A yarn about a yarn...

Several weeks back, I came across some delightful Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky in the Pecan colourway and it was love at first sight ;0) I had no idea what I would make with it but it was a deal and even though I dug deep and found the discipline to navigate away from it's page more than once, I kept coming back to admire it. Then one sleepless night, I couldn't resist it anymore and had to have it!


It was as gorgeous in person as I had hoped and I was really eager to knit it up, but what does one knit with 10 balls of chunky tweed anyway? I had it sitting on the top shelf of the yarn closet and my heart fluttered every time I went in there, but I just didn't know what to knit from it. A few weeks went by and I received an order of knitting design books and as I perused them for inspiration for a future annypurls original, I came across the most delightful Norwegian seamless yoked sweater in Ann Budd's The Knitters Handy Book of Sweaters.


Well I just had to knit the copycat version for Julian and couldn't believe my luck when I got to the requirements section and found that it required Rowan Yorkshire Chunky Tweed in the Pecan colourway! That's my yarn!!! That's my yarn ;0)

I needed a few more colours for the fair isle pattern though and really felt some kind of cosmic knitting intervention when I found "flaming" available as a single ball from Jannette's and both "olive oil" and "stout" available from Urban Yarns. And all happened to be on sale - 50% off! Can you say meant to be?

Julian eating corn pops off the sweater.
He poured them there while I was tending to Lolo.
Definately naughty. No eating off the handknits!

I cast on for it at once and was delighted by how quickly it was working up. The gauge was a whopping 3 stitches to the inch! I had the front and back done to the armpits in an evening! The next day it had a sleeve. And before I knew it...


It was all done! Now as soon as I can unknit the neckband, get rid of some decreases and reknit it large enough to fit over my toddlers huge noggin I'll give you a closer look.

Yay knitting karma!!!

PS - Since this whole sweater sized for a 2 year old only used up 3 balls in the main colour and not much of the fair isle colours, I have enough leftover to divvy up as one or two 'kits' if anyone out there is interested in getting the yarn for this sweater... e-mail me at annypurls {at} hotmail {dot} com if you are interested - ALL GONE!

PPS - About my Noro striped scarf from the last post. Debbie and Leslie asked about the yarn I used. It is Noro Kureyon in colours 172, 195 and 213 (2 balls). Jared used Silk Garden in his but I couldn't find any manly-man colours I liked in the Silk Garden (my hubby wouldn't wear anything with purple in it and they all seem to have some purple in them!) so went for the Kureyon instead. In retrospect, I should have looked harder for Silk Garden colours because the Kureyon is a little scratchy.