My two big projects I was working on so far this year, Hansel and my husband's socks, both came to a conclusion within a week of each other in March. I got this sudden drive to stop staring at all of this lovely O-Wool I got for my birthday and start knitting with it. This particular yarn was being saved for a special purpose, my first sweater! Needless to say it was a race to finish both of these other projects, because I really wanted to be able to devote all of my time and energy to this one project.
After reading Karen Templer's post on sweaters for first-timers, I knew that I either wanted to do a top-down or bottom-up seamless construction for my first foray into sweaters. And after knitting Skiff this past fall, I was in love with the detail that Brooklyn Tweed put into all of their patterns. So Gable, a classic and gorgeous pullover by Hannah Fettig of Knitbot and Knit.fm (another one of my major obsessions) was an obvious choice.
Working with the O-Wash Fingering so far has been a DREAM. This yarn is amazing, and I don't see my obsession with fingering weight yarn going anywhere any time soon, and I absolutely love that I've found a yarn that is as soft as superwash is known to be, but that got there using an organic process. WIN. I knit a 4 x 4 swatch in stockinette as instructed, and pre-blocking it came out slightly too small, at 26 stitches to the inch across instead of 24. The row gauge was also slightly taller than the pattern called for. Post-blocking, it came out to exactly 24 stitches to the inch, and the same row gauge. Thinking logically, I knew that the difference was small enough that it wouldn't make sense to go down a whole needle size, and that I'd just need to be aware of the total length of the sweater as I went.
The only other concern I had before casting on was an instruction to alternate skeins while knitting, as the yarn was susceptible to tonal variation. Looking at the skeins all lined up, I didn't see any evidence to suggest this, but knowing that I was about to invest so many hours in this project, I emailed Jocelyn at O-Wool directly to ask. She suggested that I try knitting my swatch with yarn from two of the skeins I purchased, and if I didn't see any difference between the two, that it might be ok to forgo the alternating. Well I tried it, and the skeins all seem to be pretty identical, so I decided not to alternate. Hopefully that won't prove to be a stupid decision later, only time will tell.
I cast on, and this great sweater saga has begun! If you are interested in following along on Instagram as well, you can find me @abbygoodknits, and with the hashtag #abbyknitsgable.
Have a great Tuesday!