The 28-Day Sweater

First, let me thank you all for the good thoughts and let you know that our power was restored shortly after 9 last night! The houses on our street were the last ones in our neighborhood still without power by the end of yesterday, and we heard an audible cheer from our neighbors (which we joined in on) when the lights came back on. I have newfound respect for the utility workers who were fixing all the downed lines; to fix the line that was causing the outage for us, the workers had to basically rappel down the hillside at the end of our dead-end street and negotiate some pretty dense foliage.

I also was very grateful that all we lost was the power and a fridge/freezer of food when I went on my walk this morning and saw some really bad damage to houses and at least one crushed car in the neighborhood. We are truly lucky that replacing the food was not a major hardship and that we were able to be at my parents' for the day and continue with work as usual!

I am posting a bit later in the day than usual because there has been a lot to catch up on after the very odd start to the street. I also took Rainbow to the orthodontist first this this morning so they could do all the imaging required to order the first appliance she'll get, so breakfast and my morning computer time was a bit rushed. I dropped her off at my parents' to hang out with them for the day and then did a Trader Joe's run so we'd have most of what was lost, including dinner for tonight and milk so that I don't have to drink my coffee black another day (blech!). I was hoping she'd be home earlier in the day to take some photos for me, but I guess they're having a lot of fun and I didn't want to wait too much longer, so please forgive the fact that you're getting selfies, which I am admittedly not very skilled at taking (I guess I'll never have a career as an Instagram influencer!).

I think all the time spent knitting with Mary during our Sunday Zoom sessions has rubbed off on me, because I actually did knit a fingering weight sweater in 28 days!

Pattern: Threipmuir by Ysolda Teague, size 3 (37.75 in./94 cm chest circumference), no waist shaping
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Ridgetop Fingering (80% Romney/20% Falkland) in Peacock (blue), Wisp (gray), and Lime (green)
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 2.5 (3.0 mm)
Started/Completed: May 16/June 12
Mods: shortened the sleeves; worked two extra rounds on the collar

This project was a delight from start to finish. I'd been planning it for quite some time, even so far as to buy the yarn for it last year, so it felt really good to get it knit. As I hope you can tell from the photos, the fit is just as I'd hoped: enough positive ease to be able to wear something underneath but not so much that it's a shapeless sack on me. I've got between 2 and 3 inches of positive ease at the fullest part of my bust, and I've realized in the past year or so that that is my ideal.

Despite how this photo might make them appear, my arms are not that long, so I omitted some plain rounds after the final sleeve decreases and went right into the ribbing for the cuff. I generally like my sleeves to hit the top of my hands and fully cover my wrists, and these turned out just right. Had I worked the 12 even rounds called for in the pattern, the sleeves would likely have come down to my knuckles, and knowing that I am rather a klutz, this would mean I'd be dragging my sleeves through my food regularly or else having to fold them up, which is not the polished look I was going for. I also added an extra two rounds to the collar because my row gauge was a tad off and the number of rounds called for in the pattern seemed a little skimpy to me.

While I admit that when I first started the colorwork I was a bit disappointed at the low contrast between the green and the gray, it has grown on me. I think a darker shade of either of the two contrast colors would have made for poor contrast with the blue, and I'm finding that I don't mind more subtle contrast these days because it seems a bit less in your face.

I was a tiny bit worried about playing yarn chicken with my main color at the outset, but looking at other projects on Ravelry and the amount of yarn used by other knitters who had made the next size larger reassured me. And I really had nothing to worry about, because I ended up using just a bit more than 1,000 yards/925 meters of the blue (and I had 1,200 total to start). I used really negligible amounts of the contrast colors as well -- 88 yards/80.5 meters of the gray and 76 yards/69.5 meters of the green.

This was the first Ysolda sweater I've knit, but it certainly will not be my last. It was an extremely well-written pattern that had so many options built in -- regular yoke or broad yoke, regular length or long length, with waist shaping or not -- plus a range of 16 sizes from 32.25 in./81 cm up to 72.25 in./181 cm. Well worth the money I paid for it! Incidentally, I see Ysolda's patterns are on sale on her site at the moment, just in case you're tempted!

If you'll give me one more moment to gush, I have to talk about the yarn. I've used it twice before, for a pair of socks and a hat, but this is my first garment out of it -- of at least two, because I have another sweater's quantity in the stash. This is definitely a toothy wool, and it's coarser than your typical superwash merino. I really like it, though, and while it's a touch scratchy to some of my more sensitive areas, it did soften with being washed and I know that it will wear well. And that's a really good thing, because I plan to wear the heck out of this sweater later this year when the cold weather returns!