06-25-2021

I totally love the pattern. Not very happy with the yarn I chose. The Sugarwheel Cotton yarn from Hobby Lobby was cheap, which is why I bought it. I actually bought it for another project, which I haven’t started yet. So I used the yarn for this. The yarn is very pretty, very soft, drapes beautifully, a little fuzzy (in the good way), and overall easy to work with. On the down side, it tangled, which is frustrating. And it pilled badly.

The pattern is lovely. I am short, so I shortened the length both of the body and the sleeves of the sweater. The length I only shortened by a couple of inches. But the pattern says 12 inches on the sleeves, and I stopped at 8. The pattern photo shows the sleeves just below the elbow, the way I’m wearing it here. Also, the sleeves are somewhat baggy in the larger sizes, so maybe doing a bit of a decrease after getting past the bicep could be in order.

I had a full skein and a partial left over.

As to the tangled yarn. My boyfriend ended up spending an evening helping me get the knots out of one of the two balls that tangled. I managed to finish the sweater before I got to the real knots in the other. I started the skein the way my Mom taught me decades ago, and how I always do it for this type of yarn: pull out the clump of yarn from the center of the ball. That way the yarn is feeding smoothly from the inside of the skein instead of bouncing the ball around as it unwinds from the outside. This usually prevents knots. But the yarn is so fuzzy that little bits of fuzz were sticking to each other and would mesh two strands together, causing the knots.

Also, regarding the yarn. The fuzz factor also made this yarn messy. Lint was a problem. Also pilling. The yarn was splitting when I cast on, but luckily not at all while knitting. But the pilling was bad. To the extent that the sweater I finished this morning already looks old and well-worn. Fuzzy in the bad way. That’s disappointing.

That said, the sweater is wearable, and the yarn made the project cost effective, so worth it for a practice or around-the-house garment.