This sweater, which is informally known as “an HR disaster waiting to happen”, is finally finished! The first time I wore it to work, people couldn’t help reaching out to touch it. The texture is pretty intense, so I can’t really blame them, although I wish they had asked for permission first. The pattern is a riff on “The incredible, custom-fit, Raglan sweater“, and it took a month of obsessive knitting and complete disregard for everything else in order to complete it. In lieu of buttons, I have experimented with different brooches as a closure for the sweater. I also opted to leave it as a short sleeve sweater. Long sleeves would have been fun, but by the time I completed them it would have been too warm to wear it.
The yarn was assembled using a lazy magic ball technique. By lazy, I mean that I tied all of the yarn lengths together instead of weaving the fibers together with a yarn needle. Because I used such varying yarn textures, the traditional connection technique would not have worked, and it would have taken FOREVER. I wrote a short blog post for SCRAP, my material source, on How to Make the Most of Short Lengths of Yarn. At one point, I probably had 50 different yarns on the table as the palette to create my custom yarn.
I am incredibly happy with how the sweater turned out, but I don’t expect to be knitting any more sweaters for a while. It is really tricky to get the size and shape right. I had to frog my first attempt at the collar, which was frustrating because I had spent hours on it. On the plus side, it gave me an excuse to stay up late with an entire season of The Aquabats Super Show.
Jenn Likes to Make Things 