Make: Bias-Knit Sweater (1)

A few years ago, my sister's flatmate abandoned some very nice Debbie Bliss Rialto 4ply yarn in a maroon/claret colour. She knew I'd love to adopt the yarn, which needed quite a delicate pattern. I found this one online - it's from the 1950s magazine "Women's Day".

As an aside, there are some properly vintage knits in Women's Day - this is what Google images yields...

I started this jumper literally years ago and I don't actually have any pictures of the initial make phase. I came across the half-knitted jumper front when we moved house and added it to my To Finish file. It took about an hour to work out where I was on the pattern, and to figure out I was missing two stitches... But two outta 228 ain't bad!

I realised I wouldn't have enough of the maroon yarn, so I went online to order more - but it seems they don't make the 4ply in this colour any more! After an exhaustive and ultimately unsuccessful search, I instead decided to use a complimentary colour - mallow.

And today, I finished the front half of the sweater!

The pattern uses mostly stocking stitch on the diagonal, with knit rows to make the raised ridges. Contrastingly, you also use knit stitches for the channel up the middle - so some knit stitches stand out, some back. Go figure.

I used the mallow yarn for a V-shape across the shoulders - then for the reverse I will knit mostly in mallow, with a maroon V.

Now I just have to get on with the reverse! Let's hope it's not another few years...

Make: Norway Cross-Stitch

Back in March 2012, the Boyf and I went on holiday to Tromso, in the north of Norway. I really wanted one of those proper Nordic jumpers... but alas, they were about £300, which I just couldn't justify for something reputed to be a super-warm, super-itchy piece of knitwear. We popped into a craft shop, under the illusion that I might buy a pattern and knit my own, when I spotted a Norway cross-stitch pattern.

 

So that was almost four years ago. Since then, I've moved house twice, one of which I've bought, changed jobs, and moved from what could definitely be referred to as "mid-twenties" to what can only loosely and slightly misleadingly be described with the same moniker.

 

I've been doing bits and bobs of the cross-stitch fairly randomly over these four years, but I have really tried to focus on it over the last six months. And it is finally complete!

The whole piece is about 25cm wide and over half a meter long!

At the top alongside the Norwegian flag are some Arctic circle locations - Tromso, where we visited, Hammerfest (home of "The Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society"), Kirkenes and Nordkapp, almost as far north as you can go without leaving Europe.

Then comes fish in Mo I Rana, flowers Molde and Trondheim's Nidaros Cathedral.

 

Bergen's colourful houses and Lillehammer's Garmo stave church line up nicely next to each other, and then comes the ski-jump from the Oslo Winter Olympics, in front of a longboat from the Viking Museum.

The whole piece has a border in the colours of Norway's flag, and it features a number of snowy mountains, ocean scenes and flowers. These could be Norwegian "bergfrue"

There is a gate to the Old Town in Fredrikstad on the left, and Kristiansand's "Kardemomme by" features a couple of jaunty crabs.

The oil rig for Stavanger was real fun to sew; when it was just the blocky cross-stitch, it didn't really look like anything special, but the backstitch just brings it alive!

I also enjoyed sewing the Arctic Cathedral from Tromso, of course. These are our own photos from our holiday there! I'd say it's a pretty good representation...

 

 

 

It was an amazing holiday and I can't wait to get my sewing framed and up on the wall!