A Very Big Jumper

In the spirit of celebrating the not quite successes, as well as the resounding triumphs here's the story of a very big jumper. I started knitting this at the beginning of February and finally finished it yesterday - I'd realised a couple of weeks ago that it was going to be far too big, but had gone past the point of frogging it all back by then, and was still sort of hoping it would work on me.

When I tried it on today it was clearly not the case, I might as well have been wearing a blanket. It's a shame because there's a lot I love about this jumper - the colours I chose were perfect (rare that I'm completely happy with this part), it was easy to knit but I also learned a few newish things, and the shape is great. The pattern was Lower Leogh from Mary Jane Mucklestone's 'Fair Isle Weekend' and the reason it looks like a young tent on me is that I messed up the maths when I changed the gauge I wanted to knit it in.

It's meant to be a jumper with a good bit of positive ease, it's also meant to be short and boxy which isn't a style that really suits me. Fortunately, it's an easy pattern to add length too - and I did get the length of both jumper and sleeve right so that's another win. Unfortunately despite some swatching it turned out that going down two sizes from the one I thought I needed with the original gauge wasn't enough.

The reason for the gauge change is that I wanted a summer jumper that would have a really lightweight feel to it - and again I got this spot on by going up 2 sizes with the needles - my freshly washed jumper feels as soft and light as cashmere (I think it's going to my sister, she's in luck). 

Anyway, I've knitted, I've learned, I've started a second Lower Leogh going down another 2 sizes and I'm going to completely recalculate the neckline so that it isn't as wide and doesn't drop down to mid-torso. By the time I finish it, I'll probably want to knit a third one in Mary Jane's original gauge to keep out cold winter winds.