Mixage Sweater

      4 Comments on Mixage Sweater

Although most crafters that both sew and knit consider knitting to be a winter craft and sewing is for the summer, I have always tended to be the other way round. The portable nature of knitting means that it is perfect for taking sailing with me over the summer, but even I was a bit surprised to find myself knitting a Worsted weight jumper in the middle of this summers heatwave! Especially considering that I haven’t had any work this year and therefore haven’t been away on the boats and have had access to my sewing machine the entire summer. But here we are at the end of summer with a new jumper…

I offered to test knit the Mixage Jumper for Jimi Knits and swatched up a few of the Worsted wools in my stash, because let’s face it I was never going to buy a jumpers worth of John Arbon Harvest Hues, despite it looking like an utterly gorgeous yarn I am just too hard on my clothing to use a wool like that. I am also trying hard to reduce my stash, despite inheriting two large boxes of wool recently.
Unfortunately none of the wool I had in my stash really matched the gauge and the two that did were single balls so I would have had to purchase more wool. Not to be dissuaded and eager to jump into knitting the jumper I searched through the new boxes of wool from the Grandmothers stash and found a jumpers worth of vintage Patons Fiona which, when knitted with a strand of two-ply shetland wool which I had purchased a cone of at a local charity shop, which gave gauge and a lovely marled fabric.

I knit the size M as it has a fair amount of ease built-in and I fall slap bang between M and L, but knit the size L sleeves as the M didn’t give me enough room for my upper arms. Thankfully this dropped shoulder style is nice and easy to change the arm size without having to change anything else.
My gauge was slightly different to the pattern and this gave me a little more ease, which helped to give me the extra half a size to keep the recommended ease. But as with pretty much every garment I have ever knitted my row gauge was different to the pattern meaning that I had to reduce the number of rows in the yoke to keep the neckline looking similar.

I used two strands of the two-ply wool as the contrast wool for the tramlines on the front and the right sleeve. This gives a nice low contrast effect because the wool blends into the main wool a little and also it is slightly smaller than worsted weight so the tramlines don’t stick out as much as they might otherwise, but I really like this effect, I think it is much more wearable for me.

Since my row gauge was a little longer than the pattern called for I had to modify the yoke of the jumper a little, taking 10 rows out of the height to ensure that it wasn’t too deep. This caused the diagonal cable to interact with the neckline which I didn’t want it to do, so I moved the neckline shaping that occurred on the return row away from the neck edge and knit 2 together before the cable row. This results in moving the cable away from the neck edge and ensuring that it managed to continue uninterrupted.

This is a nice and warm jumper and whilst I did wear it for the early morning walk in the forest it came off before the end of the walk and will probably wait at least a few more weeks before it comes back into rotation (but this is the UK and who knows it might be out again tomorrow). But it really does need another good wool wash and a soak in some conditioner to loosen up the fabric a little bit. It still has some of the oil on the 2-ply which I actually love the smell of, but should probably remove, and the jumper is a little stiff under the arms and the drop shoulder causes the jumper to bunch up there a little. I am sure that this will reduce after some more washing and wearing, but I am confident that this jumper will survive for a long time as the fabric hasn’t shown the slightest bit of pilling yet unlike some of my recent knits which were bobbly before I finished knitting them!

Go and check this wonderful design out when it is released in early Sptember, and knit yourself some wonderful jumpers. Check out the other test knitters designs, with versions from grey and flourescent pink right through to Jimenez’s own single colour version, there is a colour combination for everyone. Oh and did I forget to mention it is unisex so perfect for everyone in your life.

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4 thoughts on “Mixage Sweater

  1. Kim

    Well done finding what you could use from stash. I’m doing my utmost to clear stash too and I understand just how hard it can be when you are working to a specific design. The sweater looks great, and autumn is starting to sneak into our forest colour so it won’t be too long before you need that warmth!

    Reply
    1. Pippa Post author

      Currently sat wearing the jumper I can safely say the warmth is needed now. Apologies about the epic delay in responding, I blame life…
      Combining yarns really helps when trying to work to specific requirements. Having a thinner yarn to bulk it up sightly really changed the properties.

      Reply
  2. tinaor

    Sweater looks fab. I love the split design across the front. Lucky you to find the right mix of yarn in your stash. I often have patterns that I don’t have enough yarn for and vice versa. As I try to reduce my stash I am coming up with lots of weird and wonderful accessories!

    Reply
    1. Pippa Post author

      Thank you. Apologies on the epic delay in responding…
      Combining yarns can really help to make stash yarns so much more versatile.

      Reply

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