Life At Villa Boswell

This sweater was completed before Christmas, in a deep jewel tone that I think is wonderful for the winter time.  It also goes really well with some patterned corduroy pants I have.

The Pattern

The pattern, called "Sahara" is from Stitch Diva Studios.  I love all of their designs, which are quite stylish and form-fitting.  It’s just amazing the patterns they have for crochet too: who knew you could make something you’d actually want to wear with crochet?  Anyhow, what’s also nice about the Sahara pattern is that you can knit it to fit your body, adding or subtracting the increase/decrease element to suit your taste or to modify the style of the sweater.  You can also adjust the depth of the "v" neck, to make it more or less plunging.

Here are the details:

• Pattern: Sahara from Stitch Diva, by Wendy Bernard
• Tilli Thomas Pure and Simple for the body, Disco Lights for the neck and bands (Don’t click if you hate drooling)
• Totally adjustable: sleeves, neckline, hem length

That’s about perfect! Especially since the pattern (check out the link to the pattern to see), is made-up for a total barbie doll.  (I mean, really, how many women who knit have protruding hip bones, for Pete’s sake?)  And sure, if you have a size A- bra cup, then feel free to plunge that baby right down to your belly button, because nothing’s gonna fall out.  All the rest of us have to be a bit more circumspect, thank you.

Lessons Learned

Yarn: I chose a Merino blend that was super soft.  I wish I could tell you the name! This was my 3rd project after a many-year hiatus, so I hadn’t yet caught onto the importance of keeping that yarn band.  Anyhow, this merino looks great here, and now, after a number of wearings, it’s a little fuzzy, but still quite attractive.  I got the yarn from the great folks at Knitting Arts in Saratoga, who helped me make sure the gauge I’d chosen worked out correctly, since the gauging in this sweater is a bit complicated.  Anyhow, the lesson here is that the recommended yarn, 100% silk, is ridiculously expensive (like $35 a skein or something).  The merino worked just fine.  That said, I find myself curious as to how silk would work up in this sweater.  Amy Singer’s No Sheep For You book tells you that silk is actually pretty warm…or at least I think she mentions that in her book.  In any case, I’m pretty sure that this sweater doesn’t have the drape it would had I worked it up in silk.  However, I’ve saved enough $$ to be able to knit 2 other sweaters in merino, so there that…

Provisional Cast On: This pattern is a "try on as you go" pattern, which is worked from the top down.  First, you start off which what is called a "provisional cast on."  I’m sure if you search YouTube, you can find someone who will demo this nicely for you, but the instruction booklet is also quite detailed and easy to follow.  I cast on using a rather coarse yarn, and I wish I hadn’t, because it sort of frayed my stitches after a while.  Next time, I’ll use a nice bamboo or something soft.  Also, pulling out the stitches at the end was more challenging than I thought it’d be.

Shaping-on-the-Fly:  With this sweater, you knit down the back to the arm holes, then return to the shoulders and knit down the front to the arm holes, joining the two sides and continuing in the round to the bottom. The instructions explain that, because you knit this sweater from the top down, you can try on as you go, and simply increase/descrease stitches as you need in order to get the fit you want.  I think that was a bit misleading.  First, you really can’t try on anything until you join the front and back panels and start working in the round.  Secondly, you knit the front panel at the very end, so pretty much what happens as you try on the sweater is that the V-neck is a "super V," exposing your entire front, and you just sort of look at yourself in the mirror, wondering how you’ll ever go out in public with this thing!  Nah, just figure out what you need to do the tried-and-true way: measure yourself, measure your gauge, figure out your need for decreasing from there.  The other mistake in shaping that I made is that I sort of "threw in" a few extra decreases for a tighter fit but I didn’t realize that decreasing has to happen gradually or you’ll end up with a "shelf" situation, which I think you can kind of see in photo of the back.  The decrease ended up creating a kind of "pinch" to the fit that wouldn’t have occurred had I decreased more gradually.  So, next time, I’ll work it out on paper first.

Front Panel:  I love that front panel thing.  It was fun to knit and it worked out surprisingly well.  You just stitch the two sides together after you finish, stitching up to the level that you want.  I should have stitched up just a smidge more, since the sweater sort of "gives" after a while and there’s a bit more exposure, but it’s not too shocking, so I’ve left it so far. 

Hope you like it! If you knit this sweater up, drop me a line!