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Random Ramblings #2: Knitting my first ever sweater

After almost two months of work, I’ve finally knitted my first ever sweater. It’s not perfect but it certainly is the best-looking thing I’ve ever knit. This was also my first time using circular needles and I really liked working with them.

So why a sweater? It has something to do with me going through my wardrobe and being unhappy with the quality of the sweaters I already have or the ones I’ve seen in the stores. Everything seems to wear or stretch out too quickly, pill too easily or the materials feel too thin and cold to wear regularly in the Finnish climate. I thought that a hand-knit sweater made from wool yarn would last longer.

Knitting a sweater had its challenges. Familiarizing myself with knitting techniques also included how to knit everything left-handed (thankfully there’s a handy browser plugin to mirror videos!). I would have finished the sweater a little faster if I didn’t “frog” portions of it so many times, but I don’t want to dwell too much on the mistakes I made! The raglan increases were really the most frustrating part. The last step I still need to do is blocking the sweater, which might fix few of the gripes I currently have with the sweater (like the tightness in the sleeves).

The pattern I used was “Warm-up sweater” by Naomi Endicott (Espace Tricot). As for my thoughts about the pattern, even though it seemed daunting at first, it started to eventually make more sense once I learned what all the abbreviations meant - I also followed a video tutorial to the pattern that helped me a lot (by Clo Knits). I made some deviations to the pattern, mainly for the ribbing since I watched another sweater tutorial that introduced me to the “magic loop” technique (only had a circular needle of one size for the whole project!). Knitting is really addicting, and I want to try out other sweater knitting patterns in the future, but for my next project I would like to make a cardigan from crocheted granny squares.

I might have to knit a sweater for my cat pal that keeps following me! He kept stealing my sweater a couple of times when I was knitting it :D