Sunday, April 10, 2022
I have been knitting for awhile now (even longer crocheting, since I taught myself from library books as a child!), and until quite recently I had never made a sweater. So, here we are, nearly 20!! years since I taught myself to knit (again), but I've made a sweater!
Inspired by a COVID-lull vacation in Iceland, I returned with a desire to make myself a more minimalist, nature-inspured lopapeysa (Icelandic sweater). So, $80 worth of Icelandic Woold yarn and a few months later, and I've got the Avena Sweater completed.
I added one inch to the torso, and a half inch to the bottom ribbing, and then 1.5" to each of the sleeves length. But it seems that since the yarn I used was bigger than the pattern recommended, I should've shortened the colorwork yoke a bit, so it would end a little higher on my shoulder, it currently ends a little lower on my deltoid than I'd like. It's not a problem until I raise my arms, and then the yoke does a weird bunching thing that's easily fixable. Still very wearable. Other than that, I don't think I made any real errors with my first sweater!
The yarn is Istex Lettlopi, which is basically two strands of barely (not?) twisted Icelandic wool. It's a little scratchy, although it softens with wear. And it is incredibly warm. Like, works as a replacement for a coat, if that's what you want. The yarn does break a little easily if you pull too hard on it, but it's easy enough to twist back together, or do a Russian join.
I planned to make a matching hat for the sweater, and went with something a little simpler. The cabled ribbing of the Twist & Slouch Hat is a nice complemenet to the sweeping grains of the sweater yoke. The hat isn't very slouchy, as I didn't want it t o be (started decreases after 9" rather than 11"), but I did make a size up so that it wouldn't squish my hair/bangs as much as most beanies. Pretty successful!
I was originally going to make a pair of Nordic mittnes to color-coordinate with the set, but then realized that (a) I really prefer fleece-lined convertible mittens and (b) I have two pair of convertible mitts from Iceland that have a bit of blue in them, and that I really like. So instead I decided to put together a cowl and went with the Modern Stranded Colorwork Cowl from Craftsy Watching the ivdeos helped me re-remember best practices for stranded colorwork. Probably would've been useful before I made the sweater!
Like the sweater, the yarn I was using was larger than the recommended yarn. So I removed one of the colorwork patterns to shorten the cowl a bit. I might have been able to drop a 24-stitch repeat to reduce the width, but I was afraid of the cowl then being too tight, so I left the number of cast-on stitches as is. It is a rather large cowl, but that works fine as you can arrange it how you like, and also not have the slightly-itchy yarn too close to your skin.
Much like knitted lace, blocking (i.e., gently hand-washing) colorwork knitted garments solves a bunch of problems. Prior to blocking the colorwork is accordion-like, but after soaking in some warm water, all the yarns relax. This does mean you're losing some springy-ness, but in most cases, you don't want it that springy!
Overall, I'm very pleased with how the whole set came out!
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