How gorgeous is this pattern and wool? I can’t even believe how lovely this project has turned out!

This project took exactly one month, from gauge swatching to blocking the finished piece. The yarn (Koigu KPM) is lovely - a delicate colourway with just a hint of variation. It ran a bit while blocking, but after drying the colour seems unchanged.

Surprisingly, even with adding an extra repeat in the body and gauge swatching in the round, I only ended up needing 6.5 skeins of the Koigu to complete this sweater. I assumed for most of the project that I would be running out to the store for another skein, but the yardage worked out really well. I even have exactly 25g left over for a little baby project.

1/02/14: My only modification was to lengthen the body, which seems more like a preference of the designer than a flaw - Carrie B.H. seems to always make her sweater short in the torso. However, the pattern itself was a pleasure to use - easy to read, well-charted, and fun. It seemed to me that there was no clear designation for M1, and after trying a few options Lily Chen’s K1B&F (as opposed to K1F&B), followed by knitting into the back of the stitch on the next row, seemed the most discrete choice.

14/01/14: I think the overall length of the body is a little too short (and I happen to have a longish torso), so I’m adding a full repeat of 24 rounds, starting at Round 19 after the decreases and ending at Row 18, when I will pick up where I’ve left off, which is the beginning of the first increase.

Woohoo got gauge on my first try - and not even just a little bit. Spot on 24 st and 32 rounds after wet blocking on size 4s. It was a good guess to go down one needle size given the slightly heavier Koigu.

I would definitely recommend waiting to join in the round until after you finish the six rows of garter stitch. It’s so difficult to tell if your stitches are straight, and I managed to twist them, and not realize until the seventh round. That meant ripping out and recasting on more than 1200 stitches… Not fun. Still, I’m glad I did it.

Project #1 of ‘13 in 2013’