Presenting Purple Peanuts

Salt Peanuts in Huntley

Woohoo! It's another finished sweater! I can't believe that I actually finished a heavy weight sweater before fall set in. I would have been doing a happy dance in this picture, but I was actually standing on the side of a hill and dancing combined with my poor balance would have resulted in me finding out whether Salt Peanuts added to my bouyancy or not. (If I was to have started to dance, it would have been to "It was a one eyed, one horned flying purple people eater.." which for some reason kept running through my head while I was doing the finishing work).

Top: A Side Shot Bottom: Salt Peanuts Shapely Back

The color of the sweater is best represented in the top picture where I'm facing front. The others were affected by the fading afternoon sun. (Yes, only a crazy knitting blogger out shopping for luggage in a Huntley, IL outlet mall would actually pack a sweater and a camera "just in case" we didn't make it back to Chicago proper when it was still daylight. Amazingly enough, my husband plays along and has not yet decided that I am slowly slipping into insanity). The ribbon tie is a little piece of Giotto left over from another project, and it will be replaced when I find a suitably purple ribbon to replace it with.

On the overall, I am quite pleased with this sweater. It came together quickly, has a comfortable quality to it that reminds me of a well broken in sweatshirt, and it has a few body conscious elements that make it figure friendly as well -- or at least as figure friendly as you can be when you are working in a bulky yarn gauge. It assembled easily after I wove in the large number of ends that result from knitting with big yarn without a lot of yardage per ball. While the instructions for the fronts of this sweater gave me some frustration, the designer included a number of details that made it much easier to put together than it could have been. I really do love it when a designer includes knit selvedge stitches on edges when ribbing has to be seamed together. The same selvedge stitches were also created for those neck bands, and it made putting them together a breeze, too.

Attaching the Neckband

Because of the way the lace neckline needs to fall, on this garment you actually do your mattress stitching with the wrong side facing,so the seam stitches are on the right side.

I also thought that the three needle bind-off used to join the two neck bands at the back was a clever touch -- and much easier than grafting.

Salt Peanuts Neckline After Joining

The above pic is a better representation of the neckline finishing than the pic showing the back of the sweater. Since John and I were "on location" I didn't have the tools to make sure that everything was set correctly. Actually, one of the reason I like taking pictures of the sweater is so that I can see where the finishing didn't quite finish. In this case, it looks like I need to get out my steam iron and make sure that the collar lays flat. I also discovered that I need to flatten the inside seams of the right front sleeve. It doesn't stand out too much (but you can see it if you look) in any of the model shots, but it bulges a bit and takes away from the overall polish of the sweater.

What did I learn from this sweater?

• Not all bulky yarns are the enemy if the design is architected correctly. And Veronik Avery is a good architect.
• Yes, you can do simple lace in a bulky weight yarn. I think the open work ribbing in this sweater is very effective.
• This is not a lightweight sweater. At 50g/ball and 15 balls (yes, the pattern yardage suggestions for the 37-1/4 size can be trusted, I had almost all of the 16th ball left, even after doing my swatch), that's about .75 kilos or 1.7 lbs (if I'm doing my conversions correctly). This could be a recipe for disaster if the tension had not been chosen correctly, but the yarn is knit at a very firm gauge and allows the sweater to support itself better.
• Don't be afraid to leave my AddiTurbos in their packages. My Crystal Palace bamboo circulars were perfect with this yarn where a little grip contributed positively to keeping my stitches even and the yarn from slipping off my needles.
• When dealing with knit-tube based yarns that can unravel, when cutting the ends, cut on a diagonal. It doesn't completely arrest the un-raveling, but it does impede the process.
• And I've said it before, but it bears repeating... never underestimate the power of a simple selvedge stitch to make the seaming process more seamless.

In spite of the bulky yarn gauge, I wouldn't consider this a "beginner sweater", only because the instructions for the fronts require a relatively high degree of integration. You definitely have to read ahead. There are also a couple of (what I consider) to be mistakes in the pattern with regard to the instructions for the short rows and the placement of the short rows. But these could be interpretation problems on my part.

Of course, by finishing a bulky-weight wool sweater in early September, I am sure that I have commited the fall-knitting equivalent of washing my car on a sunny day -- I am guaranteeing that it will be tank-top weather until November. My apologies to all you fall, cold weather loving Chicagoans. At least now you know who to blame!