Monday, October 17, 2016

A New Jumper, and Helping Others

A while back I posted a knitting wish list with some of the designs I really liked and wanted to make. The items in my Ravelry queue tend to jump up and down the list as I find new, exciting things I want to make, or if I review the list and rearrange it. But I actually managed to finish two of the jumpers on the wish list this summer.

This is the Lavenda Rainbow Jumper, with long sleeves, because I live in Norway ;) Please excuse the mess in the back, it seems I'm unable to keep my sewing space tidy.




I nearly always reinforce the shoulders and neck of my jumpers with cotton tape, to make sure they keep their shape, and with this jumper I really had to, as the ribbed yoke is very stretchy.


This is the inside of one of the sleeves. I decided not to cut the yarn every time I changed colours,  but do it the Norwegian way instead, which is to say I carried the yarn from each colour up the jumper, and wrapped the working yarn around the strands being carried every 4 row or so, making sure the tension of the yarn being carried was OK. My mum and nan used to do it this way and they showed me how it was done when I was little, so I figured I'd give it a go. It turned out very well.


I decided to use as much of my stash as possible and ended up using two different types of yarn; Drops Fabel and Ida Strømpegarn. Ida strømpegarn is a little heavier than Fabel, but the two yarns still worked well together. I made the torso longer than instructed as I wanted the striped part to start at my natural waist. I ended up using 1600 meters of yarn for the jumper which is quite a lot.

Now for something more serious. As many of you out there might already have heard the very kind and sweet Jessica from Chronically Vintage has had her house burned down. It happened Friday of last week, and she and her husband has lost practically everything they own.

There's a Facebook page for people wanting to help out in various ways, and if you live far away and it's impractical to send something you can make a cash donation here. I made a donation as it  seemed the most practical solution.