This past week has seen me seriously down with a cold – out of a 5 day work week, only 2 days had me visible at all! I started getting it a week ago today, and knowing how awful the cold could be – the other half came down with it the week before – I decided I had better figure out something to do with myself. I decided to make myself a sweater. And I am glad I did make that decision early on in the game because, had I not, I would have just watched TV all day long and felt horribly unproductive. Even sick, I just don’t like blobbing around. So, in between aspirin and decongestants, sleeping and sneezing and shivering, I knit up a sweater and watched Engregages, but with English subtitles. Interestingly, I could understand a lot of the French by the time I watched all the episodes available on Netflix.
One of the things that has been haunting me in the world of knitting is my abundance of half-finished projects, meaning things that need a bit of thought. Being sick, thinking is one of the last things I wanted to do. The project needed to be interesting, fast, and simple. The solution was an Icelandic-style sweater. I dug out my Lopi pattern books, and looked at Ravelry, and finally decided on a pattern – which I modified to a degree – and colors. White, light grey, dark grey, black. Contrast.
The yarn is a fuzzy acrylic because I had it on hand. Using US 8 and 10.5 needles, the sweater had a gauge of 3.5 sts / inch. Once that was established, the rest was easy. And, in exactly 7 days, my sweater is completed, finished, ends woven in, washed, and ready to wear. It fits pretty nicely, too, but my grafting skills are not what they used to be . . . so I won’t show you the underarm seams.
If you have the book shown, Volume 17, the pattern is based upon sweaters 19 and 20, with some modifications to the last 2 pattern rounds.
To say the least, I’m feeling pretty smug!
Ink, Yarn & Beer 