Tally ho! A new sweater!

 

To be honest, I wasn't sure about this sweater. Halfway through it, I tried it on (it is knit top-down) and thought, "Ugh, not for me," thus why it took me so long to knit. It's a sweater for someone who is long and lithe, which I used to be twenty years ago and sometimes forget! (Well, I do still have a long torso, but there's a bit more padding around it these days.)

But I persevered, and I'm glad I did. The sweater turned out beautifully and its classic Breton stripe design pleases me ... I'm a sucker for nautical designs and stripes. The pattern, Sharon Matarazzo's Satsuma Stripes, is well-written and easy to follow; I can see myself making this sweater again, maybe in red with white stripes. I've even thought about an orange linen sweater with hot pink stripes! With this sweater I used Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport in solstice heather and white. I do like the heathered look of the blue wool, which you can really see in the bottom photo.

This is the first time, I believe, I've knit a sweater with the contiguous sleeve method designed by Suzy Myers, which allows one to knit a sweater from the top-down and seamlessly. I also used Meg Swansen's technique to create jogless stripes in the round, although a trained eye can see where the stripes begin and end on the back of the sweater.

I did make some changes. Instead of hemmed sleeves, as I was running out of blue wool, I knit six rows of garter stitch. The sleeves are also shorter than they are in the pattern; I really dislike super-long sleeves on my sweaters, given that I'm a recipe developer and food writer by trade and there's nothing more irritating than dragging my sleeves through whatever I'm cooking. This was my first time knitting a garment with a turned up hem; I like the look, but with this sweater, I think I would have preferred a simple garter-stitch hem to match the sleeves. Next time.

My younger brother is starting a two-year program at IYRS (International Yacht Restoration School) in Newport, RI, this September and I have visions of myself wearing this sweater with a jaunty red scarf about the neck when I visit him. I shall fit right in! ;-)