Mystic Pullover

Pattern: Mystic Pullover by Melissa LaBarre
Yarn: Alize Pure Wool Cashmira, 325 g
Needle: 3.5 mm rib, 4 mm body
Time to knit: 17 days

Modifications:
1) Knit in the round up to the armholes, without the pockets, the waist shaping is at the sides.
2) The ribbing is not knit additionally, as in the original pattern, it starts from cast on and my number of stitches was larger, as I knitted it with smaller needles (as I usually do).
3) Changed the cap of the sleeves as in the Phildar sweater.
4) Lowered  the neckline an inch.
5) The neckline stitches on the back and the front were left live rather than cast off and picked up again.
6) The picked up and live stitches, forming the collar, are more than the pattern calls for for my size - I actually made the collar the largest size.

One word jumps to mind when I think of this sweater - effortless. I usually struggle with my sweaters - knit and unravel, until I'm satisfied with the result. With this sweater, however, although I made some arbitrary decisions - the number of stitches for the ribbing, the waist shaping, the sleeves, and especially the number of stitches and rows for the neckline, everything turned out as I imagined it. As easy as pie.

The color is turquoise, not blue as in the pictures, but I was not able to capture it neither at home, nor outside :( However, it seems to be one of the colors of the season in the knitting blogland - during the past week I saw two more sweaters in Alize 17 on the blogs I follow :)

And speaking of colors - this is the bleakest photo session I've ever shot! It's been raining lately, it's actually raining / snowing  right now and there are even small traces of single snowflakes on some of the photos. The banks of our river are ugly and muddy. We've had a fairly mild and snowless winter, but I can't say that spring is in the air, not yet ...