I have a nemesis. It’s this sweater. It’s a pattern by Kim Hargreaves called “Calm”. I’m, sadly, not calm when it comes to this project! I’m extremely annoyed. Years ago, this was supposed to be the first piece of clothing I’d knit. I bought white mohair yarn, got to knitting, then gave up because turns out mohair isn’t a good idea for your first sweater knit. (Who knew.) A few years later I picked it up again. I finished all the pieces, but I sewed them together in the wrong way. If you’ve worked with mohair, you know that it’s near impossible to unravel. This is so far the first project I completely gave up on … I believe the term I used was rage-quit.

Looking through my yarn stash, I discovered this beautiful DROPS Alpaca Brushed Silk in red that I had originally bought for another project. I went through my pattern and decided it’d be perfect for the Calm sweater. After all, what could go wrong? It’s technically an easy pattern using only reverse stockinette stitch. Turns out, almost the same thing as last time could go wrong. I finished the individual pieces quickly, then began sewing the raglan sleeves to the front and back body … then realized I sewed on the right sleeves with the knit side showing. Oh boy. When I tried to open up the seam, the yarn broke, because of course it did. This pattern is my nemesis, I tell you.

I took this project on the seven hour train ride to Vienna with me. It’s from The Enchanted Sole by Janel Laidman, one of my favourite sock knitting books. “Firebird” is possibly my favourite sock pattern ever, but I was super intimidated to actually knit it. Recently I decided that was very silly of me. After all I’ve knit colourwork and I’ve knit socks, so why not knit colourwork socks? I splurged on this Lana Grossa cashmere sock yarn (because this pattern deserves cashmere) and cast on. I’ll show you my progress once I’m back home!

The owner of my LYS recommended this knitting thimble for colourwork to me. It took a while getting used to, but it does keep the two strands apart and prevents yarn tangling as a result!