A couple of months ago I bought this book in an op-shop for 20cents and fell in love with so many patterns. The patterns range from the 1920s to the 1980s, and yes, there is a knitted swimsuit in there! BTW does anyone recognise the model on the front cover?
yep, it’s Andie MacDowell, apparently she modelled for Vogue before taking up acting.
Anyway, I bought some wool from The Fibre of the Gods who not only grow their own alpaca wool, but also have a processing mill. My wool came from Molly and I love the fact that she features on the band. This fact becomes important later in my post.
I initially bought the wool for my One Year One Outfit mission, but then had the brown crisis so decided to knit a jumper for Mark and found this 1957 pattern in the above-mentioned book.
I do love Aran jumpers. The cabling and raised stitches make the fabric much thicker and therefore warmer. So, this jumper is light but very warm. I also love knitting cables as they give me something to think about when I’m a passenger in the car or watching television. Whilst I don’t mind mindless knitting, my threshold for boredom is pretty low, and that’s why I have a knitting machine (or four) in my stable (see knitted trousers).
I was busy knitting away and realised that I was going to be about 30g short of wool. I emailed Hazel from the Fibre of the Gods for more Molly and she informed me that she didn’t have any more. Mild panic ensued and she scoured the known universe and tracked down a ball sold to another customer, so the crisis was averted and I was able to finish the jumper.
I am pretty good at doing tension gauges when I knit, but for some reason I doubted the one I did for this jumper and went for slightly bigger needles with the result that I think Mark’s jumper is too big for him.
He of course denied it, but I could tell that it wasn’t comfortable by the way he adjusted the neckline. So, I have managed to convince him to give it to me for “tweaking”, which means that I am pulling it apart and reworking the entire thing, making it smaller and reducing the width of the neckline. This means that the extra ball of wool I had Hazel track down was completely unnecessary.
I am not done with this jumper yet!
I have the utmost admiration for anyone who will unravel a jumper and reknit it to get the sizing right…I am gobsmacked !!!
It’s better than feeling miserable every time I look at it Jenny!
Do you really have to tweak it? It looks just so cool and perfect on Mark. Besides, wool generally shrink a little bit when you wash it, even in cold water. Just saying…
I do, Hélène, and have started pulling it down. It will be so much better when it’s done – he looks like little orphan Annie in it!
I understand entirely why you would want to fiddle with this sweater – I have pulled a sweater I wasn’t 100% happy with out and rebutted. Despite being a little large this is a gorgeous sweater and I love that you know the name of the animal the yarn came from.
Love Mark’s jumper – the colour looks great on him. Glad to see you can knit again!x
I hope Molly is still joyfully growing wool and that there is a happy end to this story. What with the unravelling (I can’t even think about that) and the worrying lack of new Molly wool, I’m feeling quite concerned.
Marks jumper looks so lovely either the cables and the colour but like you I would have to restart.
Yep, doing it now!
Just stopping by to say hi from one Perth blogger to another. Love this jumper, so sad that you have to unravel and start again – I don’t think I could face it! But then again, it does take me a about a year to finish a knitting project!
Hello Betty and welcome. I’ve already fixed the jumper – it only took a couple of weeks to do and is so much better! You should come to some of the Perth meet ups. I will try and remember to invite you. Are you on Instagram? I
Wow, that was quick work! I’m not on Instagram but yes please, if you could email me or contact me via my blog that would be great, thanks 🙂
I shall endeavour to remember 🙂