Pattern: Norwegian Boatneck from Ethnic Knitting Discovery: The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and The Andes, by Donna Druchunas.
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas, Bulky
Donna Druchunas put out a call for sample knitters on Ravelry. I seen the mention of the her book Ethnic Knitting Discovery on several blogs and was intrigued enough to feel that this was an offer that I could not pass up.
Since this was an opportunity for me to try something new, I opted to have Donna pick the pattern and the yarn. Donna mentioned she wanted to try something a bit less traditional to help others see the possibilities of the pattern. That option, naturally, appealed to me even more. She sent me the range of colors for the yarn. I thought it would be fun and definitely not traditional to use orange and blue in homage to the phoenix I use as a avatar so I picked those as my first choice with a range of other colors and let her surprise me.
First, a little about the pattern. The Norwegian boatneck is a simple sweater with no shaping in the body or neckline and minimal tapering in the arms. The scariest part for most people is probably the idea of steeking. We’ll come back to that part.
In the spirit of teaching a person to fish rather than cooking them one, the book offers up three recipe-style approaches that you can follow wholesale or mix and match as you see fit. There’s a visual plan, a planning worksheet and a step-by-step project sheet to help you customize the sweater to your exact size and tastes. You provide several measurements based on your body, and/or favorite sweater. Several traditional graphic designs are presented for you to choose from, lice patterns, 8-sided snowflakes , zig zags, and other designs you might be familiar with on a traditional ski sweater. For those feeling adventurous, she suggests choosing your own designs.
The pattern doesn’t tell you to work pattern A for (X) rows, it gives you options for choosing pattern A and guides you through how to calculate how many rows you’ll need to work. You’re encouraged to think about how the sweater will be constructed and make active decisions towards the final result, picking and choosing the details that will make the sweater unique. That might sound intimidating to some, but as I mentioned the sweater is simple enough and the style forgiving enough that it makes a great way to ease into the basics of designing your own sweater. There just aren’t too many decisions you can make that will harm the final outcome.
Picking the Elements
Choosing non-traditional elements, however, did present a few challenges. Aside from the unusual color combination, colorwork sweaters like this are not generally done in bulky yarn.
The Blue Sky alpaca is a wonderful to feel against your skin. It’s extremely soft and unbelievably warm and despite my suspicions not itchy. (At least not to me, itchy is subjective, of course.) The colors are wonderfully deep and rich. It is alpaca though, and it shed like crazy while I was working with it. I had to work away from my computer as a fine layer of fuzz covered the keyboard and threaten to clog every nook and cranny including the fan area. I was covered in a light fuzz every time I worked it. It didn’t help that I waited until the weather warmed up and subsequently had to work in front of a room fan. The fuzz flew everywhere. You’ve been warned.
Not unsurprisingly, the pattern doesn’t specify exact methods for casting on, binding off, decrease and increases. I used a tubular cast on for the ribbing. Especially with the bulky yarn I though it would give a clean look and be appropriately stretchy. For the increases, m1l and m1r as a mater of habit, and I used a standard bind off. The bind off is hidden and it really doesn’t matter much.
Picking a design for the bulky yarn required a lot of experimentation. I got about 2 stitches to the inch which ruled out anything too intricate. I was determined to make up my own motif, but I didn’t want it to look muddy and indistinct. The final design is the result of about thirty variations that I plotted out in Excel.
The stranding of the three colors also had to be planned carefully. Unlike more traditional colors which have a high degree of contrast to make the pattern pop, the two main colors, rust and blue, while spectral opposites are surprisingly close, tonally. I relied on the green to help separate them a bit. I tried to keep to the two-colors-on-a-row rule, but there are a few three color rows.
The bulk of the yarn presented another hurdle. Although I dutifully made a very large swatch, washed and blocked it, it still wasn’t enough to estimate the impact the sheer weight of the sweater would have on my row gauge. Make no mistake, this is one very heavy sweater, as you may have guessed, weighing in at a little over 3 lbs. 6 oz. (1.55 kg). As a result the body of the sweater in about 2-3 inches longer than I’d planned. Ultimately for the particular sweater, I decided that wasn’t a big deal. I did have to recalculate slightly to make the proper adjustments for the sleeves.
That brings us to steeking. Steeking the sleeves presented me with a challenge, and not as you might think, because I had never done it before. I’d studied the procedure and was confident I knew the concept well. Once again though, the bulk came into play. The pattern gives instructions for a sewn steek. I had my doubts about my machine being able to handle such a thick, dense and fuzzy fabric without jamming. On the other hand, though I don’t mind hand-sewing as a general rule, I really didn’t like the idea of sewing my first steek by hand, especially on a bulky, slightly slippery yarn. I researched the option of doing a crocheted steek, and even preferred the look and the fact that it seems to have a nice flexibility with the surrounding knitting. Unfortunately, every source I checked recommended against a crochet steek in larger gauges. I decided to suck it up and take my chances with the machine. It took some doing but I took it slow, stayed patient and ultimately the sewn steek worked quite nicely.
The bulky yarn did have one really fantastic advantage. While it took me a few weeks to decide on the design elements I wanted, the actual knitting took almost no time. Even with the 3 colors the sweater came together in less than a week. The final assembly and tacking down the seams probably added another day.
I’m happy with the final result, although the sweater is much heavier than any I’d have planned normally. For my climate, it’ll probably be an outerwear sweater. Adding a coat might cause a person to broil. Of course, I’m speculating about this in the middle of August heat, I might change my mind quickly come the middle of February. At any rate I’ve already had a few offers to take it off my hands if I really think it’s too heavy. I think they’ll have to live with disappointment. I have absolutely no plans to give my sweater up. Bring on the cold, I’m ready to curl up.
