My very first sweater ever is made of koigu painter’s palette premium merino p118. I had no idea how popular koigu was when I was at the yarn shop picking out my college graduation present. All I knew was I loved the colors and it was wicked soft (I still can’t believe I got 9 skeins, a Jaeger pattern book, and needles as a present). It seems that koigu has some sort of cult following.
Watching my blog stats has become rather addictive. I was so excited the first day someone found me through a search engine! I don’t have a complete list of searches because wordpress seems to delete the old ones but I’ve noticed that some version of ‘koigu painter’s palette premium merino p118′ is one of the more popular searches leading here. This is rather sad because I have an artsy (in my delusions) but unhelpful picture of me wearing the sweater. It fails to show the inner beauty of the yarn which is mostly because I’m embarassed to say the knit and purl stitches look different. Very different. I’m still working on figuring out what ‘twisted’ stitches are but if I had to take a guess, I’d say that every other row is ‘twisted’ and every other row isn’t.
I’m pretty sure that my confusion about ‘twisted’ stitches results from the fact that after finishing the sweater I started knitting continental which given my crochet background made so much more sense. Somehow knitting continental, all my knit and purl stitches look identical, sort of like a tiny ‘v’ or ‘x’. If I’m guessing right, untwisted stitches are the ones that look more like a ‘u’.
Here is the pocket of my sweater (it does wonders to enhance my figure but isn’t at all useful to store things)
And here is the button band. These are buttons I yoinked from another project (the licorice twist sweater) – my mom got them when I was little (like pigtail braids and elementary school little) and they’re so pretty.
I hope this helps all you koigu lovers out there. When I finish grad school and am rich, I may make another sweater of koigu sock yarn. Until then, I have my one and only hand-knit sweater.
3 responses so far ↓
phoenix // 2007 April 26 at 11:59 pm |
Very nice indeed for your one and only hand-knit sweater. I’m no expert, but I think you are right about every other row being twisted. (The stitches that are slightly raised and look like a ‘y’ are the twisted ones.) Congrats, you seem to be a combination knitter! If you hadn’t pointed it out, I think that it looks like a conscious design choice and it certainly suits the yarn and the sweater. Tell everyone (well, those who don’t read your blog anyway) that you did it on purpose and you got the stitch pattern from Barbara Walker.
Emilee // 2007 April 27 at 12:24 am |
I agree with Phoenix. While it does seem that you were twisting some stitches, call it a design choice. It is such a lovely sweater, you should be very proud of it.
If you’re knitting continental and all of your stitches are identical, it sounds like you’ve got the hang of it then! Congrats.
elanknits // 2007 April 27 at 7:57 am |
My best friend twisted her stitches on the knit row only when she started knitting, I rather like it for some clothes, it makes your fabric a little firmer.