Finished Object: Clarke

Pattern: Clarke by Jane Richmond
Yarn: YOTH Yarns Big Sister
Colours: Thyme and Hazelnut
Needles: 4mm and 4.5 mm round needles
Start of project: February 18th, 2015
End of project: March 5th, 2016

On Ravelry

Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was this pullover knit quickly. It all started when I first saw this pattern, I think it was during the SSKAL15. This new pattern by Jane Richmond instantly caught my eye, after all I love stripes and I'd heard a lot about this YOTH yarn but hadn't touched it (I had actually seen it when I visited Baaad Anna's Yarn store in Vancouver but didn't buy any). I put it in my queue on Ravelry where all the things I might like to knit one of these days go.

Most of you know by now that I won the first prize of the SSKAL15 and part of that prize was a sweater's worth of YOTH Big Sister yarn. I knew I wanted to use it for a Clarke pullover right away, so I asked Shannon if it was possible to have two different colours for a stripey sweater. A while later the yarn arrived and it felt beautiful and the colours looked just as I'd imagined them. I was in the middle of other stuff, so I put it in my yarn suitcase for later.

When our skiing holidays in Tschiertschen approached the timing was finally right. There would be lots of time in the evening to knit and this wasn't going to be a project where I needed silence and a lot of concentration once the beginning was done. So I started the pullover at home (and what an amazingly clever start it is, I was totally fascinated how it all came together) and packed lots of yarn and everything I needed next to my ski stuff.

I knit in the evenings with lots of people around and often also after lunch when we stayed on the porch for a little while before hitting the slopes again - the photo below was actually taken on one of these breaks. Can you imagine a more amazing background than the mountains and lots of fresh powder...

I didn't quite manage to finish my pullover in the mountains and I kind of neglected to properly check the fit. There wasn't really a good mirror anywhere and it felt weird putting my pullover on in between all the other guests. Which is probably the reason why I didn't like the shape of the body so much once I was back home. It looked too baggy around my middle, everything else looked the way I wanted it to look. It did take some hair pulling but I decided to go back all the way up to the sleeves and add a few decreases. Seeing my poor pullover with all the frogged yarn was a miserable sight at first but I hoped for the best.

Fortunately the reknitting of the body only took a weekend and binge watching the whole first series of Code Black. Now the improved version is off the blocking board and I am very glad I went back and did it again. It isn't a huge difference but it is slightly more shapely without being tight anywhere. I am sure I'll wear it a lot now.