Paper Tiger

Back in June, I finished knitting a garment for myself for the first time since 2022 (more specifically, since becoming a parent). Clearly, a milestone worth documenting.

Last autumn I knit a plain stockinette sweater for my kid and I found the stockinette in the round both so soothing and so easy to throw in my bag and carry around. So when I finished that, I decided to cast on a stockinette knit for myself. It would be more suitable for where I was in life than the lace WIPs from The Vintage Shetland Project, cast on pre-baby (and which I still hope to finish eventually). I’d had Veera Välimäki’s Piece of Silver sweater queued for ages (Ravelry link) and I had a sweater quantity of Fabel Knitwear Athena that was calling to me, so I cast on and started working on the long ribbed turtleneck.

I finished up in mid-June and already in July and August this sweater was getting a lot of wear, which I wasn’t really expecting given the turtleneck, but it’s a superwash merino fingering weight yarn knit at a relatively loose gauge, so it’s been an excellent grab-and-go layer on slightly cool days. And indeed as I’ve been reaching for it over and over, I’ve realized that I don’t really have any other hand knit sweaters quite like this. I have far more non-superwash sweaters than superwash, and the former tend to be warmer than the latter. The superwash sweaters I do have are either knit to tighter gauges or they’re not such loose garments. I’ve managed to fill a gap in my wardrobe that I didn’t even really know was there.

I think you can see in the photos that the lightweight yarn and loose gauge has created a fabric that’s really drapey, which is something I’ve been enjoying about it. Of course this is less durable over time, but given how much I’ve been wearing it I think it’s been holding up pretty well so far. Athena is a merino/nylon/gold stellina blend, so perhaps the nylon is helping with that. I used the Gløgg colorway, which was one of the advent calendar colorways from 2021, if I recall correctly (I didn’t get the calendar that year, but Helene dyes up past advent calendar colorways, so I purchased my sweater quantity in early 2022). Gløgg is the Scandinavian version of mulled wine served during advent and Christmas, and while I enjoy it very much, the colorway reminded me even more of gingerbread, so I took to calling this project my Piece of Gingerbread sweater (rather than Piece of Silver). And despite the Christmas connotations, it is a perfectly autumnal color, so I’ve been enjoying wearing it through the transition from summer to autumn.

Just some technical details: because I used hand-dyed yarn, I alternated skeins every two rows throughout (with the exception of the turtleneck). The sweater also grew when blocking, as superwash tends to do, so it came out a little longer than I was going for, but I think it’s actually much more wearable like this than if it were cropped.

I’m looking forward to knitting more garments for myself again, though there will be more knitting for the little one too now that the cold season is upon us in Trondheim. I’ve finished my The Academic vest (but I think I’ll wait until after my PhD defense to share more about that one), and I’m slowly working my way through a Nakti by Leila Raven as well. And maybe, just maybe, some new patterns.