FO: Autumn Rose

After four of a half months of knitting (and a little hibernating) Autumn Rose is finally done and I love her!

Pattern: Autumn Rose by Eunny Jang from Jamieson’s Simply Shetland 4
Yarn: Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in 11 kit colors, 13 balls total
Purchased at: Nestucca Bay Yarns
Needles: Addi Turbo US 3, 2, 1, 0
Gauge: 30 st and 32 rows to 4 inches
Size: 35
Mods: Added about an inch in length, shorten the armscye and raised the neckline by about 3/4 inch.

The Pattern: This pattern really made me miss Eunny’s glory days when she had a stunning new pattern in every Interweave and gorgeous projects on her blog every week.  I really hope she’s saving her creative juices for her books that she mentioned way back when, but I can’t help but wonder if most of it’s going toward editing Interweave these days.  In any case, I’ll never forget when she showed a sneak peek of Autumn Rose on her blog and I spent the next few months dreaming about knitting it, scouring the internet for it, and then crying a little bit when I saw the price tag for it.  Luckily, my generous parents gave me the kit for Christmas last year so I could knit my dream sweater without paying a withdrawal penalty on my IRAs.

The pattern is well written and easy to follow as everything is charted.  My only complaint is the chart lay-out; apparently it’s traditional in fair isle charts to display the background color in white and the pattern color in black or grey, which is confusing in a pattern like this where the background color is dark and the pattern color is light.  I couldn’t really wrap my brain around that, so I recharted the entire pattern in excel, making an 11-color masterpiece chart.  This also let me easily play with modifications and change the pattern as I knit.  Overall, I’d say anyone who’s comfortable with two-color stranded knitting and sweater construction could pull this sweater off.

The Yarn: Wow.  This stuff is phenomenal.  I’m not going to lie, I was worried I would have to frame this sweater and hang it on the wall since the yarn felt so hairy and itchy in the skein and knitted up.  I think I must be faily intolerant of itchy wools–I can’t even wear my Tangled Yoke Cardigan for longer than an hour without all those little prickly hairs driving me insane–though I love how they look.  But this yarn, probably the wooliest yarn I’ve ever knit with, softened so beautifully in the wash!  This sweater is so warm and cozy and I can easily wear it all day without feeling like I want to rip it off in disgust.  Plus it spit-splices like a dream, so no hundreds of pesky ends to weave in at the end.  I think I ended up with about 20 ends when I finished–not bad for a sweater with literally hundreds of color changes.  I would definitely knit with it again.

Modifications: I knew I wanted to add a bit of length like usual, so I spread about an inch–8 rows–extra throughout the body before the neckline.  I also wanted to shorten the armscye a bit, since quite a few other knitters had issues with bunching fabric under the arms, and raise the neckline a bit, since that baby is a plunger.  But I like a scoop neck sweater over another top, so I only wanted to raise the neckline by about three quarters of an inch.  Hello two-birds-with-one-stone opportunity.  I decided to shorted the armscye and raise the neckline in one fell swoop by taking out 6 rows in the armscye decreases.  This is fairly straight forward: after you join the sleeves to the body, you knit straight for several rows before beginning the decreases.  I just started the decreases sooner and then decreased at a slightly faster rate in order to get rid of my 6 rows.  If I could do it again, I’d probably do more like 10 rows–I still have a bit of fabric bunching below my arms, but there’s not much you can do about it once you’ve cut your steek.

Overall impressions: I love it!  I feel like it’s a work of art!  I’m continuously in awe that Eunny could pull this design off–the woman is a knitting genius.  Like I said, if I knit it again–and I never would!–I’d shorten the armscye a bit more and maybe raise the neckline too, but I’m still really happy with how it turned out.  And I finished my first NaKniSweMoDo sweater right on time!

Up next: I decided to reward myself for finishing up a long-languising WIP by casting on for something new: Vivian from Twist Collective Winter 2008.  I was worried that it would be another tedious sweater after Autumn Rose, but in a heavy worsted yarn, Cascade Eco Plus, it actually knits up really fast and I’m already done with the first sleeve!  More on that to come, of course.  Thanks for reading!