Underway

After Friday's flurry of joyful expectation, the sweater is underway and I still love it. Maybe more.

The pattern is Granito  by Joji Locatelli.  I love the things she designs. There is always a little flash of brilliance in each one.

I think I initially wasn't keen on this pattern.  It's the pockets.  They are a little drapey right where I don't need the extra attention.  Now that many people have knit the sweater, you can see that the wide open pockets are a photo styling feature, possibly due to use.  But I do like the way this sweater hangs and with a slight accomodation to better fit my figure, I think it is going to be great.  It certainly will be the kind of thing that will get lots of wear.

The yarn I am using is Elann Dolce.  It is a fingering weight Australian merino and was one of my first purchases of highly discounted bags of Elann yarn.  At the time of purchase, I had a pattern picked out, but as soon as the yarn arrived I knew that while the yarn was right, the pattern was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I don't recall there being any choice of colours when I bought it, but I really like this very soft gray blue.  In the bag it always seemed to be more blue than gray, but now that I am working with it, it appears much more gray.  The darker spots are a lot like the colour of well worn jeans, worn so much that the colour is almost gone from them.

Because the colour difference is so distinct in the ball, I worried a little that it would look spotty once knit.  I was so wrong to worry.  It is just this wonderfully mottled gray blue.  Nothing distinct, just lovely soft variations of colour.  

So far so fair.  One ball finished the upper back section.  Next step is the fronts.  On the fronts, I think I am going to make a small change.  As designed, the pattern has a pretty round neck.  That isn't something that looks really good on me, so I am going to make a small henley split at the center front.  There will probably be 2 small buttons, which are not a feature, and it will probably be sewn closed.  I like the look, but the use of it is neither here nor there.  Closed or open doesn't matter, it takes away from round and adds a vertical line and that is what is needed.

When I knit Joji's Lipstick sweater, I used the extra large as my starting point and that was a mistake.  The whole sweater was always just a little wide, but it has become unwearable even with my slight change in size.  (That sweater and the red Rios it is made in are going to be redone this winter.)  This sweater, I started with the large and we will see where that gets us.  I did knit the arm edges a little longer than in the pattern.  I have pretty thick upper arms, and too tight sleeves is not a good thing.  With a little luck, that slightly more close fit through the shoulders will keep this as a sweater that I can wear for a really long time.

As I was tidying on the weekend, I realized that the red lace sweater had been tucked deep beside the loveseat for safekeeping while loom building and was almost lost in the melee.  I do have to get back to work on that.  So last week focus on socks.  This week on sweaters.