Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Off the needles - the Hourglass Sweater

I finished my hourglass sweater and have already worn it all day!

The pattern is the Hourglass Sweater from Joelle Hoverson' 'Last Minute Knitted Gifts'. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy in the Gothic Rose colourway. It's a 100% superwash merino. I bought 4 skeins online but ran out of wool just below the neckline. I bought an additional skein from Purlescence Yarns - I took the sweater in to match, but even so, the match is not great.

I modified the pattern slightly; I omitted one of the waist decrease rounds; I added a sleeve decrease round at the wrist; and I added several more decrease rounds at the neck to give a slightly higher neckline.

Overall I'm very satisfied with this sweater. I intended to make an everyday wearable sweater and I think this fits the bill. The pattern is well written and easy to follow, and its construction gives lots of opportinity to adjust the fit to a custom fit. I based the dimensions on a often-worn shop-bought sweater, and it worked out very well here for me. The yarn yardage issue was not the fault of the pattern; I slightly underbought as I increased the length of the sweater by a couple of inches.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well it looks great and the neck discontinuity just looks like part of the design. It certainly does not stand out in any negative way in the photo.
Contrary to the colour fascists (as my sister calls them) and "plum suits no-one" - the colour looks lovely.

(formerly) no-blog-rachel said...

Very nice! And I agree with Christina - you can see the difference at the neck but it looks as if it was meant to be that way.