Have you noticed how awful mens knitwear is? Tragic! Absolutely gopping! I live in a houseful of menfolk. None of whom wear knitwear. Is this the reason why? Who on earth thinks that men should wear these awful shapeless ugly patterned hideous body boxes? So in a weak attempt to be bang on trend I wanted the perfect man’s cardigan.
This was in June 2016 by the way. It’s now finished. It is mid February 2017. It is worth it. It will be with him until he leaves the house feet first. Slow fashion? Indeed. Which is why I am often asked ‘seems like a lot of work. Why don’t you just buy one?’ Which misses the point entirely. Through the ‘work’ comes the pleasure. It is pleasing to sink hands into beautiful lanolin rich pungent fleece, to prepare it and to spin it into yarn. It is pleasing to think about the wearing during the knitting and the wearing or the gifting once it is done. And to remember those moments when the garment is in your hands over the years that follow. So, my response is ‘why would you buy one. Where is the pleasure in that?’
So, I thought you might be interested to see the process by which a hand spun cardigan is born.
For me it starts with the idea. I find it difficult to spin for the sheer joy of spinning. I typically have a very clear idea in my head for a design. In this case it was for a simple, fuss free, fitted cardigan in response to the sheer ugliness of mens knitting patterns out there.
The muse looks good in blue but I hate solid slabs of bright colour (especially blue). I am reminded of those makeover programmes where ‘She doesn’t like orange’ so everything gets done in orange…Anyhoo, the answer was a marled yarn, in blues with a neutral base. Grey is currently my favourite. Or deep rich chocolate brown. I digress…
The tropical blue Top came from John Arbon Textiles. As a nice digression that I think you will like, John Arbon Textiles blended up a new top called Spin Fresh in honour of Spinzilla Team HSN 2016 Pirate theme, they donated some fibre to the team and made the remainder available for purchase exclusively at Fibre East 2016. I bumped up my Team HSN batch. It is a glorious blend of 55% dyed Merino/33%Perendale/12%Zwartbles in the colours of a really tropical Caribbean blue sea. I send a big huge hug of thanks to the guys as John Arbon Textiles. I can honestly say it was just beautiful to spin.
For the grey base I used a natural grey whitefaced woodland/Jacobs fleece that I purchased at Ickworth Wool Fair – the result of a happy accident – happy for the Jacobs Ram less so for the Shepherd…I scoured, sorted and carded this in September. About 6 hours work altogether.
The yarn was spun during Spinzilla October 2016. All the fibres were spun separately and then plied to give the marled yarn.
Just over 1000m of plied yarn. The spinning took just over 10 hours altogether. Lovely speedy longdraw.
Next, tedious yet vitally important – swatching. What can I say – don’t be lazy SWATCH! This was a happy couple of hours in front of the TV.
The first draft of the pattern followed from the gauge in the swatch. This was tested in the the knitting… and the frogging…and the knitting again. Roughly 3 weeks of evenings (christmas came and went) and a few lunch times.
The finishing took about 2 hours. And here is a sneeky peek of the finished article.
The pattern will be coming soon. Watch this space. But these things can’t be rushed…