Monday, October 23, 2006

Banishing Dark Thoughts

I started this sweater towards the end of an exhausting month in which I got married, moved, finished a major paper, and took my comprehensive exams. The exams are terrifying enough on their own - PhD students usually study solidly for months and come close to nervous breakdowns - and trying to prepare for the exams in the midst of all these other major life events was truly harrowing and dark-thought generating. This cardigan saw me through the roughest, final patch, and it bears a slightly gothic aesthetic sense. When I wear it, it banishes my dark thoughts.
Pattern: my own, taking its lead from Glampyre's mini-sweater
Yarn: Malabrigo worsted, about 2.75 skeins
Needles: size 9 bamboo circulars for the body, and size 9 birch dp's for the sleeves
The malabrigo yarn is scrumptiously soft, and even this half-sweater keeps me warm. The only drawback to the yarn is that it's also rather inelastic, such that the ribbing doesn't adequately pull the sweater snug against my body (if I were doing it again, I'd sneak some decreases into the ribbing section). But on the whole I'm immensely pleased with the way this has turned out. If anyone's interested, I might try writing up the pattern.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

gorgeous! Is this your first sweater? Have you had much of a chance to wear it. Really quite lovely, I'd be interested in the pattern.

Rachael said...

Hi - I ran across your blog looking for a realistic gauge swatch for malabrigo. The sweater is adorable!

The yarn is so heavy that 4.5 st/in seems like it would make an absurdly hot sweater, I'm wondering if I'm missing something by prefering 4 st/in - would you mind sharing your gauge?

And my random opinion - you should write up the sweater pattern & submit it to knitty!

you can find me at www.rachaelingso.blogspot.com