#9, #10, #11 & #12 / 2015... oh my! Sweater bonanza

Last time I updated was almost exactly a month ago, and while the blog has been silent, the knitting needles have click-clacked! Right now, if I am not at university,  I am knitting. In four weeks and one day I am handing in my master's thesis... so I need knitting more than ever, to zone out in the evenings.

Since I last updated, I first finished the Fana sweater for my mum.




I finished this April 11, not too long after the Easter holidays. The body was knitted at great speed! It is a little wide, but I hope it will be okay for my mother. I will see her in three weeks, so I will give her her cardigan then... I used 15 skeins (I think), 9 of the brown and 6 of the white. Yarn is Peer Gynt from Sandnes, a yarn I really enjoyed knitting with!

The next one I finished the day after, April 12. Wow, I was on fire! I didn't have much left, though. This had been on the needles for a long time, and it is the Winter Song test knit. The pattern is now released! I still haven't taken decent pictures of this sweater because I have yet to add buttons. Bad Me.




My favourite part of the sweater is all the lovely, intricate cables which pop on the back:




I still kind of think the colour is a bit too murky for my liking, but it is a colour that suits me. It will probably see more wear in the autumn! I used 3.1 skeins of Hillesvåg Ask for this sweater, that is appproximately 1000 meters.

The next one is the classic Bøvertun from Kofteboken. There are several versions of this; two with a round yoke, and this with the set-in sleeves. I opted for the classic version for this yarn, Rauma 3 ply, a dk weight yarn. I had to adapt the pattern to suit my gauge of 22 sts/10 cm, so I made an even smaller size.

 In the end I cast on 254 stitches for the bottom ribbing, in total 18 of these were set aside for button bands (9 on each band). After the ribbing I decreased from 236 stitches to 225 stitches. The square pattern is divisible by 10(+5), the flowers by 16(+1) and the rest by 4 or so. I only had to adjust number of stitches for one of the patterns, so I didn't have to think too much.

I ended up with about a 102 cm bust size, which fits me well and gives me over 10 cm of ease.

The yarn softened up greatly with washing. I have  been brave lately and washed all my knitted garments, superwash or no, on the wool cycle in the washing machine, with great results!




I was also brave and cut the front steek which was not reinforced - only by the wool's grabby nature. I like it!

In total I used 8 skeins of purple, and 5 skeins of white.




Can you see the mistake I made?

And last but not least, my most recently finished sweater that was actually finished yesterday! This is my 7th sweater this year, so it looks like I might make the 15 mark after all...




This is from the book Vintagestrikk (Vintage Knits) and is called "Med åpne diagonale masker" ("With open, diagonal stitches"). For my birthday I went on a yarn spree, and I decided to try a new yarn, Shetland Soft from Malsen og Mor. This is a light wool yarn with extremely good meterage, and it can be knit at a gauge of 24 sts/10 cm. With 280 meters per 50 grams, this makes for light and airy sweaters, and as a frugal knitter, I do like it! It fluffed up wonderfully when washed, and if the gauge seemed loose the washing plumped the yarn up.




This sweater is very short, but I used less than 200 grams of yarn.

I also quite like the pattern, it was a very quick knit and it just looks so cute. I have plans to knit another one, a longer version, which can be worn with jeans. But this cream version will look great with high waisted skirts and shorts.




And that is all I have to say for myself!

Hopefully I will be better at updating now, so I won't have to do everything at once... whew!

On the needles: Sweaters

I am still hoping that 2015 will be the Great Sweater Year. My goal is to end up with a wardrobe of sweaters that is varied enough that I won't have to wear store bought sweaters anymore. I am already well on my way to that point; at the moment, I only have one store bought sweater that I wear regularly. Then again, it is winter (though not for long, hopefully!). Let's see how this plan will work out when spring and even summer arrives. Maybe I will have to start knitting in cotton.

There are so many sweaters I want to knit. Right now, I am dreaming of cables, and I have two words: Brooklyn Tweed. Ugh, the sweaters are SO lovely. I am also drooling over the yarn, SHELTER. It looks so nice. Hey, it's my birthday soon...

