Oh boy. The process of knitting this sweater was a veritable comedy of errors, or rather: a comedy of one error: I didn’t buy enough yarn. But let’s go back a few steps and start at the beginning. In autumn last year, I knitted this adorable little cardigan in a happy orange cotton yarn. Before, I hadn’t been much of a fan of the cotton yarns I had tried, but this one had taken my fancy. I immediately planned two other knitting projects with different colourways of the same yarn, but then winter came. *game of thrones title music*

In April, I picked up my summer knitting plans (= cotton) again, but soon realized I had to hurry because Wolle Rödel was going to discontinue the yarn. So I bought nine Cotton Summer balls of yarn in emerald and started knitting quite happily. Then I ran out of yarn. I looked for the Cotton Summer in the right shade in the Wolle Rödel stores in Ulm and Heidelberg: nothing. I shot them an email: no answer. For a while there, I gave up on this sweater out of sheer frustration.

After handing in my thesis, I had enough time and space in my brain to pick up the yarn search again. I messaged several people on Ravelry, but none of them wanted to part with their yarn. Last Friday though I realized I could try and message Wolle Rödel on Facebook, and lo and behold! They messaged me back almost immediately and were being quite sweet and helpful. I got the information which stores near me still carried the Cotton Summer in the right shade, immediately started badgering my Dad to drive me to one of those locations and within about four hours I had enough Cotton Summer to finish my sweater (plus enough of the pink colourway to knit a cardigan I had my eye on).

Also I discovered some neat yarnbombing near that store:

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A post shared by Tabea Katharina (@lagrancostanza)

 

So much excitement about a simple little sweater! You see, the knitting process itself was fairly simple and straightforward. It’s a seamless raglan construction knitted mostly in stockinette stitch with a cable panel from the middle of the body going around the hood. You should know how to do a Kitchener stitch to graft together the hood and the holes underneath the arms, but if you don’t, no worries, here’s my preferred tutorial.

According to the pattern, the overlapping cable panels at the bust are created by picking up stitches by k1, inc1 in the indicated area, then putting the increased stitches on a separate needle, thus creating the second panel. At first, I thought that technique was absolutely ingenious, but it looked terrible when I tried to do it. In the end, I just cast on the needed number of stitches and sewed it on later.

In hindsight, I really wish I had made the body a bit longer. I know that my torso is longer than average, but for some reason I almost never remember it in time when knitting or sewing. It doesn’t matter though, because I probably will always wear something underneath to avoid showing too much cleavage in everyday situations anyway. Plus, a second layer gives this pieces that sporty, casual look I’ve been going for!

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I adore the cable pattern! The diamond shape is created by simple C2F, C2B (and the other way round) repeats. That way, it isn’t too annoying to knit, but is still quite stunning! In the picture above you can also see why I love the Cotton Summer yarn that much: it’s the little white and green dots that shimmer through here and there and give it its iridiscent effect. (It’s really hard to photograph, guys, so you gotta use your imagination a bit. :P)

The hood is the reason why I put the pattern on my Ravelry queue in the first place. To be honest, it isn’t very functional, even though I made it an inch longer to accomodate my giant head. Unfortunately, it still slides off my head after a couple of minutes of wearing it up. It’s still really cute and I just love the look of clothing with hoods!

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Pattern: Corona by Teresa Gregorio

Yarn: Wolle Rödel Cotton Summer (Worsted, 100% cotton), 8307 jade

Photography: Dad