Life At Villa Boswell

I love the Interweave Winter ‘06 edition.  To me, it’s full of great projects, like the Venezia Pullover, with both Fairisle techniques and steeking.  I haven’t gotten around to that pattern yet, but I know I will.  However, back in January of 2007, I wanted a "welcome back to knitting" project after years away.  Initially, I had started with a simple stockinette stitch coat, but after knitting about 3/4 of the back, i just started to feel extremely bored.  I wanted something more engaging.

Welcome to the Pewter Coat! 

I really thought this wouldn’t be as hard as the pattern indicated, since I had done lots of cables before and didn’t find them difficult.  However, I had never worked off a chart before, so I was a little intimidated.  I decided to go with a brown heather wool (it’s been so long now that I forgot which yarn I used!) instead of the grey cashmere blend shown on the model.  Here’s the finished result! (Finished this sweater in August, 2007).

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Every sweater knitting experience has an abundance of lessons, so why not learn from them?  I finished my Winter Joy Jacket and was not happy with the button band, since I hadn’t paid attention to the exact number of stitches I should have picked up.  By the time I got to the band, I was dying to wear the sweater and impatient to be done with it.  But when I complained about it to my friend Josie, she said to me, "When you spend that much, you gotta love it."  She was totally right.

So, I ripped out the button band, and therein learned the importance of good finish work on the inside, because the process was a total pain due to my inconsistent threading. But, I realized that a new button band would not make me "love it" as Josie said.  I wanted a bit more control over the color and a more fitted look to the sides.

So I ripped out the whole dang thing, excepting the sleeves, and started again with the intention of doing better seaming, a better button band, better attention to color, and finally a more shaped fit, since my first pass according to the pattern produced a pretty bulky sweater for me.

You can see the results here.

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