I knitted another sweater!!! Ok ok… I actually finished this over a month ago, and since then I’ve knit a whole ‘nother sweater. But let’s take this one day sweater at a time, shall we? 🙂
This is the Peggy Sue (oh yah, I’m so creative with my project names, ha!). You probably notice that it does differ slightly from the pattern picture – I made a couple changes (some intentional, some “oh well I done fucked that one up”).
For starts, I knit this in a smaller size than what I should be wearing – the XS, which is for a bust 30. I decided to do this after measuring a similar cropped sweater with a fit that I liked. Since the pattern calls for no waist shaping – it just goes straight down in a tube – I also added a few decreases to pull the body in to 24″ at the waist (again, my waist is not 24″ – but the copied-sweater has those measurements!). These are the changes I made intentionally.
Unintentional changes: Well, for one, the ribbing. It doesn’t come up nearly as high as the pattern is written! That was actually an accident – the pattern has you knit in straight stitch until 8.3cm or 3.5in. Being an American, I saw the 8.3 and assumed it was inches, so I merrily knitted myself 8″ of fucking stockinette. Double-checked the pattern as I was coming to the end, and realized they mean centimeters. WAH. Rather than rip all that shit out, I just drastically shortened the height of the ribbing and called it a day. I kind of like it better this way, I think it’s more flattering!
My other unintentional change was swapping out the buttons for snaps. I planned on sewing buttons – I even put in button holes on the button band (which you can baaarely see), but I managed to skip one, somehow. How? Lord knows. Anyway, my chosen buttons didn’t fit in the holes and since there was one missing (right between the bottom button and the third from the bottom – again, HOW DID I MISS THAT??), I just opted for snaps. It’s fine.
Anyway, I am pleased wit the fit! It’s nice and shrunken, and looks good whether the snaps are fully closed, partially open, or totally open…
See? 🙂
Anyway, this was as fun pattern to knit! The body is stockinette, with raglan sleeves (which means no wrapping for the sleeve caps, fuck yeah). The button band is moss stitch, and the ribbing involves some funky cabling. I likey!
I’m a big fan of this yarn, which was a gift from reader Holly, who offered it after I posted up my big knitting fail. She actually sent me a bunch of really sweet emails filled with great knitting advice, and the package she sent me was full of amazing – in addition to the yarn, there was fancy chocolate. Actually, those chocolates are the sole reason why I even eat chocolate now. I’ve always thought it was hilariously underwhelming (give me a good vanilla-flavored anything, any day of the week), but now I realize it’s because I was just eating shitty chocolate. Imagine that! This led me to try Nashville’s own local chocolatier, Olive and Sinclair, and a longtime romance has begun.
Oh, right, I’m supposed to be talking about this yarn! I don’t actually know what the yarn is specifically, brand-wise, but it’s a gorgeously soft merino and bamboo superwash. It’s somewhere in the DK-weight realm (although I compared it to some of my sport weight and I think it might be closer to that?). One thing that I didn’t notice on the skeins, but is apparent in the sweater is that there are some subtle color gradients going on. I LOVE THAT! I don’t care much for heavily variegated yarn – it’s just not my jam, sorry! – but the subtleness of this is just gorgeous and gives the sweater so much dimension. Love love loveee.
You can really see it here! Ahh, so pretty!
Per usual, I finished the button bands with petersham ribbon to keep them from stretching all crazy. I actually started to make a tutorial on how to do this, but I found it difficult to get a good picture and anyway, it’s literally just hand-sewing petersham ribbon to the back of the knitted band. So.. there’s your tutorial, I guess HAHA.
To block this, I just laid it on a towel and saturated it real good using a spray bottle. After my last fiasco with superwash, I didn’t want to risk it growing all weird!
I don’t know how much I can really call a sweater “summer appropriate” when I live in a climate that has regular 100*+ days, but this is probably the closest I’ll get. The fibers and light yarn weight are much cooler than my usual wool worsted weight sweaters.
Oh, and since a couple people asked – here are some pictures of the dress I’m wearing!
It’s vintage, probably from the late 50s/early 60s, based on the construction and style. I picked it up from the flea market last weekend for a sweet $30. It just *barely* fits me – like, I cannot gain any weight at ALL hahaha. It’s also pretty see-through, but I wear a slip under it and that works! Actually, this is the first time I’ve worn a slip under my clothes, I think. Lord, the majority of y’all must be rolling your eyes so hard at me right now haha.
Anyway, I guess that’s it! Full Ravelry notes (spoiler: there ain’t a lot) here. Thank you again for the yarn, Holly!!
Now to muster up the strength to pull on my second sweater and take pictures for that. It’s one of them worsted-weight wool ones, ugh 😉
OH, I almost forgot – I owe y’all a giveaway winner. Random Number Generator saysssss (dum dum dummm)….
Taryn is our winner! Yay, congratulations, Taryn!
Thanks to everyone who entered!
LLADYBIRD 