I’ve been knitting up a storm this fall/winter and have completed a (very speedy sweater) called Ingenue.
It’s a fairly basic raglan sleeved sweater, constructed top down & knit in the round.
Generally, when I get bored or when I get to a hard part of a project – I loose patience and wander off to a second project. But not this time! What kept me on track with knitting & completing this sweater was Megan & Michelle – my two new knitting buddies.
Michelle, a seasoned knitter (right) and Meg, a newbie knitter (middle) teamed up to make the Catherine wrap sweater in October. When they embarked on their second team project, they invited me to join along and I couldn’t be more stoked to join in the fun.
We met just about every Monday evening in November (as schedules allowed) had some yummy tea and knit together. Instead of just having one start date and another end date, we had weekly ‘homework assignments’ and by each Monday night session we were more or less in the same place on our sweaters. It was wonderful working together this way. No one was left behind and it really kept us on task, start to finish.
When I have to frog a given section and reknit – I have a bad habit of wandering away from the project. I had to rip out one of my sleeves and reknit it a bit smaller, as mine was too large near the shoulder (still kinda is – but no matter).
During this time, I cast on for my Victory Beret pattern and started knitting that instead.
But… the completion deadline was nearing and it made me get back on task with Ingenue and complete it once and for all. If I didn’t have this team to knit with who knows where the lovely Ingenue sweater would be right now!
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
Ingenue has been on my knit list for a while now. To me, this feels like a classic Audrey Hepburn sweater – a similar style you’d see in A Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I’m not one for knitting in neutral colors, but this ivory sweater is going to fill a great gap in my winter wardrobe. Not to mention how great of a lounge sweater this is for cold evenings at home.
The neckline is my favorite aspect of this sweater.
The collar is folded down and stitched on the inside, so the neckline is very stable and upright.
Like I said earlier, this was such a speedy knit. I’m used to knitting with fingering weight yarn – so switching to worsted weight made everything go so quickly.
Speaking of yarn… I used Berocco Ultra alpaca yarn (50% wool, 50% alpaca) since I wanted a more drapey knit sweater. I swatched like a good knitter and I was 100% on gauge when I used a US size 7 knitting needle. But…. I ended up having to knit my sweater with 4″ negative ease – and yet it appears to be 0″ and in some instances positive ease. All I can say is, I did want a loose, drapey knit so I’m quite happy with the outcome despite the ease difference.
Enough pictures of me… look at these two lovely gals.
Michelle:
Michelle also used an alpaca-wool mix yarn, but her fit is wonderfully spot on. It’s like custom made or something?! heh
Meg the Grand:
Meg used a very dense wool-alpaca blend to great effect.
And lastly… None of these images would have been possible without Felix and Mike:
Knitting is a wonderful craft – but it does become so much more fun when knitting with some fun gal pals. :)
If you’d like to see more, I have the rest of the images up on flickr and some on my Ravelry page. Be sure to also check out Meg’s Ingenue post and Michelle’s Ingenue post for more fun reading.
In: Knitting
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