I wish I could say I finished this sweater in the time between posting my Such Flattering Puff Sleeves sweater and today. The truth of the matter is, sadly, that I started this garment sometime in August 2014 and have been working on it until March 2015, with long breaks inbetween. To think this was supposed to be a quick project for the linen yarn I picked up at my LYS because it was on sale!

Guess what the problem was! One should think it was the stitch pattern of the body, right? Nope! In fact, I was done with both the back and the front piece in August. It was the sleeves, these godawful, cursed things. Not the ones shown in the picture. No, the originals are sort of sold short by the name “sleeves”; they were more like tents. GIANT. NERVEWRECKING. TENTS. Let me tell you, it’s no fun knitting kilometres upon kilometres of moss stitch. It escalates from being mildly annoying after the first couple of rows to MAKE IT STOP MY BRAIN LEAKS OUT OF MY EARS HELP, I’m not even kidding.

And to add insult to injury, when I was finally, finally done and had sewn the sleeves to the body, I looked like a 1980’s business woman of the Hark! A Vagrant variety. It was not a good look. So, when I wasn’t about to explode in fiery red hot rage at the sight of this sweater anymore, I sat down to rip out the sleeves and frog them. I decided I just wanted simple sleeves instead of that extravaganza. I cast on 75 stitches, then knitted in moss stitch for about 12 cm. To shape the sleeve, I cast off 5 stitches at the beginning of the next 4 rows (55 sts), then decreased 1 stitch at each end of the next right side row and afterwards decreased 1 stitch at each end of every following 4th row 13 times (27 sts).

I honestly love the way this sweater turned out, despite the difficult road to the finished object. It’s lovely and light, just like I imagined at the beginning; it’s going to be a pleasure to wear it in summer. The linen yarn gives it a unique texture, and me callused skin on my fingers … it definitely isn’t like buttery soft alpaca yarn. 😉 It’s okay though, because it compliments the stitch pattern so well! The only feature I definitely dislike is the neckband. It looks horrible turned up like in the original pictures, and it turned out irregular anyway. I couldn’t be bothered to fix it after all the time and effort I put into the sleeves but eliminated the sleeve bands because I didn’t think they’d look better in any way.

Pattern: To Wear With A Summer Suit (A Stitch in Time Vol. 1) by Jane Waller/Susan Crawford.

Yarn: Lino Plus by Wolle Rödel (Sport, 55% Cotton/24% Acrylic/21% Linen) in “Gelb”