WIP Wednesday: Bobble-ing Into The New Year

After finishing my Belladonna cardigan, I had to get another sweater on the needles. I really want to make up the Rose Street Cardigan - I've been waiting to make it since it was released in April - and that will be the next project I start, but this one unexpectedly jumped the gun. I really love watching Engineering Knits on YouTube. Her interests align with mine so entirely - I just love everything she puts up. She wears a lot of vintage handknit sweaters that she purchases on Etsy and Ebay when she films and there is one particular sweater she wears that people used to ask her what pattern she used all the time thinking she had made it from a vintage pattern only for her to explain that she bought it completed already. The popularity of this sweater lead to a whole saga of her making a pattern from her vintage sweater and then grading it out and releasing it as her first sweater pattern - the Mohn Cardigan. To be honest, making this was not really on the radar at first. The design was cute, but I wasn't head over heels or anything about making it. Then add in the Black Friday Knit Picks sale. They did different sales every few days over the course of a few weeks and one of the days they had specific skeins of yarn, including all of their Upcycle Alpaca Blend, marked down to $2. I grabbed the max of 5 skeins in several colors and just 2 skeins in a few other colors in mostly sport weight but also some worsted. I had ideas of what I could make at the time, but no definite plans. Then this sweater was released in December and I put this yarn together with this design in my head and it just wouldn't go away. 

Once I finished the Belladonna, I just wanted to swatch the Mohn cardigan to see if this yarn would even work for the sweater because if this didn't work then I would have to drop the idea for a while because I didn't have any other sport weight yarn on hand that I liked for this. I made the first swatch on December 30th, but I had a very hard time getting the bobble effect of the tucked stitches. The first swatch was all over the place. I watched Charade and made the swatch and knew it wasn't done right. Then I remembered that she made a video to go along with the pattern and I thought to watch that. I made a swatch that turned out great and I got gauge no problem, which was very nice to discover. I cast the sweater on officially December 31st and I managed to get the first bobble stripe done, but I still didn't do it right even then. I finally realized what the issue was after that and I've had no problems since, but that first line does not bobble. I didn't want to rip back, so it just is what it is. I may play around with fixing the issue later, but it's fine for now. 

Anyway, that is a very long winded description of this next project, lol. I'm using Upcycle Alpaca Blend Sport from Knit Picks and it's working up really nicely. I never planned to make this right now. I never planned for this to be my exclusive knitting project. This pattern is just so fun to make. It's very potato-chip-y. I always just want to get through the next bobble stripe and then the next. Even with not knitting for about 4 days straight, I've still managed to knit to where the pattern tells you to split for the arm holes (I'm extending the length, so I still have some inches to go, but still the pattern says I'm done with the main body at this point). This may also be part of using sport weight yarn, which I've never knit with before on a sweater. I'm used to either worsted or fingering weight sweaters (frankly just because sport weight tends to not be on sale much), so it's been a pleasant experience knitting this up in many ways. I'm using the Sapphire color as my base with Arctic and Black Pearl for the stripes. I like the neutral kind of vibe it gives even though it's blue, and I also love that it's a type of colorwork even though it's just basic stripes. It's like colorwork light, lol, a nice start to my goal of knitting true colorwork this year.

So that's what I've been working on the past few weeks and I really love how it's turning out so far. The tuck stitch bobbles look so cute! I actually like them a lot more in person than I did in the pattern photos. SO fun.

What new projects do you have going this year? I'd love to know!