Tag Archives: Hand knit sweater

It’s a race! Cold weather vs. finished pullover.

I love the local library! I found a gem of a book titled,”Latvian Dreams, Knitting from Weaving Patterns” by Joyce Williams. It was full of charts with geometric designs. The sweater patterns in the book were fashioned after the gansey, very little shaping, with the focus on the two color patterns. The sweater is knit in a traditional style of knitting in the round and using steeks at armholes and collar.

I decided to try the “High Park Pullover”. In the book it is shown in blue and white – but I think (and am hoping) that I have enough fine weight alpaca to knit this (with long sleeves). Years ago I bought tons of alpaca yarn from Richness Alpaca. I’ve been looking for a project to use it all up and I have found it!

I am racing the snow – my goal is to be wearing this sweater the first time I shovel!

High Park Pullover
15 more rows and I am at the collar!

The first inch of rows were the hardest. Now that I have figured out the repeats I don’t have to look at every stitch on the chart while knitting. I’ve had to frog a few rows but luckily not too often.

Bottom of sweater
Bottom of alpaca hand knit sweater

The book has a fun approach to the sweater patterns. Charts show the geometric patterns in the shape of the sweaters. Gauges for different weight yarns are listed and depending on which yarn you use you adjust the pattern by number of repeats. For my sweater I added 20 stitches to the charted pattern in order to get the correct size – One 10st repeat for the front and one for the back.

Alpaca sweater, center stitches

I can’t wait to get to the sleeve – see how clever the design is where the sleeves meets the body of the sweater! I’ll have to walk around waving my arms in the air to show it off.

Photo of underarm for High Park pullover

I can get one round done in about 20 minutes. The sweater is charted at 270 rows. . .  (not including the sleeves, I haven’t looked at those yet) I don’t want to do the math! I’m planning on working both sleeves at the same time because I’ll have to tweak the pattern and also because I’m not sure how far my different colors of yarn will stretch. Knitting both sleeves at the same time will help me use up the yarn and make sure the sleeves look the same. The sleeves are worked from the top down, picking up sts at the armholes and working down to the cuffs, and that’s a lot of fabric on my lap. Doing both sleeves at the same time prevents sleeve slap (that happens while turning the sweater to knit the second sleeve and the one that is done swings around and slaps you).

I’ll post pics of me in it – shovelling.

Look what I found in my closet!

I was rooting around in my yarn boxes the other day and found this sweater that I knit TEN years ago! The poor thing needed one sleeve sewn in and the collar knit. Lucikly there was a partial skein of each of the yarns left in the box with the sweater so I could knit the collar.
I must have been planning for the future when designing this because it fits me now. This would look so great on the slopes . . . if only I were a skier!

Peasant birds sweater

I have a book of charts titled “Charted Peasant Designs from Saxon Transylvania” and spend many an hour looking through the charts in awe. These birds always attracted me and now I find I’ve knit them into a sweater! I totally forgot about this sweater. . . hard to believe.
Peasant bird sweater 2

The sweater is knit in the round and armholes are steeked. The yarn is Plymouth Galway.
Front of sweater on the body formsweater front shown laing flat

I also love that curly cue “S” design. The shoulders have two stripes of this “S”design on the front and the back.
Peasant birds top of sweater
It also runs up the sides of the body and the sides of the sleeves. I knit the sleeves in the round and worked the increases on each side of the stripe. Makes a good looking sleeve!
Sleeve underarm