Upsizing --- Berenice

When, in June 2014, Brooklyn Tweed released their Kids collection of patterns, Berenice immediately caught my eye.  I wasn't the only grown-up girl on Ravelry who thought it would be nice if it came in adult sizing as well as child's, but (I think) in the Brooklyn Tweed Look-Book that appears on the website, there was a note about making it with thicker yarn and bigger needles, to size it up for an adult.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was thinking about future projects to knit and the yarn I've got in my stash and before I knew it, I'd bought, downloaded and printed the Berenice pattern and had got out my ten-ball pack of Jaeger merino aran, which is a not-quite-black colour (I think the shade's called Derby).  I also looked at the examples on Ravelry where people had upsized it to fit an adult and read the available project notes.

The Thursday before last, I cast on.

At this point in time, I've got one shoulder seam to sew.

It's a pretty quick knit.

 That photo shows the colour fairly well, but you can't really see the detail, so here's one with the flash on.

Nice, isn't it!

The construction of this short-sleeved sweater is a bit different to usual because the body of the sweater's knitted first and then stitches are picked up around the neckline, the sleeve cuffs and the hem and the ribbing's then knitted.  Those stitches are also supposed to be picked up with the wrong side of the knitting facing you, so a decorative 'ridge' shows on the right side.  I'm not sure about doing this on the neckline though, as I'm not it will look particularly neat.  I shall have a go and see and if I don't like it, I might pick the stitches up on the right side and then do one round of purl stitches to give a ridge before starting the ribbing.  I'll probably knit the bottom ribbing longer than in the original, to give me a bit more length to the sweater (I could have knitted it longer before I started the under-arm increases, but I wasn't sure how much yarn I had to play with.

Upsizing this from a child's size has been easier than I thought it would be.  Using the pattern's gauge/tension directions and comparing them to my own with this yarn and the needles I'm using £4.5mm KnitPro), I was able to do a bit of maths and work out how many rows I needed to knit.

It's the first time in ages that I've knitted a sweater that needed to be sewn up as most I've knitted recently have been bottom-up or top-down, knitting in one piece sweaters.  It's not easy to see in the photos, but either side of the cable and lace centre panel, the sweater is reverse stocking stitch, so I've taken my time, doing mattress stitch, being careful to make sure I'm picking up the little purl bumps in a straight line up the knitting and I think it looks neat enough.

What you can probably see from the next photo, though, is that I've pulled the stitching a bit too tight under the arm.  Fortunately, I didn't tie off the yarn when I finished that seam, so I'll be able to loosen the stitches.  I've got one shoulder seam to sew and lots of ends to darn in before starting the ribbing.  I'll be looking on the Internet for ways of darning in yarn ends in reverse stocking stitch, especially as there are two ends that are mid-row, because there was a knot in the yarn (grrrrr; a particular bug-bear of mine).

I'm hoping it won't take me more than another couple of days to finish this off as I think it's going to be a sweater I wear a lot as I've got several long-sleeved t-shirts I can wear it with.

Mind you, with this current dreary wet weather, I think blocking and drying it will take longer than I'd like.

I seem to have a lot of yarn downstairs at the moment.  Not my fault; DD2 keeps bringing down balls from my stash and asking me to make things from it and I haven't got round to taking it back upstairs again.  She's particularly keen on me making her some tinsel Hedgehogs.  I've got yarn and I've got the pattern, so I might indulge her.  Expect a sparkly post before too long!