Wednesday 25 January 2017

Keith Moon Sweater - Finished!

My first finished object of the year.

Yes, Keith Moon turned out to be a very quick knit and I cast off last Friday, soaked and blocked it over the weekend.  Drying was turning out to be a slow process, so having patted it out on Saturday morning, when I got home from work in the evening, I folded a bath towel in half, draped it over the shelf in my airing cupboard and then carefully hung the half-dry sweater over it and left it in there until Sunday afternoon, which worked well (I usually hang socks and other small things in the airing cupboard to dry as well - woe betide any members of my family who use the front half of the middle shelf to stack towels!!).

Here it is:

Before soaking and blocking.  Nice, but a bit wrinkled.


After soaking, patting out and drying.  Much smoother and even.


I knit the pattern mostly as written, with just a few modifications:


  • The sleeves in the original have a slight bell shape, which isn't really me and which I think I'd find impractical for my lifestyle, so I cast on fewer stitches and just increased at the same rate as the pattern stated until I had the right number of stitches.  The sleeves are also full length rather than three-quarter.
  • In the original, the hem facings of the body and sleeves are knit in the same colour as the lower band of colour (CC1 - in my case, the blue) and the i-cord edging is knitted in the second contrast colour (CC2 - green for me).  However, I'd read comments about people running out of CC2 and having to buy more, so I used blue for the body hems and green for the sleeve hems because I thought that might use my yarn more efficiently, because buying more roving in the same colours and then spinning them up to the same thickness would be a pain.  I also (as you can see from the photos) used different colours for the i-cords, so green for the bottom and neckline and blue for the hems.  You can see the facings (before the i-cord was knitted on) in the photo below (it's the same photo from my last post about this sweater):


  • Many of the examples of this sweater I've seen on Ravelry have the neckline/collar standing up a bit, but I wasn't sure I wanted that look, so I deliberately knitted a little bit more tightly for that part, which pulled it in just a teeny bit, so the collar/neckline sits flatter.


Am I pleased with it?  Yes I am.  My only niggle is aimed at myself, because one of the skeins of yarn I spun was slightly thinner than the other three, but that's my fault for not making a spinner's control card so I could keep checking while I was spinning the yarn.

Would I make this sweater again?  Yes, I would.  It was a quick, easy knit, but with several nice features such as the faced hems and i-cord edgings.  Would I change anything if I knitted it again?  Probably.  I might put it a few short rows across the back yoke of the sweater so it sits higher than the front.  I might also sew down the neckline/collar facing rather than picking up stitches on the wrong side and doing a three-needle cast/bind-off as I think it would look neater.  As it is, I might sew a length of ribbon around the neck edge, just to finish it off and hide the cast-off line.

So, have I cast on anything since finishing this?

What do you think?  Of course I have, but I think I'll leave doing a WIP round-up for next time.

2 comments:

  1. Fantastic! I love the colours and how wonderful that it is made from your handspun! I hope that you love wearing it a lot!!

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  2. Ooo! It's gorgeous, and you didn't waste any time in making it!

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