Hi there! Welcome to Episode 9 of my knitting podcast!
In this episode I will walk you through my two finished knitting projects. None of them is for me: one is a cardigan that I made for my mom, and another one is a sweater that I made for my dad. In two days I'm traveling to Poland to meet them, so this was my last-minute chance to show you both before they leave my home. You might remember them as WIPs from Episode 8.
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Chapters
- Intro (0:00)
- Maija cardigan by Anna Johanna (0:50)
- Why I love unspun yarn (5:10)
- My struggle with knitting colorwork flat (10:10)
- 51-06 Nord Mens pullover by Sandnes Design (15:26)
- How I fixed the collar that was standing up (19:50)
Patterns and other things that I've mentioned in this video:
- Maija cardigan by Anna Johanna, knit in Nutiden from Höner och Eir and Plötulopi from Istex.
- 51-06 Nord Mens pullover by Sandnes Design, knit in Nutiden from Höner och Eir.
Maija cardigan for my mom
The pattern is from Anna Johanna's book that I bought three or four years ago. This is already the second pattern that I'm making from it. I used different colors and a different yarn than the designer did. Everything was different, but the pattern is the same!
Project details:
- Main color: one strand of Nutiden with a little bit of pinkish undertones, held together with one strand of light gray Plötulopi. Together they give a gray with a hint of pink.
- Contrasting colors: a pink-red-plum color (I'm really bad with naming colors) and a mossy green, both Nutiden, and a yellow Plötulopi. They are not too bright, but they still bring a little bit of life and happiness to the cardigan.
- All yarns are held double.
- Needles: 4.5 mm (US 7).
- Gauge: 16 stitches in 10 cm. Quite loose, so the plain parts went fast.
- Yarn used: I haven't weighed it, but my guess is around 600 g. Unspun yarn is light, but the cardigan is long, almost knee-length.
- Buttons: coconut buttons with a pinkish color. Attaching them is my homework after this video.
Why two strands of unspun yarn
My plan was to make something really warm and snuggly. My parents live in Ukraine, and because of the war, it is quite cold there in the winter time.
For me, unspun yarn is the warmest. I have never used anything warmer. I think this is because there is a lot of air in between the fibers, and it catches all the warmth around you and keeps it there. Both Nutiden and Plötulopi are 100% wool, non-superwash, and it's not my first time knitting with either of them. Can recommend!
It is a little bit of a challenge to start working with unspun yarn, because it breaks easily, especially Nutiden. You need to be gentle. But it is also very easy to fix: just rub the two ends together, and they stay.
How I manage four strands of yarn
In the colorwork parts you have two strands of the main color and two strands of the contrasting color, so four in total. You could pull one strand from the middle of the cake and another one from the outside. But I prefer to wind a part of the cake into a separate ball. When a cake is almost empty, the hole inside becomes so big that the rest of the yarn gets wiggly and starts tangling, and unspun yarn is hard to untangle.
The construction
- It is a drop-shoulder cardigan with a V-neck. The buttons start right below the first colorwork section and go all the way down.
- You cast on at the back and knit back and forth, including the colorwork panel, down to the underarm.
- Then you knit one front shoulder, then the other, join everything, and knit flat all the way to the bottom. There is no steek in this pattern.
- In the end you pick up stitches for the sleeves, knit the colorwork at the top of the sleeve, and decrease towards the cuff.
My modification: the pattern has waist shaping, and I skipped it. Colorwork usually pulls the fabric in a little bit, so when I blocked the cardigan, I made sure to stretch those parts enough to keep the body straight.
I'm not sure that I made the button band loose enough, so I pulled it well during blocking too. So far it looks good.
My struggle: colorwork knit flat
This was the first time I knit colorwork flat. And it is painful!
When I knit colorwork in the round, I hold the contrasting color in my left hand and the main color in my right hand. I'm a continental knitter, so throwing with the right hand is a bit slow for me, but it's moving. Purling with my right hand, though, felt impossible.
I tried a little bit of everything. What worked best for me was holding both yarns in my left hand on the purl rows. I'm not a big fan of it. It works well when the colors alternate evenly, like one by one or two by two. But if you have one stitch of one color and four stitches of another, you use more of one yarn, the other strand gets sloppy, and it just doesn't feel right.
Slowly and steadily, it went well. And this time there was no sleeve island for me: the sleeves have colorwork in the round, and after the flat colorwork it was pure pleasure.
I'm not sure that I will pick up another project with flat colorwork anytime soon. Especially not in fingering weight!
Nord pullover for my dad
The pattern is from one of the Sandnes Garn pattern catalogs. They usually dedicate a catalog to one of their yarns. Of course, I didn't use the recommended yarn. I used unspun yarn again.
Project details:
- Main color: Nutiden in a very dark gray, almost black, with a little bit of gray specks here and there.
- Contrasting colors: the same mossy green Nutiden as in the cardigan, a white Nutiden that I bought maybe five years ago, and a blue Plötulopi.
- All yarns are held double.
- Needles: 5 mm for the main fabric.
To my taste, it is a nice Icelandic-looking sweater, and it is supposed to be very warm.
A note about Nutiden: it comes from a small mill, and they make every color only once and never again. So if you buy it, make sure you buy enough. (This is not a promotion, nobody pays me for that. I just like this yarn.) If you want to know what happens when you don't buy enough, check the mistake number 4 in my biggest knitting mistakes.
The construction
The sweater is knit bottom-up. I normally start with both sleeves, so I never get stuck on the sleeve island. Then I knit the body, join everything, and knit the yoke in the round.
My struggle: three colors at the same time
When I was choosing the pattern, I didn't pay too much attention to the colorwork chart. In many places you hold three colors in the same round. With unspun yarn held double, it means six strands of yarn. It was a mess!
It was definitely not boring. And I love the result: after blocking, the colorwork is even, fresh and crisp.
Lesson learned: next time I choose a colorwork pattern, I will check how many colors you hold at the same time.
How I fixed the collar
The pattern has no short rows, so I added some at the back after the colorwork, to raise the back of the neck. Then I knit the ribbing for the collar, bound off, and asked my husband to try it on.
I didn't like it. The ribbing was quite narrow, and it just went straight up instead of lying nicely on the shoulders. The collar was standing up and living its own life.
So this is what I did:
- I unraveled the ribbing, the short rows, and several rounds of the colorwork, so the sweater sits a little bit lower at the front.
- I knit the short rows again.
- Instead of around 4 cm of ribbing, as the pattern recommends, I knit several rounds in stockinette with the main 5 mm needles.
- Then I switched to 4 mm needles for the last rounds, to make the edge a little bit tighter, so it rolls around itself.
I'm very satisfied with how it ended up. It looks much better to my taste.
What's next
I'm done with colorwork for now. I need to cast on something more relaxing, with fewer strands of yarn to manage.
If you have any struggles in your knitting journey right now, please share them in the comments. I'm not happy to see anybody struggle, but I can relate!
