I had tried making a sweater on circular needles five times before this one. I wanted to love circular knitting on circular needles and I couldn’t. With this sweater I discovered it was the cable or my circular needles: first I had always used circular needles with thick, unbending cables and the size of the cable didn’t fit the circumference of the pieces I had attempted to knit.
With this sweater, a new pair of cable needles and a well explained pattern, a new world, full of possibilities, has opened. Now I want to knit everything in the round and even try to… eeek… steek!
The pattern I used is the Tin Can Knits Flax pattern, which is a free pattern. I have a profound dislike for the garter stitch, so I skipped the garter motif alongside the sleeves. This pattern explains the construction of a raglan, so it’s easy to use it as a base for future sweaters. The wonderful Amy Palko swapped the garter stitch with a lace motiv in the same number of stitches to make a completely new sweater, for example. She wears it in this episode of her podcast, which I recommend to all knitting lovers.
I knit this on 3.5 mm needles, in Holstgarn supersoft yarn (my newest yarn obsession), held double. The colorway is dark apple. When I ordered it online I thought the green was going to be brighter, more like and apple, than like a forest green, if that makes sense? I love the color anyway so no hard feelings there. I used a cone, but I would say I used about half of the 500 grams cone for a size SM, cropped version of the sweater.
I wore it already five times or more, and it’s the perfect winter into spring kind of garment. (I am even wearing it as I type, how lovely!)
Yet another first for this sweater was trying out the very short cabled circulars that are made for sleeves or sock knitting. I used the Addi Sockenwunder, which I got from the Holstgarn website and even if at first I wasn’t sure, I ended up loving them. I like knitting socks with dpns, but sleeves, the turning, with all the bulk and the falling needles… not fun. But the tinky circulars got me over sleeve island.
I have a Tambourine cardigan without sleeves waiting for me since last year in my abandoned WIPs, maybe this is the time to bring it back to life.