13-07-2025

Collar finished. Now I just need to do all the remaining sewing-up!

10-07-2025

Just about managed to squeeze 90 stitches around the neckhole onto three double-pointed needles without dropping the end stitches too often…
Final lap: end in sight (in the middle of a heatwave!) It looks after all my earlier panicking as if I shall have a whole ball of Kartopu Melange left over.

07-07-2025

Finished second sleeve. They really are a most peculiar shape, being definitely longer along the cable edge despite the fact that the increases all take place on the opposite side. Just as well, I suppose, since the elbows fall on the outside of the sleeve!

20-06-2025

Found a knot near the end of my current ball of wool and joined in a new one… after first accidentally joining it twice in the wrong place, once to the cast-on end and once to the cast-off end of the first sleeve instead!
Current stitch count 28+24+28.

31-05-2025

I think I have finally got the second sleeve set securely in pattern, after at least three restarts when I managed to end up with the wrong number of stitches between the cables after the first few rows…
I ended up TV-knitting the first sleeve to well beyond 50cm (measured along the line of the increases, which seems to be shorter than the cable side) and had to shorten it back to 49cm; I could have shortened it further, but actually that length did seem all right after all.

11-04-2025

Decided to stop increasing at 86 sts (31+24+31), since the sleeve is already huge in width and the pattern simply gives the same finished circumference and length for all sizes (94 stitches x 49cm), with the only difference being in the rate of increase! I shall probably want to make the sleeves shorter as well, since 49cm is equivalent to a 19-inch sleeve, which would be a bit long even if it weren’t a drop-shoulder design.

09-04-2025

I found myself absolutely obliged to learn the infamous ‘magic loop’ technique in order to fit a sleeve-cuff onto even a short 5.5mm cable needle; fortunately this one happens to be a modern cable needle with a very fine and flexible cable that can be doubled back on itself. It transpires that the secret is to have TWO loops sticking out from your knitting (and producing potential ladders), not just one - once I had mastered that, I no longer needed to use an auxiliary double-pointed needle to laboriously tweak the stitches over the end of the tight-stretched cable needle!

I have now done sufficient increases to have 23 moss stitches on either side of the seam line (which ends up with either a K,K or P,P pair where the two ends of the pattern meet, but this doesn’t seem to show) and have finally progressed to the stage where I only have one loop sticking out…. The sleeve is obviously going to be incredibly bulky. It is already more than wide enough for any ‘normal’ jumper I have knitted, and we are only halfway through the twenty increases stipulated for even the smallest size; I suppose that is something to do with the drop-shoulder effect. I can’t help feeling that it is probably just as well that I am knitting the sleeves on smaller needles than the body, however.

Interestingly, you can actually see the subtle difference in the size and detailing of the cabling caused by the needle size change, but having finer cables up the outside of the arm can pass as a deliberate design feature, I think.

05-04-2025

As I suspected, I don’t have any 6mm double-pointed needles. I do have a shortish 5.5mm cable needle and two sets of 5mm dpns of different lengths (and a set of 4mm dpns); since the sleeves are enormous and bulky and the jumper has a very basic dropped shoulder design I shall probably just use the 5.5mm needle, hoping that it is a suitable length, and assume that smaller sleeves won’t make any difference when it comes to sewing the armholes in.

04-04-2025

Front finished. Now I need to work out what I’m going to do about finding 4 and 6mm double pointed needles!

29-03-2025

Fourth ball finished at 43 cm of front.

21-03-2025

Third ball finished at 17cm up the front piece.

17-03-2025

Cast on again and ribbed the front. I don’t understand why the pattern quite explicitly tells you to increase in the form of a knit row from the wrong side before starting the chart, thus creating a purl ridge between the ribbing and the main body pattern…

16-03-2025

There seems to be an error in the instructions for the small size: the main body is worked over 112 stitches, but the instructions for the neck tell you to cast off 40 stitches for the neck (leaving 72 sts) and work the shoulders on “the remaining 38 stitches” on either side. Presumably this should be 36 stitches.

I worked four rows for the shoulder before casting off. The completed back piece looks huge compared to the vintage jumpers I’m used to making, but of course this is an unshaped drop-shoulder design, which means that it is basically hip-length and hip-width all the way up…

13-03-2025

57 out of 64cm completed, joining in new ball after 53cm.

12-03-2025

49cm done, with the second ball of wool almost finished. But fortunately it turns out that I have two more balls than I’d realised which were hiding round the back of the bag, so I don’t need to complete the back piece with this ball alone….

26-02-2025

38cm done. I hope there is actually going to be enough wool to finish this; moss stitch is basically ribbing and uses an awful lot compared to stocking stitch. Everyone else seems to have completed the garment with way less yardage, but of course this wool may be chunkier.

21-02-2025

First ball finished; current length 25 centimetres.
It is perfectly possible to knit the smallest size on a single pair of my long 13-inch needles without bothering to use an extra needle or a cable, and I have been happily doing so!

17-02-2025

Accidentally cast on 86 stitches for the ribbing on the smallest size instead of 84 - I just need to remember that I only need to increase 26 stitches to reach the body size of 112. It’s not as if the bottom of this jumper needs to grip tightly over the hips…

Worked 16 rows of 2x2 rib in 4mm needle. The small size doesn’t really need the extra length of a circular needle, but I suppose the longer ones probably do!

To increase from 86 sts to 112 sts, increase in every 3rd stitch 22 times and in every 4th stitch 5 times, I.e. repeat (3,3,3,3,4) five times, then another (3,3) at the end of the row.