First Sweater

I took a bit of a blogging break, but I'm back. I did my first Ironman triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) race last summer and the training left very little time for my other hobbies. I finished a few small projects, but they weren't worth blogging about. I've done a fair share of knitting in the last few months though and want to share a few of the projects. This is my first full sweater.

I've knit a few summer tops before with cotton and silk, but this is the first wool sweater. The pattern is Drops 175 Wind Down Sweater. It's a free pattern on Ravelry and I settled on it because it had a little bit of lace detail on the sleeves, but was mostly an easy knit in stockinette. I made a mistake in the beginning with the lace, but there's a helpful video on the Drops website and after watching it everything went much smoother. The yarn is a Superwash Merino Cashmere blend by Lion Brand in Green Tea. I rated the yarn as average because it worked well in this project for the price point and I wanted to be able to wash the sweater in the machine, but I own much softer and prettier yarn from other brands. I actually already washed the sweater a few times before taking pictures and it seems to be holding up fine. As you can tell from awful wrinkles in the pictures, I didn't block it after the last wash. Oh well.

The pattern is knit in the round top down and is actually the same in the front and back. It also has a small eyelet detail on the inside of the sleeve, which is a nice touch. All in I'm happy with the outcome for the first sweater, but Aran weight wool is pretty warm for Austin so I only wore it a few times this winter.


Olga