Someone donated 3 huge bins of White Buffalo Mills Unspun to our knitting club. What a delight. Wasn’t enough room to store it so I offered to find a home for it and now am tasked with doing something with if. Took me hours to go through it and try to sort it out. There are not a lot of adequate colours to do an entire sweater so I am going to have to be creative.

This pattern caught my eye with Canada Day coming up and because of all the “51 State” nonsense. I am sure there is someone willing to wear our colours.

I have not knit a Cowichan sweater before and was this a learning experience. The most interesting being how to attach a collar. The designer had a video on it and I tried it but it seemed to lack the kind of finishing I like. I mattress stitched all the side, raglan and arm seams and then turned to the internet to see about the collar. One site suggested seaming the centre to the outside and the sides to the inside. Somehow couldn’t visualize that. I then went on sites where native women were selling their sweaters. Very difficult to see the neck finishing but I lucked out on one where the inside of the collar had a horizontal line going across every second garter ridge in the collar. You could tell it was seaming because it was a different colour. I fiddled with it for some time but achieved the most amazing results. The bound off edge of the sweater shows to the outside and the collar is just layered on top of the neckline.

To do this, you lay the right side of the collar on top of the inside of the neckline. Go through one garter ridge then under the bound off edge of the neckline. Move to the next bound off edge and bring your thread to the second garter ridge missing one garter ridge. You are working both sides at the same time but works up like a dream

I gave the red in the sweater a vinegar bath to set the colour then a euculan soak on the whole sweater before blocking. There was a field of dirt in this yarn. Had grit all over my tub. All the more unusual because all the skeins were in original packaging.

Took forever to get the photos up.

Revisions

• Added 2 extra rows to the sleeves
• Made the Maple leaf smaller at the front and eliminated it from the sleeve.
• Because I didn’t do such a good job of sorting out my yarn, I ran short on the dark brown so I put Canada in the upper sleeve section.
• Knitted a zipper facing.

Errata

• The back has an uneven number of rows to the underarm bind off so if you start with a knit row you will not be able to bind off where indicated.
• The pattern has a gauge set for 8 mm needles yet when you are finished the ribbing you do the body with 7.5 mm needles.
• On the collar, the single increase start after you are down to 16 st and on the other end, the single decreases start after you have 14 st on the needle.
• There is a note regarding a slip stitch edge for the front sides that says you have to add additional rows. Not sure what that is about
• Just a pet peeve. When I finished the back, the leaf seemed a little wonky. There are an even number of stitches across the back so it will be one stitch off centre for sure but it looked peculiar because the detail band has a strong vertical line that should have lined up with the stem. Just put the Maple Leaf one stitch to the right.