The main reason I posted the rather boring story about my first jumper of the year was so that I could tell the ever-so slightly more interesting story of the second jumper of the year. This story.
Jumper one went down so well that I started plotting jumper two. After all, why spend time thinking of a birthday present when you could spend time knitting it! During my initial searches for jumper one, I'd been really impressed with the look of this pattern (Florestan). Okay, large parts of it are a little over-fussy but the main cables look great. Plus, it was in double knit, which means lots of yarn options. I'm ashamed to say that I've become a little averse to buying pattern since discovering the wealth of free ones on Ravelry but I coughed up and downloaded the pattern.
What a disappointment. It takes a lot for me to write about a pattern in these sorts of negative terms but I couldn't believe I'd paid money for such a sparsely written, badly described pattern. The PDF is 11 pages long, great! Only three of those pages have jumper instructions on. Not so great. Two of those pages only have a single column of instructions. Not great at all. The rest is ten photos and three pages of abbreviations and tips and tricks. I'm a reasonably experienced knitter and I found those two columns hard going. And that was only the sleeves...
In parallel to my pattern searching, cable deliberating and general faffing, I had a decision to make about the yarn. Jumper one had gone down well in Rowan Pure Wool so that was the logical choice. I still had four balls left so that was a chunk of the cost sorted already, all I needed was another 16 or so from Get Knitted. Yes, there'd be a risk about the dye lots but I could do the arms in the old balls and the body in the new ones and it'd look fine. It even gave me a chance to start the arms before my order arrived.
As I'd expected for that sort of quantity, Get Knitted was out of stock but promised to order it in. I wasn't worried, why would I be? And then they said that Rowan was out of stock. That's when I was worried.
To cut an extremely long story short, everywhere that had stock was too expensive (John Lewis). Everywhere that was affordable had to order from Rowan and, when the manufacturer is out of stock, you can be pretty certain that birthday present isn't going to be ready. All this waiting and investigation had eaten up precious weeks and, although I had two Florestan sleeves finished, I was now less than a month from the deadline with no real hope of completeion.
Time for Plan B!
Fortunately, thanks to jumper one, I knew of a quick and great pattern. Thanks to my swatching, I knew of a reasonable-but-ever-so-slightly-felt-prone yarn that was definitely not out of stock. But no one wants the same jumper in two different yarns so it was time to work out a different cable!
With stitch dictionaries strewn everywhere and half-worked charts, I tried several variations. I have never been so conscious of the fact that every day I spent testing was a day I wouldn't have for knitting. In the end I settled on this (heavily modified from a couple of different sources)
I need to work it through again to decipher my own symbology but, in case anyone is curious, it shows right-side rows only, wrong side is worked as you'd expect maintaining the knit/purls of the previous row. Where there's a dot on a cable, purl that stitch rather than knit it. I will try to work out the detail though as I was really pleased with the result.
Obviously the resultant jumper wasn't as nice as the first version simply because the yarn wasn't as good. However, my tension was better and it's hard not to have pride in seeing my own cables come out so well. Thank goodness for out of stock yarn, otherwise I would have been stuck with the disappointing Florestan.
I don't knit many jumpers. That much yarn is expensive and I think I was put off by too many enthusiastic but technically flawed attempts as a beginner. Even now, when I class myself as a reasonably experienced knitter, I just don't seem to be able to get it right. Or at least that has been the case up until this year.
I'm now beginning to think that I'm incapable of knitting good jumpers for me.
Last year I had a commission and, to quote a wise but untraceable Raveler:
"Knitting is like sex. If I like you and you appreciate it, it is free. Other than that, you can’t pay me enough. "
Fortunately, this was the fun and appreciated sort of commission. Unfortunately, the requirements were a little tight. It had to be an aran/cable jumper. White or cream. Machine washable. Warm. Nice yarn. Long arms. Add to that my own requirement (somewhere this side of £100) and hopefully you'll see the challenge.
Machine washable and nice yarn presented an immediate problem. In a defeat for my budget criteria, nice yarn won out on the grounds that "if it's not nice then I won't wear it and it won't need washing in the first place."
Finding the pattern was tricky at first because I had some strong ideas about what I wanted to make. I quickly but reluctantly abandoned these in favour of what the recipient wanted and I'm very glad I did. The pattern chosen was a DROPS design, and therefore doesn't have a nice evocative name but rather goes by the sadly utilitarian 85-6. I'll admit to being initially uninspired but it turned out to be an unexpectedly good pattern choice.
The next problem was the yarn weights of the pattern. It's written for two different yarns held together throughout, an aran weight and a sport weight. I really, truly, desperately tried to match this with something that was available in the UK, was machine washable and didn't break the bank. I failed, repeatedly. Fortunately, I tested alternatives and found that two strands of doubleknit held together was a fantastic match! And, with the popularity of doubleknit in the UK, there was no shortage of white/cream yarn to choose from.
So, from there, I swatched like I've never swatched before! Hoping I might still save a little money, I tried a couple of budget yarns that still had some wool content but nothing worked as well Rowan Pure Wool DK. It was squishy, warm, soft and - best of all - superwash! Unfortunately, it also comes with the price tag you'd expect from Rowan.
Enter Get Knitted, yarn shop beyond compare! Their price was unbeaten anywhere, plus they're (almost) my local. I drove up to look at the yarn but found they had one solitary ball on the shelf. Fortunately, the lovely staff ordered it in for me and gave me the wonderful 10% Ravelry Group discount. It's not an exaggeration to say that, without Get Knitted, I never would have made this jumper. Thanks to their generous discount, low price and free shipping, even the amazing Rowan yarn fell into my "extravagant but affordable" price bracket.
So on to knitting. With two strands of doubleknit, you're more or less working with chunky. It's pleasingly fast. The elasticity of the yarn meant it took me some time to get my tension and I will confess that the back came out a rather different length than the front but I was on a time limit (belated Christmas) and there was no time for ripping back.
The pattern is brief, to the point and mainly great. There were only a couple of sections where I had to read things over a few times to check I had understood it correctly. That said, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone making their first ever jumper because I think it does assume some knowledge of a normal jumper construction.
I only made two modifications (other than the extra long arms that had been requested).
- The first is at the start of the front. There's an unusual and striking cable pattern through the front but the pattern starts with 4×2 rib and then cuts straight to the cable pattern in a really jarring way. I didn't get a photo of it but I just couldn't live with it. To hell with time constraints, I ripped back and adjusted the middle section of the rib so that it flowed into the cable. I can probably post a chart if anyone is interested.
- The second modification was the sleeve caps. Perhaps my tension as unusual (I don't think so) but, as written, I don't know how the sleeve caps would have fitted without some hefty (and very unmanly) gathering. Instead, I gradually decreased the sleeve caps down until they matched the size of the armholes more closely. I'm so glad I did because the result worked wonderfully.
I'd really recommend this pattern for anyone looking for a quick but really good jumper. There's a bit of shaping to the body which worked wonderfully, the cable is unusual but not overly complex and it turned out to be everything it needed to be. Most importantly, it was appreciated.
