling, so the whole sleeve took like 2/3 the amount of time.

Just after finishing the sweater, I couldn't get the shawl collar to roll properly. Wet-blocking helped me form the collar to proper shape, at least when flat, but as soon as I put it on it doesn't want to roll enough of the way back to cover more of the neck ribbing. I don't know if it's supposed to, and I can't tell if it's just because my sweater is so oversized it doesn't fit my shoulders properly. The ribbing does seem laughably deep:

THE PONIES: Okay, I can't ignore the ponies. I sewed this basic dress in January from some silky poly I found at Jomar. Of course I liked the print, even though these are insane, chaotic horses tromping about all upside down and round about. Took me awhile to figure out which was way up -- or which way had the most upright horses. The dress itself is okay. Sleeveless, elastic waist, lined skirt, self-bound neckline and armholes. It doesn't fit beautifully so it actually benefits from being overshadowed by a huge grandpa cardigan. The pattern is (roughly) the bottom layer of the BurdaStyle Double Layer Tank dress, which I've used before.

Alright my little alpaca babes, how are you staying warm? Is anyone else knitting the Rosemont or knitting/sewing something just as snuggleh?

Ravelry notes here.