The Wool Merchant's Daughter

I finished this in time to wear it during February:

When I first began knitting a few years back, there was a yarn called Berroco Foliage. It was a lovely thick-thin pencil roving type of yarn in multi-colors. The first few years it was available, the colorways WERE all named for foliage and trees: Autumn Forest, Japanese Maple, Joshua Tree, etc. Then, they started to changed towards garden plants: Coleus, Russian Sage. Finally, the designers gave up and, in desperation, got away from the multi-colors and the foliage names. The colors became all the same suite: Cranberry Bog, for instance, was all shades of maroon and burgundy. Finally, the designers jumped the shark with “Soapstone,” which was a blend of muddy blue with a name not even remotely resembling anything to do with foliage.

Not surprising, the line went out of print. But one of the later colorways was this one, called “February.” It is not truly grey, but a grey-blue variegated to black. I had a bag of 10 skeins tucked away because I loved the color and had a sort of vision of what I would knit from it. Finally, I came across a pattern book called Classic Elite Knits that contains a pattern, “Rising Stripes.” The big, round turtleneck collar was exactly what I was after.

I used the size small pattern (where in commercial sizes I am a large!), and it fit perfectly. I used a size 7 needle to compress the yarn a little. Having knit with the yarn before, I knew it tended to get a little fuzzy if you knit too loosely with it. A size 7 packed it down a bit. I knit the body in the round until it split for the front and back. I didn’t use the set in sleeves, but picked up 60 stitches around the sleeve opening and knit from the shoulder to the cuff. It is a very simple sweater but very effective with the stripes.

I pushed to finish the February sweater so I could wear it in February. The witch hazels are in bloom. The days are getting longer. February is fading away, but I have a nice new sweater to get me through the chilly days of spring.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2015 at 8:37 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.