Project Info
Pattern: Derwent by Sarah Cooke
Yarn:
- Some cheap acrylic yarn from JoAnn’s (White)
- Partner 6 Phildar (Grey)
About halfway through the project I regretted using some cheap acrylic yarn from JoAnn’s because I was loving how the sweater came out, but the completed project looks nice and is super warm as well!
Time to Completion: January 15, 2021 – March 8, 2021
After finding myself without a project before a camping trip, I stopped by JoAnn’s and caved to buy some cheap acrylic yarn so I’d have enough to make a sweater I’d stuck in my library of patterns.
Project Notes: After carefully making the fringe and attaching the sweater in the round, I found that I’d unintentionally created a mobius strip. Having made plenty of hats and never once making that mistake, it felt especially tragic as I pulled out enough rows to end up back with two separate pieces of ribbing.
Round two of knitting the hem in the round was a successful attempt and from the the pattern came together pretty easily. It was a reasonably easy pattern to memorize, and my repeated mistakes on the side cables gave me lots of practice in pulling out stitches and using my crochet hook to re-construct the cables correctly.
This was also my first attempt at a bottom up sweater, this was a quite simple process until it was time to add the sleeves. I picked up stitches around the arm, attempting to evenly pick up 81 stitches and managed to evenly pick up 60 stitches on one side and 120 stitches on the other side. It took a couple tries to get it right but then I was happily knitting away.
The next bit of trouble came as I started the second sleeve, and while contemplating if I should make the trade off of going up one needle size in order to have the correct length circular needles or continue with the same size and keep using a magic loop to make the circular length work. After deciding to use the correct needle length and to grit my teeth through the magic loop awhile longer, I got to work using the larger needles. About a third of the way through the sleeve I realized my mistake, and decided to soldier on and hope that this sleeve wouldn’t be noticeably larger than the first sleeve.
The sleeve was, indeed, noticeably larger. It turns out the needle was a size and a half larger and the sleeve was noticeably larger; as heart breaking as it was, I took a pair of scissors to my sleeve and cut it at the elbow and frogged it back to the short rows at the armpit. (You can only imagine the look on my partner’s face as he watched me cut the sleeve while in the middle of a Zoom call)
With the correct needle size, I re-knit the sleeve. Adding the collar went extremely fast after knitting three sleeves and I had the sweater finished and the ends woven in shortly after. Voila!
I gave the sweater to my mom before taking a photo, but I liked it so much that I made myself a second one! (Note the overly long sleeves)
#adventuresabroad 