Ladies and gentlemen, I present razzle dazzle rose:
a sweater created by yours truly in a mere five days. It is, of course, also the name of a lovely, elegaic song by Camera Obscura, who provided some of the soundtrack to our journeys round Skye a couple of weeks ago.
The yarn is the wonderful stuff I recently bought from Shilasdair Yarns. I bought 450g of the rose colour, and 150g – the last 150g – of that nice deep indigo shade. I saved the indigo for the yoke, thinking there would not be enough for stripes elsewhere. I really like the balance of colours in the finished sweater and have enough of both colours left over for a hat…and perhaps some mittens. In the end, the whole sweater only used 400g of yarn.
From start to finish, this was an immensely satisfying knit. I spent several days picturing what it would look like, and anticipating the knitting. After working up a swatch and adjusting a few calculations from existing well-fitting sweaters, I knitted a simple seamless yoke from the bottom up, with no pattern, fitting it to myself as I went along. It was incredibly mesmeric to knit. And I was determined I would have it finished before it was time to begin work again on Monday….By lunchtime today, as I worked on the yoke, I had entered a sort of knitting nirvana, coloured rose and indigo, and constituted entirely of goathland aran. World outside? What world outside?
By 6pm I had a perfectly fitting sweater, with no seams to sew up and only a few ends to weave. Huzzah! Yarn rhapsody! Unadulterated woolly smugness!
Its a good job you can’t see my fixedly staring eyes, which have taken on a cartoon-like aspect, composed of woolly pink and purple spirals.
Did I mention the sweater fits me really well? It does.
Yarn: Shilasdair Goathland Aran (300g shade 441. 100g shade 451).
Needles: 5mm and 5.5mm
Pattern: My own, with some help from Elizabeth Zimmermann.
KDD & Co 
Seriously playful, lovely, and graceful (as is your manner). I love those seamless yoke sweaters, having only tried my first two, for my little nieces, last January. I am sure I will do one for myself very soon. I still can’t convey at this early stage of reading your blog in it’s entirety (which I plan to do in a few posts in the mornings, while I come to life with my coffee *and* tea ) if you’ve been knitting forever , or just quite new at it, as in for five or so years. I’m sure I’ll grasp the cronology of your knits very soon, given the clues from here and there in this wonderful read that is Needled.
~Jen from MtVeeder, Napa, CA (do I really need to still say all of that, I wonder, or if you might have that understood by now, which “Jen” I am.
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I just snuck a peek at this sweater again, thinking how my eldest niece would love such a color combination, in identical of a manner. Allow me to copy and give you full credit if it ever shows up on my blog? Anyway, regarding your words ” Pattern: My own, with some help from Ann Budd and Elizabeth Zimmermann.” … this is scarily my very own experience in sweater designing!
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Kate, these are my similarly originated seamless yoke sweaters from AB’s charts :
http://yarnings1.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/seamless-yoke-sweaters-of-my-own-design/
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That looks great! Glad to hear it was such a satisfying experience.
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What a great sweater! The kind you’ll probably wear constantly. And I *love* that rose color!
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Beautiful! I just adore those colors and it does fit you really well. Pat yourself on the back! Im so impressed :)
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