my new sweater

hello! i've suddenly found myself with lots to blog about, knitting and otherwise, so i should actually be posting more often, at least for the next couple of weeks. today though, i wanted to show off my cute new sweater!


i started elizabeth zimmermann's seamless yoke sweater at the end of august. as i do with most big projects, i worked on it for a while, put it down, and picked it back up later. but finally i finished it last week. this was a sweater that was not technically difficult to knit at all, but it was frustrating. i knit the two sleeves first, using the first as my gauge swatch. when i moved on to the body, i used the gauge i calculated from the sleeve to determine my cast-on number for the pattern. well, i really don't know what happened, but my swatch lied. totally lied! i knit along for about ten inches of the body, and even putting in quite a bit of waist shaping, when i tried it on, it was a good three inches too big. the only thing i can figure is that my knitting relaxed somewhat with the long stretches of stockinette. anyway, i wanted a pretty fitted sweater, so this was disappointing. normally, i am not good about ripping things out and redoing them. if it's a small item, and it's for me, i'm usually happy to live with my mistake. but this time, i felt like not redoing the body would mean i would never wear the sweater. so i knit the body again, and i'm really glad i did. the finished sweater fits me perfectly...almost like it was made for me!


this sweater is really all about the yoke, and i gave what i wanted to do for my yoke some serious thought. i knew i wanted something simple, but not plain. i really loved the color of the yarn (a beautiful blue somewhere between robin's egg and turquoise, with olive and fuschia tweedy flecks), and i kind of wanted that to be the focus. when i saw blueskysun's (rav link) ribbed yoke version of the sweater, i knew i had found my solution. she was kind enough to give me some pointers on how she did her own yoke. i think it's quite genius on her part--the ribbed yoke is very flattering, and hides the yoke decreases very cleverly.

(looky, it snowed!)

overall: i'm very happy with the end result. it's probably my most successful sweater to date, and one i expect to wear a lot.

the details: pattern: elizabeth zimmermann's seamless yoke sweater, from knitting without tears and other books
yarn: peace fleece worsted, in lena's meadow. i used 4.5 skeins to make about a 41" bust size.
needles: size 8

i'm ready to start another sweater now, and it will be none other than melissa's garter yoke cardigan, using some pretty blue/violet beaverslide that i've saved up just for this pattern. i'm so excited!