FO: Wisteria Sweater

A photo presentation of my latest most favourite sweater - Wisteria. It is my own design and I am truly proud with it. The sweater is boxy - a form I wouldn't have thought I would like on myself, as I definitely prefer tailored clothes, but this one I love, go figure. My initial attempt at knitting the yarn was in fact a fitting raglan sweater, which I had almost finished, when I abandoned the idea and frogged it. And I am so, so glad I did - now I have a sweater I love and I am actually going to wear, a lot.
It is knit bottom up to the armholes in reverse stockinette, then I knit the sleeves to the armholes, adding a juicy fat cable for interest and from the armholes up I knitted all the parts together in a composite raglan, preserving the cable up to the neckpiece. When I reached the neckline, I cast off the central stitches on the front and started decreasing to round the neckline, converting from knitting in the round to knitting back and forth.

The whole weight of the sweater is only 140 g - it's like a light super soft cloud around the body and it is surprisingly warm. It was 5C (41F) when we took these pictures today and husband was wearing a wool hat, winter jacket and his hood on and I was posing just in my light sweater and I swear I was not cold (too much :) ).

The yarn is my own composition out of two very thin Italian bobbin yarns -

• Zegna Baruffa Cashwool 100% merino 1500 m / 100 g and 
• Zegna Baruffa Mousse 70% merino 30% polyamide 1400 m / 100 g 

so the average thickness of my resulting yarn was 750 m / 100g, probably the thinnest yarn I've handknit so far. The color of the yarn is also my own handdyeing, using a concoction of red, blue and black to produce plum and some diluted red to add a bit of pink.

Pattern: Wisteria Sweater (personal pattern)
Yarn: Zegna Baruffa Cashwool and Mousse, held together, 140 g
Needle: 3 mm rib, 3.25 mm body
Time to knit: from April to November

Bonus Sweater - Photo Session

And a quick photo session of the Bonus sweater. It is amazing how much I like this sweater and how little I expected of this color combination when I started it simply to use up the very high quality merino remains.

Pattern: Bonus sweater (personal pattern)
Yarn: Zegna Baruffa Cashwool 160 g asphalt, 160 g burgundy
Needle: 3.5 mm (sleeve cuffs), 4 mm
Time to knit: 3 weeks

BONUS SWEATER (DOWNLOAD)

WIP - Bonus Sweater

Last year I bought 500 g of Zegna Baruffa Cashwool in dark burgundy and 500 g in asphalt and I knit two sweaters out of them - Tre Archi and H&M Ribbed Sweater.
I had quite a lot of yarn left from these two sweaters - 170 g of the burgundy and 100 g of the asphalt and I didn't feel like knitting more hats and scarfs, so I bought another 100 g asphalt and cast on a new sweater, combining the two colors.

Although the colors are rather dark and definitely not my first choice for a color combo, I actually like how they work together. The design is my own, inspired by The Heirloom Knit Baby Blanket - the borders and Seashore Sweater - the stripes. As almost always I'm knitting the sweater bottom up, with tailored waist and slight negative ease. As you can see I'm on the second sleeve, so if I don't stray to other projects I might have it finished in a few days.

H&M Ribbed Sweater

Finally finished the semi-brioche sweater for Gaby I cast on back in February - in time to add it to her Christmas presents :)
The pattern is mine, loosely based on a picture of an H&M sweater from their 2017 collection. It's boxy and short, with longer back and zippers at the sides.
The yarn is super soft Italian bobbin merino and the sweater is very squishy and soft to the skin - and because of the semi-brioche stitch it is very warm too.

Pattern: H&M Ribber Sweater (personal pattern)
Yarn: Zegna Baruffa Cashwool, 400g, color asphalt
Needle: 4 mm
Time to knit: long :)

Gaby is a fan of the H&M brand and if I'm not mistaken the jeans and the shirt for this photosession are both H&M. When I was preparing the photos for this post I noticed that she had zippers on her jeans legs too, in unison with the zippers on the sides of the sweater :)

The zippers are operational.

Happy girl - happy mother!

Tre Archi Sweater

My latest most favourite sweater - Tre Archi by Louisa Harding, knit in the softest merino I've ever tried - Zegna Baruffa Cashwool. It is yet another one of those Italian wool bobbin yarns I've been ordering online lately. I've got two more colors of this yarn - dark green and asphalt and the latter is going to turn into another sweater for me too, probably soon.

Pattern: Tre Archi by Louisa Harding
Yarn: Zegna Baruffa Cashwool 8, dark bordeaux, 330 g
Needle: 3.5 mm, 4 mm
Time to knit: two weeks

Notes and modifications:
1. From the original pattern I used only the overall visual concept and the charts for the cables, but I chose to make mine a longer and fitted sweater. I knit the body and the sleeves in the round and made my own calculations for the stitches and rows. The arches for the body are placed low, so that the most narrow part of the cables would fall at the waist. Thus I started with 221 sts - 17 repeats of the cable and ended at the waist with 152 sts. Then I increased the stitches gradually on both sided until the armholes and split the knitting for the back and the front.

2. The original beginning with two rows of garter stitch curled despite my efforts to block it, so I carefully unravelled the cast on row and made the bottom end of the sweater symmetrical to the neckband. That should have been my logical choice from the beginning, I think this edge is much more beautiful and there's no danger of rolling up.

3. For the sleeves I cast on 60 sts, increased to 65 sts in the first knit row for 5 repeats of the cables, knitted in the round. This gave me 45 sts at the end of the cabled part. Then I gradually increased to 65 sts to the armholes, adding two new stitches every 10 rows. I sewed the sleeves to the body using mattress stitch.

I am absolutely thrilled with the result - so much my type of sweater - simple, elegant and feminine.

Asherton Reversible Scarf

Modelled above by my son, this is another present for a friend. The pattern is easy, yet interesting and engaging with its pure geometric lines and it is totally reversible. For me this is one of the best men's scarf patterns out there.

Pattern: Asherton Reversible Scarf
Yarn: Zegna Baruffa, Spring 1, 100% merino, Italian bobbin yarn, 200 g
Needle: 4 mm
Time to knit: 4 evenings

The yarn is very thin - 800 m / 100 g, so I knit it in four threads held together. The color is gray melange, with subtle purple, yellowish, blue and red nuances mixed with the lighter and darker gray and it's a chameleon - dependent on the direction of the light it might look lighter or darker.

The size I chose is 20 cm wide and 160 cm long - I think an average size for a man's scarf. For this size I did three repeats of the pattern in width and ten and a half (the half is for symmetry) repeats of the pattern in length.

This merino is very soft and pleasant to the skin, I hope the new owner would appreciate it. I had ordered 300 g of this yarn, so now I'm knitting a hat to make it a set.