This sweater has been in the mak­ing since May. The Redy sweater by ANKESTRiCK, knit­ted with one giant ball of Lion Brand Pound of Love that was frogged from Mike’s aban­doned project. I used 5mm and 4.5mm nee­dles to account for the heav­ier yarn. 

I like all the dif­fer­ent parts of it: the reversed stock­inette stitch, the dis­tinct seam­lines (made with purl stitch­es, not seamed), the com­plete­ly seam­less con­struc­tion, the fun­nel neck that is not very close to the neck, keeps warm but does­n’t scratch. 

The only thing I did­n’t like too much was the rolling of the stock­inette stitch at the col­lar, so I fold­ed the edge over about 2 inch­es and stitched around.

Unre­lat­ed note: I’ve also not had a hair­cut since Feb­ru­ary, because I don’t have a car and can’t jus­ti­fy tak­ing pub­lic tran­sit to the hair dress­er. But here’s a recent pic­ture of me depict­ing my cur­rent hair­style, and smug­ly mod­el­ing a knit sweater.

Ani­mal Cross­ing saves my mind. Any­one else play?

May every­one be well, and safe, and keep­ing good com­pa­ny with an abun­dance of yarn as we ven­ture into sweater season. 

Fol­low­ing the failed attempt at mak­ing this sum­mer top, I frogged the project and used the yarn (Patons Hemp­ster) to make the Icarus tank from Knit­ty issue 47. 

I bought this yarn at my local yarn shop, The Yarn Guy, last sum­mer, and had since frogged twice, but it’s hard­ly split­ting, so it’s a nice a durable one. The Yarn Guy is def­i­nite­ly oper­at­ing online and has a huge amount of stock, real­ly friend­ly and help­ful folks, so please check them out if you’re look­ing to sup­port inde­pen­dent yarn shops in the Toron­to area.

I made some mod­i­fi­ca­tions so that it was knit­ted flat in two pieces, with lace pat­tern on the shoul­ders. Not that I did­n’t have the cir­cu­lars to knit in the round, but knit­ting flat just feels more straight­for­ward to me at the moment, some­thing I have the men­tal capac­i­ty to handle.

The rolling of stock­inette stitch at the hems blocked out sur­pris­ing­ly well. I’m hop­ing it won’t roll back much after wear­ing and washing. 

The mod­i­fi­ca­tions I made is for a boxy-shape top that is cropped length. It is worked flat and seamed at the shoul­ders and sides. It mea­sures 36″ around. The yarn is DK weight and I used 4.5 mm needles.

Back:

CO 86. 

Knit in stock­inette for 4 inch­es, then begin lace pat­ter as indi­cat­ed in the Icarus tank pat­tern for work­ing flat.

(It may be help­ful to note that it’s actu­al­ly eas­i­er to read from the chart than the writ­ten pat­tern, as there are a few errors in the writ­ten one and can cause some confusion.)

Repeat lace pat­tern until piece is 18″, BO.

Front:

CO 86.

Knit in stock­inette until piece is 15.25″. 

Work lace pat­tern row 14–19, but reversed and split up over the two shoul­ders, as follows.

On row 14, p 6, pm, p 5, pm, p till there are 11 stitch­es left, pm, p 5, pm, p 6.

On row 15, begin with the 10th stitch in the chart, and k both the 10th and 11th stitch­es (i.e. omit the cable twist on this row and row 18), then fol­low the rest of the chart. k till mark­er, then work stitch­es 1–11 of lace chart (omit­ting the cable twist in stitch­es 10 and 11).

Work the rest of the lace pat­tern as above rearrange­ment of stitches.

In the sec­ond repeat of the lace pat­tern, start shap­ing neck at the same time.

On row 14, p 28, BO 30, place the 28 stitch­es on spare cable nee­dle, then p the remain­ing 28 stitches.

While fol­low­ing the lace pat­tern (and incor­po­rat­ing 5 more stitch­es toward the cen­tre every time the pat­tern repeats), k2tog on the neck edge of each RS row sev­en times. The last RS row will be row 15. BO 21 stitches.

With RS fac­ing, attach yarn to the oth­er neck edge. ssk, then work the rest of the row with lace pat­tern row 15. 

While fol­low­ing the lace pat­tern, ssk on the neck edge of each RS row six more times. The last RS row will be row 15. BO 21 stitches. 

Block the pieces. Sew togeth­er shoul­der and side seams.

Hope every­one is keep­ing well, and find­ing some knitting/crocheting/creative projects that sus­tain a sense of well-being at the moment.

It is granny square day today! So I thought I’d take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly take a pic­ture of my fin­ished mitered square blan­ket :D it’s loom-knitted!

150 squares! It took about 2 months to make, it’s the biggest blan­ket I’ve ever made, 42″ by 63″!

I made a series of tuto­ri­als if you’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing your own! (a dish cloth / pothold­er with four squares is a fun make too if you don’t want to com­mit to an entire blanket)

After the blan­ket and the c2c top in my last post, I found a pat­tern that would be per­fect for the yarn I won at the Yarn Hop raf­fle, from Yarns Untan­gled, in “untan­gled” colourway :)

The pat­tern is Retro Sol­stice Eclipse by JL on Rav­el­ry. And look! I’m knit­ting in the round! (I’m always kind of afraid of pat­terns that knit in the round, but once I get start­ed I find it actu­al­ly eas­i­er than knit­ting flat) I also fig­ured out why my last in-the-round sweater had this weird gap at the joint — my stitch mark­er was too big. That seemed like a real­ly sil­ly mis­take. But now I have these sleek stitch mark­ers that came with the raf­fle prize so it’s all going smoothly :)

Speak­ing of the Yarn Hop, since we’ve had so much fun the day of, we’ve been meet­ing through­out the sum­mer! Here we were enjoy­ing the park…

And here were were at Spin Me a Yarn, who gra­cious­ly host­ed our meet­up last week!

Can you spot Albert the Alpaca shar­ing a chair with me? :D Albert final­ly got to meet Lam­bert, the res­i­dent lamb at the shop, look­ing spiffy with sock in his own “Lam­bert” colourway.

If you live in Toron­to and would like to join us at our mee­tups be sure to fol­low The Great Toron­to Yarn Hop on Face­book!

Hope you’re enjoy­ing sum­mer and much crafting!