I haven’t shown you any knitting lately because I’ve been working on this beast. It’s heavy wool on big needles but still a lot of knitting. Here’s the sweater:

The pattern is Iced, which is a free pattern from Knitty and a top-down cardigan. Here’s the page on Knitty where you can print the pattern and here’s the Ravelry page.

The yarn I used is Noro Kochoran, a discontinued bulky yarn that’s a blend of wool, angora and silk. I’ve had it in my stash for quite a while. (That’s the Ravelry page for the yarn, since it’s not on the distributor’s site anymore.) My colourway is #75. Here’s a shade card that I found online:

#75 is third from the left. I also have #83 which is on the far right. It’s a really fuzzy yarn and was a bit of a splurge at the time. In the skein, it didn’t look so stripey, but (of course) it is. It shed a bit while I was knitting, but I hope it’s done with that.

I’ve been looking for a pattern for this yarn for quite a while, and was inspired by a Ravelry project of this sweater in this yarn. That knitter said that pattern and yarn were a perfect match, so away I went. On the needles, the tension looked a bit loose – it matched gauge for the pattern, but seemed too loose for the yarn. I knit a swatch and washed it and was much happier with it – the yarn fulled nicely when it was washed.

I did drop a needle size for the collar after knitting it on the specified needles and thinking it was too loose. I’m much happier with it now – even though it was three nights’ of knitting unraveled to redo it. I later unraveled the rows of garter stitch at the hem and reknit them on the smaller needles to match. I didn’t have 7mm needles small enough to do the same at the cuffs, so I knit their garter stitch cuffs on 6mm needles. I can tell the difference but I doubt anyone else will. Here’s the sweater with the fronts overlapped, which is how it would actually be worn. (I was just showing off my matchy-matchy! LOL)

The result is a very snuggly cardigan. It has that “bathrobe” look that shawl-collared cardigans so often have for me (maybe that’s because of the stripes) but I like it anyway. I haven’t put buttons on it yet and probably won’t.

Here’s my Ravelry project page.

I used about 6 skeins of the Kochoran so there are 4 left. I realized that the yarn has exactly the same weight/yardage as Rowan Colourscape Chunky – woo hoo! – which gives me another pattern stash. I’ve made this vest for Mr. Math of the Rowan yarn – it’s called Sonny and was designed by Sarah Hatton – which took 490 yards, so I have enough of the Kochoran, maybe even to be matchy. (Fingers crossed.) I’ve now cast on this vest in the Kochoran.

Here’s my Ravelry project page for the vest at right. I think it’s going to look really good in this yarn.