Dizzy Dog Quilting and Knitting: Arda Sweater

Hi all -

While I had expected to be showing you the backing for Lindsey's graduation quilt in this post, that didn't happen. Instead, my crafting took an unexpected detour and I actually knit an entire sweater since my last post. Yep, an entire sweater from start to finish. I had only planned on making a start on the sweater, but I loved the feel of the yarn so much that I just had to get it finished so I could wear it! The sweater I knit was the Arda sweater by Amy Christoffers:

I used the suggested yarn, Berroco Vibe, which is a really soft mix of organic cotton, organic wool and nylon.

This sweater was a wonderful learning experience for my. It's only my second sweater and the first was a side-to-side construction, the instructions were very detailed and I knit it as part of a knit-along where there was a lot of support online. This sweater was knit from the bottom to the top, had brief instructions and I did it all on my own except for one clarification of the instructions that I got from the designer. (I also found a mistake in the pattern that I need to send to the designer.)

As I mentioned, you start the sweater at the bottom and knit up:

Once you get to the armpits, you put the main sweater aside and knit the arms up to that point. I took this opportunity to try a new-to-me technique of magic loop two-at-a-time knitting. In this method, you know both of the sleeves at the same time on long circular needles. It's a bit finicky to get started because things can flip around:

But once you get further up the arms, it gets pretty easy:

The biggest thing you have to watch is to make sure that you are knitting with the correct ball of yarn on each arm and to keep the two balls from getting too tangled. Then you put the pieces together and continue knitting up to the neck:

The final step is to pick up stitches along the front edge and knit the button band. I haven't picked up stitches much and it always stresses me out trying to get the right number of stitches evenly spaced. But this time I figure out a trick to help with that. The pattern gives the number of stitches to pick up in different areas around the front and neck. First, I put a locking stitch marker at the ends of each section where I would be picking up stitches. The, as I worked each section, I used more locking stitch markers to evenly divide the sections into subsections that would need around 10 stitches each. I could then evenly space those 10 or so stitches in each subsection and know that the stitches all around the edge would be evenly spaced. Sorry I didn't get any pictures, but it worked like a charm and I know I'll be using that trick whenever I need to pick up a bunch of stitches!

I really love how this sweater turned out and I can see myself making another one. If I do that, I might make the next smaller size. I couldn't decide which size to make. The model was wearing the size with 4" of ease. For my measurements, I had to choose between 2" of ease and 6" of ease. Being conservative, I went for the 6" of ease and it fits fine and I'll be able to wear it over anything. But I think the size with 2" of ease would be nice, too, so that's what I would try next. time.

The only other knitting I did this time was my May installment of the Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club. This is the club that lasts the entire year. This month's installment was "only" 8 rows, but we're up to more than 400 stitches in each row so it did take the entire evening! Here is what we got for this month's installment: