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On boxing day I cast on my next knitting project – a sassy cropped winter sweater. Yet another design by Andi Satterlund. It is a cute colour blocked design. I wasnt in the mood for cabling thats why I choose something simple. The best part is is a free pattern! Can’t go wrong there ;-). I used my yarn of choice; Red Heart Aran which I bought online at a bargainous 99p per ball. Having used this yarn before on my Marion cardigan. I know how it handles being washed and dried – I am happy with its performance. It acrylic which suits me just fine. Plus the Marion acted as a gauge swatch.

We had a spot of sunny weather in the afternoon.

The instructions are very easy to follow.The only mistake I made was not reading the errata which I now know to be of importance. Basically errata is a list of corrected errors appended to a pattern. I sort of just rushed into casting on without following that sage advice of reading through the whole pattern before you start. Here is what happened with the armhole cast on and placement of the markers. I did about 50 rows of the sleeve cap and armhole but when I tried it on it looked weird. Like the back of the armhole was at the front (thank goodness I tried it on then otherwise I could have knitted to the end before realising something was wrong. Anyway I went back to look at the pattern and spent ages trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. To cut a long story short it was right at the bottom of the pattern and I was like DUH! So yes I unraveled it all  so I could begin picking up stitches again!

I bound off the neck in the main colour purple because I ran out of the brown! Looks good though.

I am most proud of my improved ability to pick up and knit stitches on the armholes and neck. Because I now know how to wrap it looks so much neater than my Marion cardigan.I struggled a bit with the colourwork but I got through it. The first colour work is uneven with long floats especially on the waist. By the time I got to the sleeve cuffs though I was much neater. For the sleeves I added a decrease repeat to get the length I wanted otherwise for the design they are just past the elbow. Another interesting thing I noticed was just how much gauge can change just by using different needles. For the first sleeve i used magic loop on 16 inch circulars. On the second sleeve I used the smaller 10 inch circulars and one sleeve is longer and wider than the other. Clearly I need to be consistent.

A happy bunny in a me made outfit. I have worn that Hollyburn so many times!

Verdict.

I love it. Its a cute warm sweater to wear with my Hollyburn skirt. Since I am making more Hollyburns it will be well worn. It works well with jeans as well. It took me 5 weeks to complete it but it would much less if I knitted more often. I knitted this mostly on Fridays during our family movie nights. We have been watching the Pirates of the Carribbean films over the last 4 weeks ..so yes each time I put this on I instantly recall the “He is a Pirate” theme.

A fun easy to knit sweater. Now in to my next knitting project an Owlets sweater for my 5 yr old boy who has been begging me to make ‘yarn’ him something.

Happy knitting everyone and thanks for stopping by.