Right now I'm not knitting anything too cable heavy, though - although the previously mentioned Winter Song sweater does have a whole bunch of small, intricate cables all over the yoke..




This even has cabling on the wrong side. I'm not used to it, and I had a lot of problems with it in the beginning! The yoke is split into three parts; left and right front, and the back. I sped through the right and left front, but the back is taking me such a long time, and it's very attention demanding knitting, so not good for TV knitting. Hopefully, this weekend will see me get some real work done with this yoke!

The intricacy of the Winter Song sweater is what made me cast on for a new sweater... and hey, it's a classic: Thermal from Knitty. Even though it's much simpler than the Winter Song sweater, they have one thing in common, and it's one of my favourite sweater styles: They are henley sweaters! I don't know why, but to me it's like the henley is the epitome of the casual, cozy sweater. I have at one point actually owned four of the same henley sweater model from H&M... in different colours, mind you, but still! Something about the buttoned front just speaks to me.

I also find that when knitting, I tend to want to use so many techniques, to kind of show look what I can do, look how talented I am but I can't only have sweaters like that; my style is very casual.




I am also going back to my roots, so to speak, with this yarn, which is all Norwegian. Ask/Hifa 2 from Hillesvåg. I "accidentally" had a bit of a yarn spree, I guess you could say, a while ago, and got yarn for four sweaters(!). I like the yarn, it's at a good sport weight gauge (24 sts) and very good meterage. It's also quite soft in its own way - I like it!

So these are the sweaters I'm currently knitting. I hope I will finish at least one of them in the coming two weeks; I want to knit a yellow sweater in the Easter holidays!

Happy Thursdays!

WIP Wednesday #3 delayed: Test knitting, university knitting and Latvian braid love

Unfortunately I did not have time to post my WIPs this Wednesday. Today I'm at home being sick and feeling sorry for myself, so I have used the opportunity and daylight to take some pictures and give a little WIP update.

I finished one sweater, so I swiftly started a new one. This is not a stranded sweater, it is a single-colour henley pullover. I am doing a test knit on ravelry, the pullover winter song by MonaLykaina. I need more simple and casual sweaters in my wardrobe, and I often feel like I choose patterns with too many design elements, or at least I have in the past. And while I love straned Norwegian sweaters, a lot, I can't have a sweater wardrobe only consisting of them. 

The yarn is from Hillesvåg, a sport weight with good meterage.  The colour is an example of Don't Trust Your Monitor, as I ordered this online. I wouldn't have chosen this green if I had seen it "live", but I like it enough to go with it. I'm just not crazy about it... Objectively, though, this is a colour that probably will go well with my colouring, but I would have liked it a little lighter. I'm sure it will be fine, though; and I already sent back five skeins  (that is 500 grams)  of yarn in a colour I was unhappy with. Hopefully I will be happy with the colour I chose now. 

No denying it, though, the colour Moss Green is a pretty green and it looks differently in different lights. 

Here is one representation of the colour...



And here is another!

I like this version better...

As you can see, there is a lot of stockinette in the body of this sweater, so I guess it will be quite uninteresting for a while, until I get to the yoke.

That brings me to the next project... the mittens which I'm still working on.




Yes, I have had a littke knitting photo shoot in my window sill.

These mittens are slow going because I am only knitting on them while I am at university. I haven't been at many lectures lately, but I have been working a lot on developing a good system for analysing a compound, and it is taking a LOT of time, and it produces quite a bit of down time. Combine that with low energy levels due to a beginning cold and I had a good excuse to do some knitting. So hooray - I'm over halfway with mitten number two!




And let me just say, I am in love with the look of the Latvian braid. I actually didn't know of it until a few months ago, but it's just great for the bottom of mittens with this kind of cuff (that is, no ribbing). It is absolutely lovely, and a total pain to knit. The result is worth it, though.

I think I am going to make an effort to finish these mittens soon. I want to start a new project...