I finished my purple sweater this week. What a quick knit—even though I reknit the sleeves. The pattern is Barista, by Martin Storey, which is in the current Rowan magazine, #60. It’s knit in Big Wool, which I had in my stash in this great purple colour. Here it is!

Mr. Math photographed it near the end of the day, so there are some dramatic shadows. They show up the stitch pattern quite well, though.

There was a tiny mistake in the pattern, which was no big deal. There’s a chart for the stitch pattern, and the key for the chart showed two blank (identical) boxes. Obviously, the squares with nothing in them are knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side, and the squares with a dot in them should be purled on the right side and knit on the wrong side. I got a Sharpie and made a dot in the right square in the key. Fixed.

In the knitting, I made a couple of small changes. First, I kept a stitch in stockinette at each edge of each piece for easier seaming. You can see the side seams here:

Second, I cast on four extra stitches for the sleeves, since I found them a bit more snug than I wanted. I followed the instructions for the increases on the sleeves, but did two fewer of them, so I’d have the right number of stitches for the raglan decreases.

And finally, I made the collar deeper. It was a really wide crew neck when I tried it on and I wanted it to be more snuggly, so I knit until I ran out of yarn. Here’s what it looks like folded down. I like having a choice!

This isn’t the most flattering sweater I’ve ever made in my life, but it’s warm and it’s comfortable and it’s purple. I love it. What do you think?