Strokkur Knitalong

We did it!  What began on New Year's Day was concluded yesterday with a very cold photo shoot.

This is a lovely set of Strokkur sweaters you are looking at here.  Missy's and mine can both be found on Ravelry.

Before our New Year's Day cast on session, we made a trip to 3 Kittens to carefully select our yarn colors.  We went there in search of Lopi.  Once we got there, we realized that Heritage by Briggs & Little was our yarn of choice both for the wider range of color options and for the durability of 2 ply.

We utilized the black and white setting on my camera to get a sense of how color options we considered would work together.  In the end, we both were smitten with a very bright, blaze orange colorway so we both incorporated it into our selection. Bonus: we were able to split the skein.  One does not need a lot of that color leftover in the stash!

This project was my first substantial colorwork project.  I had done very small amounts of stranded colorwork in the past to no great success.  Determined to get better at stranding, I tried out 2 different knitting thimbles/yarn guides.  I settled on this one from Clover and I am SO SO happy to have it.  It makes colorwork so much more comfortable and consistent for me!  I liked this design best because it works well with the way I hold my yarn (over my pointer finger on my left hand).

As often happens with my knitting, my careful gauge swatches lied.  The sweater gauge was larger than my swatch gauge.  Luckily I recognized that early on and was able to get another skein of the green in the same dye lot.  I could have sized my needles down, but I realized that some positive ease would be good since I wanted to wear it as outerwear with layers underneath it.  That is really the only way I could tolerate this kind of fiber.  It is a bit "rustic" feeling.

Thanks for the photo, Missy!

 I tried the wrapless short row technique that Ysolda recommends.  It was interesting to learn a different way to do short rows, but I noticed a difference in how it looks on once side vs the other that I didn't like too much.  You can see the bumps it created just below the colorwork section in the photo below.  Not too terrible, but also not blended as well as on the other side.  

We both leveled up our knitting skills with this sweater!  Tough, tough knitters, we are.