Planning and Design

My first knitted sweater! After getting the Loopy Mango book as a gift for one of my birthdays, I ended up buying a kit for a pattern not in the book from their website. Which then proceeded to live in my craft storage for almost 5 years? Good thing fabric and wool doesn’t go off 😝 I finally got the motivation to make this as practice for a different project I’m planning.

Materials

• Pattern
  • Sailor’s Dream Sweater (Loopy Mango)
• Wool
  • Loopy Mango Merino No. 5 in Midnight and Polar Bear

Construction

I know how to knit scarves so I wasn’t too worried about the main body, just the collar and sleeves. I managed to do the collar fine but struggled with the sleeve round until I looked up the magic loop method. It’s so good! I was a bit perplexed that Loopy Mango didn’t have a tutorial on it given they even specify the technique on their patterns. So big thanks to Tin Can Knits for their youtube video.

I wasn’t a bit fan of the method of sewing together the panels. I’m not sure how many other ways there are but I feel like I’ve seen it much much neater on my nan-in-laws sweaters. And picking up stitches feels so arbitrary to me, something I’ll hopefully get better with over time.

Reflections

Well…this is certainly shorter than I expected! Not that I tested with a tension swatch beforehand 🤣 The wool is lovely and soft though, unfortunately I finished it just in time for the warmer change in weather 😅 I realised after referring back to the product page that the collar wasn’t meant to sit so high which I could fix by pulling the top down when wearing it. But the sleeves are still a bit on the short side.I guess I’m not a S/M but a M/L? A bit of a weird sizing system there imo. Also there is no sizing chart or reference, just how long/wide the finished product is. Which doesn’t help me with arm length.

Things I learnt:

• Maybe do a tension swatch LOL. I kinda just went for it because I have no idea how I’d adjust the pattern if my tension didn’t match what was recommended.
• How to knit in the round and use the magic loop method.
• Count every row every time! Because I’m a beginner I shouldn’t get cocky 🙃
• Be careful with sizing. I assumed M/L would be American M/L and therefore too big for me but seems like it was a wrong assumption to make. Although I’ve since made Loopy Mango’s Her Cardigan in M and the size was fine. So maybe I can just blame the weird sizing options this time…

Categories: Sewing

Tagged as: Knitting

hikaru