5.02.2008

Happiness Is...

Prepping to cast on for a new sweater project!

Its the Bonbon Pullover from Winter 2007 Interweave Knits and as you can see I am playing with the colours. I bought the yarn from the Knitter's Frolic last weekend. Its Sheldridge Farm W4 100% wool...



Clockwise from the top the colours are Lemonlime, Bottle Green, Silver (main colour), Green Apple, Corn Silk and Misty Blue. I am also using a white which is Mission Falls 1824 Wool. The Sheldridge Farm White is a natural, unbleached white and I wanted something closer to a clear white than a creamy one.

I haven't worked with multiple colours in a sweater for a long time so I'm looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to working with worsted weight yarn on size 5 needles! The majority of my projects since last September have been fingering weight with a couple of quick items knit in DK. Making big pieces of knitted fabric fast from big yarn and big needles is very appealing right about now!

The last two sweaters I made for myself had what could be called "sizing issues". These issues were such that one was hard pressed to believe an intelligent person could have imagined they were intended for me to wear.

I like knitting and wearing sweaters I've made though so I need to get on top of what I keep doing wrong and fix it because it is more than heartbreaking to put all that effort into something that is then totally impossible to wear.

I've been following the series on Ease on the Interweave Knits blog. I also noticed in the latest IK Spring issue the patterns actually feature information on how much ease is in the modelled garment. So I've become increasingly emboldened to give sweaters another try.

A couple of weeks ago I gathered pictures of all the sweater patterns in my cue, laid them all out at once and took a look at what they all had in common. It turns out the knitter in me was loving sweaters with lots of yoke detail - just the area I've been having problems with. Then I looked at the store bought sweaters in my closet and noted that all my favourites have little or no detail in that area. I went back to the pattern books and magazines looking for sweaters that were similar to the favourites from my closet. That's when I came up with Bonbon. It does have a yoke but it will be easy enough to just knit that area plain rather than with colour.

Next I put on the closest sweater I have in style and size to Bonbon and took pictures of myself in it from back, front and side.

It happens that the sweater had no ease - both hips and bust are exactly the same as my measurements. I want Bonbon to fit a bit more loosely so I am going to make the size that offers me about two inches of ease.

With the colours charted I just need to roll a few balls from the skeins and swatch away! I am nothing if not optimistic!

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