Seacoast in Chicken Beak Yellow

Is it me, or did this sweater just fly off of my needles?

I will have to go back and check my start date, but I am fairly certain that it took me less than 2.5 weeks. I am not known for my speedy knitting skills, so this is pretty cool.

Why so fast? I think there were a few factors at work:

• We went away to sci fi conventions twice in the last two weeks, and hotel time is knitting time.
• It’s a pullover, knit in the round, so all of that stockinette stitch in the body is knitted and not purled. I knit a lot faster than I purl.
• The yarn is beautifully squishy, and it grew very fast lengthwise. I was able to get the correct stitch gauge, but my row gauge was way off. I had to knit far fewer rows than the pattern called for.

That last point is probably something that I should have been paying more attention to when it came to knitting the yoke, adding the waist shaping, and doing anything else where a specific number of rows was called-for. Technically things may not be falling in just the right places, but it miraculously still looks ok.

The fabric of this sweater feels so good, that even if it looked kooky, I would still wear it. Maybe I wouldn’t wear it out in public, but I would wear it hanging around the house. And I would do it all the time. It’s one of those garments that you want right next to your skin.

It’s a case, I suppose, of You Get What You Pay For, as this yarn was an incredible splurge at the first Rhinebeck I ever attended. This is the most expensive sweater I’ve ever knit. I have a cheap streak a mile long, but still I nervously plunked down the $90 for 1000 yards of this stuff, and I do not regret it one bit. It feels that nice.

I love the yoke on this sweater. The neckline shape is my favorite neckline to wear. I am having a little trouble getting it to stay put in that shape, but I may be able to fix that with blocking. I haven’t blocked it yet because (as usual) I was impatient to wear it.

I was concerned about the dark spots in the yarn when I was first knitting. I thought they looked a little like ink smudges. But now that the whole sweater is finished, and the smudges are well-distributed, I am not as bothered by them. (Although, the first time somebody says to me, “you’ve got dirt on your sweater” I will probably be googling how to over-dye wool. I’m thinking a nice olive green.)

The details

Pattern: Seacoast by Joji Locatelli
Yarn: Good Karma Farm Wool/Alpaca blend in Chicken Beak Yellow
Modifications: I was afraid I didn’t have enough yarn to finish, so I made the sleeves shorter.

The earrings I am wearing: (Just in case you wondered) Retro Tree earrings from Blockpartypress. I’m a huge fan.