State of the Project: Southampton Soft, part 1 aka Am I a yoke to you?!?

Well, my sweater has grown nicely - I have now completed the yoke and am working on the body. The neckline shaping and shoulder increases with the wraps and turns and having to remember which way the increased stitches should lean were a bit fiddly at first, but I think the end result looks pretty great, even if I do say so myself. It should be all smooth sailing from here - just stockinette and some ribbing for the body and then the sleeves with the lovely lace pattenr, which I am planning to make with circular needles using the Magic Loop method. 

In other news, I got some new knitting gear yesterday! How cool is this project bag and these stitch markers from The Woolly Tangle?

Yes I have a new project aka idle hands are the Devil's tools.

While I was knitting the Suolaulu sweater, I discovered yet another knitting podcast by a Finnish yarn designer: Meiju Knits. Of course I had to check out her Ravelry store and found that I really like her style! A lot of her patterns were for cardigans, but she also has some lovely sweaters and shawls and a cool hoodie. A sweater called Southampton Soft caught my eye from one of her videos and I decided to make it. It is a top down pullover with lace panels on the sleeves, a decorative button on the back of the neckband and a relatively snug fit. 

At first I intended to do some stash busting and use one of the Aade Lõng yarns that I have, but I realised that I didn't have enough of it. I also realised that I didn't have 2.75 mm circular needles. Sooooo of course I ordered the needles and went to the shop to buy yarn. Drops is currently having a Merino Madness sale, but when I was looking at the merino yarns in the shop, I couldn't' find a colourway that would've called out to me and also I actually wanted something a little softer. So I went with Drops Nord in the colourway Rust, which is a slightly mottled fall orange. Nord is a sock yarn that contains alpaca, polyamide and wool and feels really nice to the touch. 

For now, I have finished the shoulder increases and am currently working on the sleeve increases: 

And here's a closer look at the lace pattern: 

State of the Project: Suolaulu sweater, part III - the finale!

She's done! I washed and blocked her yesterday and she doesn't smell like a barn anymore. You can definitely see some of the red peeking through the white in the colourwork part, because it is just so vibrant, but I think the pattern definition is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. 

I didn't enjoy picking up the stitches for the sleeves, and they turned out a bit puffy, but that's fine. 

Do you love?!?

 

Upgrading my yarn winding gear.

Seeing as winding about 200 grams of Kihnu native sheep's wool yarn took me the better part of an evening, and I have several other hanks of yarn and all the prettiest yarns seem to be sold in hanks, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a skein holder and a yarn winder. 

Here they are: 

Learning to use them took me a few minutes and the yarn kept getting stuck in the little metal articulations between the blue bits, so the first ball I made looked a bit messy, but once I attached the yarn winder to the table, used one hand to work the winder and the other one to hold the yarn up, I ended up with pretty neat looking balls of yarn that looked like this: 

I am pretty pleased with the investment. It's going to make winding the yarn for my next projects so much easier :-)

State of the Project: Suolaulu sweater, part II

The Suolaulu sweater is coming along nicely. I have finished the part of the body that was knit in the round and the entire front part and am currently working on the back part (17 more rows to go!): 

Pretty, isn't it?

I also tried the sweater on and it is a good fit, but I seem to be using slightly more yarn that what the original pattern suggested - I got four balls from my hank of 8/2 Kihnu native sheep's wool yarn, each weighing around 50 grams, but I have already almost used up the fourth one and I haven't got to the collar or the sleeves yet. That's not really a problem, because I have another hank (the one I bought was almost half a kilo and actually consisted of two separate hanks), but it does mean that I will have do some more winding. Oh well.

State of the Project: Suolaulu sweater, part I aka That's a lot of Emotions for a Sweater :D

As I mentioned in Tuesday's post, I cast on the Suolaulu sweater on Monday evening! 

Here's what happened...

After seeing the yarn and pattern sets on the Nurja IG and deciding that ordering a set from Finland was a bit too pricey for me, I spent some time thinking about my own stash and decided to use the natural white Kihnu native sheep's wool yarn that I bought when I visited the island earlier this month as the main colour. I do have other, coloured fingering weight yarns in my stash, but nothing that seemed suitable to use as the contrasting colour. The colours of the Retrosaria Pegulhal yarn in the sets are all very natural and fit in with the swamp theme, so I wanted something that was earthy AF. Inspired by Estonian Seto patterns, which traditionally use red and white (representing life force and light, accordingly), and also by the fact that traditional Kihnu knitwear patterns always contain some red (to protect the wearer from evil), I decided to look for a red shade. 

I turned to the e-shop of the publishing house that printed the Haapsalu scarf and shawl books. They also sell yarns and needles that they consider suitable for traditional Estonian handcraft. I couldn't pick a shade right away, so I ordered three different yarns: a cranberry red one and a madder red one from Aade Lõng, an Estonian yarn manufacturer, and a pure red one from a Norwegian company called Rauma Ullvarefabrikk.

Here they all are: 

I decided I liked the cranberry red one the most, and it also went very well with the swamp theme, so that's what I went with. The next step was winding the hanks of yarn into balls, which I spent the better part of Saturday night doing. I don't have the right equipment of course, so I had to improvise: 

The yarn I bought from Kihnu is also earthy AF. It made my living room smell a bit like a barn (which I don't mind, I like sheep) and it feels just a bit lanolin-y still, but I was very worried that I would mess up the hank or cause it to felt by washing it, so I decided to just wind it, make the sweater and wash that - I'm going to have to wet block it anyway.  Here is the end result:

Jenna the designer actually commented on the picture when I posted it on my IG, saying she thought it looked like cranberries on snow, which I definitely agree with!

On Monday, I started checking Jenna's Ravelry store for the pattern as soon as I woke up, and luckily I didn't have to wait very long - it was posted pretty early in the morning and I was super excited and happy about that. I began knitting the sweater later that night and worked on it for most of Tuesday. I also took it to work with me yesterday and today and even managed to make a fair bit of progress, because the shifts were relatively quiet (I mean, you're not really allowed to use the q-word in my profession, but my shift is over, so I think it's okay?). I am currently about halfway done with the colourwork portion of the body: 

Almost Weekend Project: Kiuru Hat.

Yes I did buy the pattern for the Suolaulu sweater and cast it on yesterday, but before that I thought I would be a good idea to knock off one more item from my to-knit list: the Kiuru hat by Sari Nordlund (I think I am turning into a stan). 

It was a quick and easy knit and the cables were not daunting at all. I cast it on on Saturday morning and finished it last night. I would definitely have finished it over the weekend if I hadn't been working Saturday. The yarn I used was the same Drops Flora in the colourway Petrol that I used for the Fleuriste cardi. The hat soft and light and thus probably more suitable for the autumn than the winter, and that's perfect because I have a matching autumn jacket.