Hello Internet friends!

If you’ve been lurking my instagram lately then you’ll have spied this beauty of a sweater which is also the last personal project from my Knit City 2019 yarn haul. I really enjoyed all 3 of the personal projects I planned and then made specifically from last year’s knit city (you can see my entire knit city haul here, and read about my two previous projects here and here).

I actually semi planned on this sweater at Knit City 2018 when this pattern was in pretty high rotation by both vendors and attendees. I really loved the pattern but hadn’t planned on knitting it just yet, I squirrelled the idea away for the next knit city and made sure it was part of my purchasing plan. I’m really glad that I did wait since I don’t think Early Grey Fiber Co was at Knit City 2018 so I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to knit this project with her yarn, and I think this pattern and yarn are a match made in heaven! (side note: Aside from my hoarder tendencies for yarn, fabric, and stationary supplies I also Looooooovvveee tea and have a bit of a David’s tea problem, so I was of course instantly in love with a yarn company named after my daily morning tea of choice, early grey, and their DK weight yarn which is another favourite of mine, oolong!)

For this pattern I knew I wanted to use some solid coloured yarn with a good helping of subtle dye variation, and both of the Early Grey Fiber Co colourways I picked up really fit that bill. The teal/blue colour way is called Dickens and I absolutely love how it variegates from an almost light sky blue to a dark almost faded denim colour. The yellow colourway for the cross motif is the Stay Gold colourway and reminds me a lot of the spiced pumpkin colourway from Sweet Fiber that I used for my wool and honey sweater. I had originally thought about using a variegated yarn for the third contrast colour but decided I wanted to balance everything out by using a solid deep wine/purple colour from Poppy Yarn and Fiber in the Spanish wine colourway. I think my colour choices were really on point for this project. When selecting my colour options I used a handy trick I learnt from an old Brooklyn Tweed post about taking a black and white picture of your colour choices together to help you discern if there is enough contrast between your choices. I think this really helped me to focus on if the colours would work well together instead of getting caught up in if I liked each colourway on its own. You can get more specifics on yardage and gauge, etc., on my ravelry notes page here.

I really enjoyed knitting this pattern, it was great to get back into two handed colour work for this project. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the added challenge of knitting with two strands, one in each hand, and it gave me some much needed continental style knitting practice! I think I really got the hang of the two handed knitting with this project, I had a nice groove going and finally wrapped my brain around colour dominance and how to wrap floats with the yarn in my right hand without having to drop the yarn in my left (youtube videos were indispensable in this last accomplishment, it really helps to see someone demonstrate it a few times to get your head around the idea).

In terms of modifications to the pattern the only one I made was to shorten the sleeve length by 1/2” to keep a sort of bracelet length. I also added this lovely tag from Kylie and the Machine to the back of the sweater to help distinguish the back from the front (the back neck short row shaping really helps create a nice neckline and fit for this pattern but it can be hard to distinguish which side is the back when you are just holding up the sweater). I really love the way this sweater fits, it’s oversized while maintaining a really flattering silhouette and I actually really like the oversized yoke and how it extends the colourwork over a wider space. I will say thought it can be tricky to reach up for things as then the whole sweater rises up so definitely wear this with a pair of higher waisted jeans like these skin tight midrise ginger jeans that I’m wearing here.

Hope you enjoyed this project as well as my other two knit city projects! I’m excited to start plotting out my next knitting projects while the weather is still on the chilly side here in Vancouver!