Completed: Accessory for Your Spring Suit

The weather cleared up in Chicago (finally!) for me to go out and take some photos.  It’s still quite cold, which was a plus since I was taking photos of my long-sleeved Spring Suit Jumper.  Otherwise, I can’t wait for it to get warmer so I can go out in the rest of my recently completed items.

I believe I started this Jumper back in August (2012) and I stopped and started a few times since then.

I used Berocco Ultra Alpaca Light which is a sport weight yarn comprised of 50% alpaca and 50% wool.  While this jumper may look very light, it’s quite heavy with the alpaca content.

Since the pattern originates in 1936, I paired it with my drop-waisted skirt, lace-up shoes and a curly top.  I’m not certain I have an authentic 30’s look; it ended up more of a modern 30’s throwback instead.

I reworked the original pattern a decent amount.  The stitch counts and shaping are roughly the same, with the exception of shortening the armscye and narrowing the shoulders.  But the changes that I did are mainly cosmetic.

This knit was supposed to be purl stitches throughout the body of the jumper, whereas I made them all knit stitches.  I also added one of the stitch patterns from the bodice onto the sleeves.

And I also modified the collar/bow.

I made the collar wider but I also shortened the length of the bow.  Instead of creating a bow, like you would doing your shoe-laces, I instead knit a small circular loop and fed the tie trough the loop.  So it looks like it has a knot, but it really isn’t.

The reason I did this was that the bow tie was going to be way too thick and bulky (due to my yarn choice) for my top and it would going to end up covering the entire bodice, which I didn’t want.

Even after reducing the width of the shoulders, I found that they still drop lower than my actual shoulders do.  It wasn’t enough to bother me so I just left them as is.

While I wouldn’t recommend using this yarn for your own Accessory for Your Spring Suit Jumper, I’m happy I used it up.  You see, I’ve had this yarn longer than I care to admit (easily over 4 years).  Back before I knew how to knit when I was only crocheting, I had used it to crochet up a sweater which was an epic fail.  So it was sitting forever in my closet as half of a crocheted jumper and it really needed to be frogged.  This jumper seemed like it would be a good match for the yarn and I frogged my crocheted top and started knitting this up.

The yarn isn’t terrible paired with this jumper, but this is the first time I’ve worked with alpaca.  And it just ended up a bit heavier than I thought it would.  It’s not bad since it will be a god-send in the middle of the Chicago winter, but it just made the neckline and bow a bit tricky to execute.

I had a lot of fun doing my hair for these photos.

I was telling Felix, I feel like I have a feau-hawk of curls.

I only curled the top half of my hair earlier in the am and left the whole bottom section flat.  To do my hair, I did a french twist on the flat bottom half and lightly unpicked the curls and pinned them to the top of my head in a pleasing way.

My hair is just shy of being shoulder length, so the french twist took me two tries but I was able to pull it up just fine.

I could have pinned some of the curls a bit higher onto my crown, but I still think it was a pretty fun do.  I felt like there was a party on my head the rest of the night since I left my hair like this for the remainder of the evening on Saturday.

Come Sunday morning, my curls were pretty much intact since I didn’t brush them.  I was able to execute my FIRST successful pin curl for Sunday brunch!

I made two pin curls at the front and pulled the rest back into a high (mini) pony tail.

Woot for pin curls!!!  Seriously, I’ve tried several times to do these and they were always an epic fail.  I think the key to them is having your hair curled before hand vs. doing them with straight hair like I’ve tried in the past.

Hope you all had a pleasant weekend and that the weather is more spring-like, wherever you are.

In: Knitting

Blogger for 6 years and counting, I am a passionate creator who loves to tinker.

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