There is something about Noro yarn that speaks to my knitter’s soul. I love the colour variegations in these yarns, and – unlike many knitters – I love the texture of the yarn. I love that it’s a single ply, spun loosely, that it runs thick and thin, and that it’s a “yarn that remembers the barn”. I don’t mind sticks in my string.

Earlier this summer, I started a jacket in Noro Silk Garden. Here’s the first post about it. I could call it a cardigan, but the shaping is so structural and the finished fabric so firm that it feels more like a jacket to me. I’ve almost finished the knitting now and love it even more.

Here it is, with one sleeve not quite done:That’s the back of the sweater at the top, with the back hem at the very top. Sleeves on either side, fronts at the bottom. (And my foot! That sock is knit in Lorna’s Laces, btw.) The shoulder seams are still open and the notched bits are the collar, which will be joined. Then the whole thing will be folded down the length of the sleeve, so I can seam the sleeves and each front to one side of the back.

Although I was very matchy-matchy, I don’t think the mirroring will be perfect. Oh well. You can see on the back, for example, that I didn’t have a second run of that black through gold bit, so I had to fake it. The sleeves are slightly different from each other – the one still on the needles will probably end before it gets to the bit of green at the cuff of the other one.

It’s funny how the blue looks so prevalent in the picture. In real life, it looks very green.

I did make a few modifications to the pattern:

1/ I left the stitches live instead of binding them off when instructed, and used a provisional cast-on where there would ultimately be a seam. That means my seams will be grafted instead of sewn. The shoulders have no seam at all – I just picked up stitches and kept knitting. I’m curious to see whether this affects how stretchy the finished garment is – it might well be that the sleeves get droopy without that seam.

2/ I rewound the yarn multiple times to try to keep the colour variegation consistent. I did do one goofy thing. When starting the first sleeve, I misread the colour progress from the front and inverted the order of colours on the sleeve. Instead of the shoulder of the sleeve beginning with that beige, it should have started with the deep and ultramarine blues.

3/ I slipped the first stitch on each row while knitting the fronts and the backs to keep the edge neater. I really didn’t need to slip the first stitch on the edge of the fronts that goes into the side seam, but it was easier to slip every row and not think about it.

4/ I think there is an error in the instructions for the larger size, because the two wedges at the top of the sleeve aren’t centred over the sleeve if you follow the directions. I recalculated and centred them. I made a mistake on the first sleeve and didn’t start the decreases right away after finishing the wedges – those instructions that give lots of details for striping or whatever, then say “at the same time…” get me every time! – but began them after the third repeat of the 6 rows A and 2 rows B stripe. I decided this might work out better for ease in the underarm, so just carried on and did the same on the other sleeve.

Now I have to wash it, block it and sew up the seams. I’ll show it to you again next week, once all that nitty gritty work is done. I do love it, though. It’s amazing how all those colours blend into a coherent whole. Here’s my Ravelry project page, btw.

What do you think?

This past year, the first Noro magazine was published. As you might expect, it’s full of wonderful patterns that show the colours of Noro yarn to great advantage. I had to get a copy when I saw this jacket, the cropped jacket by Irina Poludnenko. This link for the jacket is a Ravelry link.

It’s a very clever piece of business, using short row in garter stitch to tailor the jacket. It also uses two colours of Noro Silk Garden Sock, so you get that wonderful alternating stripe thing going on. That’s really striking in Noro yarns because they self-stripe, so the striping pattern is constantly in transition. The jacket  is cropped and fitted, with a shawl collar and long sleeves.

Here’s the left front of mine:

This is the left front, so the edge on your left is at the centre front, then forms the collar. The edge on your right is the side seam. The notch at the top is where the collar of the front meets the collar of the back and the shoulder seam is beside it. The stitches on the stitch holder are the front side of the shoulder seam – even though the instructions say to cast off this edge, I left the stitches live so that I can simply pick them up along with the back shoulder stitches and keep knitting. After the fronts are done, the back is knit side to side, then the shoulder seams joined. The sleeves are then knitted down from the shoulder to the wrist, and the side seam – from wrist to waist – joined last. I thought it would be better to eliminate that shoulder seam. The two colourways I’m using are 289 for the main colour and 313 for the contrast. Of course – because I’m fussy like that – I rewound the yarn so that the colours in the right front will mirror the left one. I’m deciding how fussy I’ll be about matching the backs and sides – you can see that I didn’t cut the yarn at the shoulder, just in case.

Self-striping yarns are always addictive to knit – using two colourways at once seems to be even more so! I’m really enjoying this knit.