brainylady

Retro Prep redux

Thanks for all the compliments on my sweater! Really, I was so excited about it, and it's awesome to -- well, frankly, to hear people agree with me. Since I haven't gotten round to putting up the details in my knitting gallery, here you go:

Yarn: Noro Kureyon 100% wool (colour 131) -- 10 balls
Needles: 4mm (US 6 / Cdn. 8)
Gauge: approximately 5 sts./inch (I followed the instructions for a 38-inch bust and the sweater came out about 40 inches around.)

As well, I humbly accept the award of Best First Sweater Rockumentary, bestowed upon my last post by Greta.

This was certainly an easy sweater to start with.* It's knit in the round, so the only seaming left at the end is some underarm grafting (and I'm one of those perverted knitters who loves to graft). I enjoyed knitting from the bottom up; the body and sleeves involve an awful lot of stockinette, but once you attach them and start the yoke, each round goes faster and faster with the raglan decreases. I loved the Kureyon. It doesn't split, so you don't have to look at your work at all while you're knitting. (But you should, from time to time, as you may find that, say, six rows back you accidentally picked up the bar between two stitches and created a hole smack dab in the middle of the sweater front, damn it.) Changes in colour and thickness keep it interesting. The knitted fabric is thick, and no doubt it will be toasty warm, but I don't imagine I'll knit such a bulky sweater again. (I prefer to wear lighter ones.) Yes, it is a bit scratchy, but not nearly as much as I thought it would be. I always wear a T-shirt under a sweater anyway, so the itch factor doesn't matter too much. And of course there is the wonderful fact that no one else has this sweater in these colours.

* It's the first sweater I've finished, but it wasn't the first I started. The pieces of my Must Have Cardie are still waiting patiently to be seamed.