Floozy, Complete

It has taken nearly six months, but finally it is done!

Pattern: Floozy by Libby Jonson
Yarn: Blacker Yarns British Classic 4-ply in Pale Blue (MC), Mustard (CC1), and Mid Blue (CC2
Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm), US 2 (2.75 mm), and US 2.5 (3.0 mm)
Started/Completed: October 18, 2018/April 4, 2019

When I cast this sweater on, it was supposed to be an easy knit. Yes, it's fingering weight, and yes, I had to go down to a US 2 needle to get gauge, but the colorwork was up first and is always fast and then it was just single-color stockinette. Easy, right? In reality, it might have been easy, but it certainly wasn't fast.

I managed to get through the first bit of the colorwork at the top of the yoke while I was away for Rhinebeck last year. I worked on it a bit more when I got home, but then I was distracted by other things and put it down for a while. Next, I took it on vacation when we went to Florida over the winter holidays, figuring that I'd get a ton of knitting done. But then I got carried away with knitting gnomes and charity hats and reading good books, and all I managed to do was get to the point where I split the arm and body stitches. It wasn't really until I was in a car for nearly 20 hours over three days last month that I got serious about getting this sweater done. When I returned from that trip, I had a body ready for the band at the bottom and about half a sleeve done, so there really wasn't that much work left to do. At that point, I decided that it was time to buckle down and focus on this project to get it off the needles once and for all.

The colorwork used in the yoke of this sweater is fun, but it's slip-stitch colorwork rather than stranded, and it wasn't nearly as fast for me. Essentially what happens in slip-stitch colorwork is that you use one color at a time and slip stitches in the unused color. It makes it a bit easier to do flat than stranded work, but it also means that you essentially have to work four rows to get two rows of knitting. So for those sections at the bottom and top of the colorwork section, where there are two-stitch blips of the mustard, I worked two rows knitting/purling the mustard stitches and slipping the pale blue and then two rows knitting/purling the pale blue stitches and slipping the mustard. For me, it was harder to get into a rhythm with this style of colorwork, though I certainly agree that it's less of a pain than trying to knit stranded work flat. That zig-zag line in the darker blue in particular involved some knitting gymnastics that are quite clever but slow. I think that had I been knitting this in the round, using stranded rather than slip-stitch colorwork, it would have been much faster for me.

Slowness aside, I enjoyed working with the yarn, which I obtained through the Woolly Thistle. With a mix of British breeds plus some BFL for softness, it's a real workhorse yarn. Many people would probably consider it a bit rough or scratchy, and though it did roughen up my fingers a bit while I worked with it (which, frankly, is a hazard for me in general during the fall and winter), I didn't mind it. I get the sense that it's going to be one of those yarns that wears like iron; it may even look like I haven't blocked the sweater yet though I did give it a good long soak over the weekend. Though it's classified as a 4-ply/fingering weight, it's very fluffy, which is probably why I had to go down to a US 2 to get gauge -- and even though I'm used to knitting fingering weight on an even smaller needle, the fabric is firm enough that knitting got a bit uncomfortable after a while.

I experienced a bit of rowing out on the body, which is unusual for me and I think an outcome of using a smaller-than-specified needle. If you look closely at this photo, you might be able to see it. Although I was hopeful that blocking would help, it's still there; I think that this sweater will require a number of wearings and washing to settle down and even out, and frankly I think most people are going to be looking at the colorwork at the top than the plain stockinette at the bottom. The tension on the sleeves is much better; I used a US 2.5 needle for those, knowing that my gauge was going to be a bit tighter working in the round as opposed to flat, and it turned out to be a good move on my part.

I had panic-ordered two extra skeins of the pale blue yarn when I got back from Chicago, thinking that I was going to run short, but in the end I had plenty of yarn -- I even have about half of the last skein left. I suspect the reason for the panic was that I thought I needed to make the long body version, assuming that the shorter option was going to be more of a cropped fit, but in actuality it's the perfect length, hitting just below my hipbone. I'm thankful now that there were only those two skeins available from the Woolly Thistle or I would have ordered even more! I'm sure the leftovers will be put to good use, though. This yarn strikes me as perfect for mittens, and with leftovers of the contrast colors on hand as well, I anticipate some colorwork mittens in the future.

I'm very, very happy with how this sweater turned out. I sewed on the buttons on Sunday night, after searching through my button collection for options (they needed to be the right size and I needed 10 of them) and coming up with three possibilities. Did I do it perfectly? No; if you look closely at the first photo above, you'll see that the colorwork isn't quite lined up as well as it could be. Do I care? Not really. I did my best, and that's good enough for me. In all likelihood, I'll end up wearing this open most of the time anyway, so it may be a moot point. I'm just so relieved to finally be done and to no longer have this last WIP from 2018 hanging over my head. We're supposed to get a bit of a cold snap next weekend, so I might even get to wear it out a bit before it has to be packed up for the summer!