well well well what have we here? oh yes, i finished my first sweater today. no i have never made a sweater before, but now i really don’t see what i was so worried about. i guess the plethora of sock knitting helped my pattern reading skillz. the sweater is extremely soft and oh so lovely to wear. i bought this pashmina yarn on a whim at a lys and then had no clue what i was going to make with it. while surfing one day i happened upon this lovely finished object and thought, oh yes my yarn wants to be that.

the yarn i used is a bit lighter than the one called for in the pattern so it took a bit of tweaking to get it to work (i ended up going up two sizes and changing some of the reduction and increase rows and i omitted the first set of purl stripes at the bottom because they weren’t flattering on me at all). i ripped and reknit sections of the sweater and probably knit the equivalent of two sweaters. what is fantastic about this sweater is that it is knit top-down in one piece and then the sleeves are knit right off of the live held stiches at the short sleeve mark. i completed this sweater and the weather has cooled down so i can even wear it. now back to my regularly scheduled programming: socks and circuitry.

details:

pattern: angelica sweater by stephanie japel

yarn: Lana Grossa Pashmina in color 18 (a deep teal), six 50g balls exactly, almost four balls for the body, one ball for each sleeve and the leftover from the body for the picked up edge on the keyhole neckline. this yarn is so incredibly soft, it is ever so slightly splitty but heck this is cashmere and baby merino, who cares about that?

size: knit per the instructions for size 42, but finished bust size of the sweater (not worn) is 35 inches due to the yarn substitution

needles: 5mm circular addi turbo, 4mm circular addi turbo for finishing

mods: tons, in the raglan shaping on the shoulders used M1R, k1, M1L instead of yarn overs because they were a bit too hole-tastic for my taste, only reduced 5 repeats on the back in the bust shaping, 7 as written for the front, omitted first set of purl stripes at the bottom of the body, increased every other row instead of every row for the hip shaping and placed the increases to line up with the bust shaping, knit the sleeves in the round (after all why knit them flat?) using magic loop, did seven reduction rounds for each sleeve and placed the reductions under the sleeves not on top as per the pattern, did not increase at the end of each sleeve and made the sleeves extra long.

[the gorgeous quilt in the background was made by my mother, photos taken by my significant other]