Friday, March 10, 2017

Sample Knit: Atlas

Yesss! Brooklyn Tweed just released their new collection, BT Yokes, and it is full of hand knit goodness. I just so happened to knit a sample for this collection, Atlas for women, designed by Jared Flood.

This was a fun sample to knit and I love how a fair isle yoked sweater comes together. The body is knit in the round to the underarms and then set aside while the arms are knit and then they are all knit together to form the yoke, which is where the fair isle knitting starts. The stranded knitting on this yoke is visually stunning but it can get complicated - some of the rounds require the use of three colors - but the end result is worth the work.

I love the color combination that Jared chose for this sample, Hayloft, Old World, and Fossil, but it would be really fun to play with other colors to knit your own unique Atlas. This sweater was knit in Brooklyn Tweed's yarn Shelter, which has an array of beautiful colors.

All photos in this post are used courtesy of Brooklyn Tweed.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Finished: Aidez

Catching up here.... I realized I hadn't ever blogged about the Aidez sweater I knit - 5 years ago!!! I wouldn't have believed it had been that long if I didn't look up the information on my Ravelry page. I seem to have finished this in March of 2012 - when the twins were 5 months old - so that explains everything right there.

I am glad I had enough sense to enter the details into Ravelry or I would not have remembered any of the information. The pattern is Aidez by Cirilia Rose. I knit this in Valley Yarns Northampton Bulky in the color Natural on size US 10 1/2 needles.

I am pretty sure I started knitting this when I was pregnant. I thought it would be a good sweater to wear because it was open in the front. I think because I was so big and uncomfortable being pregnant with twins, I didn't get very much knitting done and scrapped it until after they were born. I know it was a relatively quick knit because of the bulky yarn.

I really love the cables on this sweater - especially the seed wishbone cable and the ear of corn cable. They are very interesting and not your run-of-the-mill cables. I did switch out the two cables that ran on either side of the trellis cable on the back for the ear of corn cables. I felt like there were just too many different types of cables going on on this sweater. I also wanted to tie the front to the back so that the cables were consistent. Otherwise, it seemed like the front belonged to an entirely different sweater than the back.

I really like this sweater but I don't 100% love this sweater. The sleeves are an inch or two too short and the front panels aren't wide enough so that they meet in the front - which I think is part of the design. It is nice and warm but it is way too bulky to fit under a coat. So if I am wearing it in the house and it is freezing cold outside and I need to go out, I have to take it off and find another sweater to wear. It is perfect to wear as an outerwear piece on chilly days. All in all it has been a good sweater and I have gotten a lot of wear out of it.