Paper Tiger

Of course the first finished object I have to share since my previous WIP check post is one I didn’t even mention in that post. A few days after I published the post, though, I realized that it was coming up on one year since I’d first cast on my Nakti pullover, a pattern by Leila Raven. I’d set it aside last winter after realizing that I was going to need to rip out and re-knit the yoke colorwork (I missed a few of the decrease rounds before the colorwork started), and it had been hibernating ever since. But with that one-year mark coming up I decided I’d like to finally get it finished!

Leila has been reworking this pattern slightly, and I was able to test out the new yoke shaping at the top of the yoke. (The pattern is slated for re-release by the end of this year.) While my gauge was a little larger overall than my (admittedly small) swatch and the sweater came out more oversized than I originally intended, I’m still really happy with the fit and I think the new yoke shaping works great.

While most of my published yoke designs are worked from the bottom up, in recent years I’ve really switched over to top-down knitting, so this was the first bottom-up adult sweater I’d knit for a long time. I have to say I really prefer top-down now, which would surprise past me!

This was possibly the first time I worked a round colorwork yoke where the beginning of the round was positioned at the back of the yoke rather than one of the shoulders. The downside is that this is a more visible placement for the jog than the shoulder, but the upside is that the pattern is centered on the front. While that doesn’t make a huge difference for this particular design, where the pattern repeats are fairly small, it would make a difference for anything with a larger repeating motif.

I knit my Nakti with yarns from stash, with Garthenor Ronas Native Shetland 4-ply for the main color, and Prado de Lana Mijas for the contrasting color. Leila’s original sample featured a dark main color and light contrasting color, which I do love, but I also like that the colors I chose mirror a different design of Leila’s, her Stasis pullover designed for Brooklyn Tweed. I’ve loved Stasis since it first came out in 2012, and I was tempted to knit Stasis with these yarns, but Nakti is a much more size-inclusive pattern and these days I prefer to share designs that a larger number of knitters are able to make for themselves. I also enjoy choosing designs that don’t already have hundreds of projects on Ravelry, and Nakti currently has 13 connected projects (compared to nearly 800 for Stasis). I feel like Nakti has been a bit criminally overlooked.

I can already feel summer slipping away here in Norway, so I’m sure I’ll be wearing this one out and about before too long. I’ve also made progress on the projects mentioned in my last post, so I’ll have more to share before too long.