Asja Janeczek | Alive & Knitting

Finally, some knitting! I had a sort through my incomplete knitting projects over the holidays and made a plan to get some things finished up. First to jump into my lap is this one, a mostly top-down pullover. The yoke is knit up and cast off at the neck, then the stitches at the bottom of the yoke are picked up to knit the rest down.

Of course, I’ve done the fun part of knitting the yoke, and now there’s just a million miles of stockinette stitch to be finished. This picture is from 2020 and is pretty much where I stopped, right after dividing for the armholes.

Wild Grass Pullover by Asja Janeczek knit in Swans Island Washable Wool by Deborah Cooke

It’s been waiting on me for five years!

The pattern is Wild Grass by Asja Janeczek – here’s a Ravelry link for the pattern. My yarn is Swans Island Washable Wool Collection Sport, which I bought at Swans Island on our trip to Maine a few years ago. Here are the yarns on their website. It looks as if this one has been discontinued or possibly renamed. (?) It’s lovely yarn – the colours are very saturated and it’s very soft and squishy. The teal blue is a bit darker than it appears in this top picture. The fiber is merino wool.

The yarn also has a kettle-dyed look, so I’m alternating between skeins for the body. It will be a bit stripey no matter what I do, but that’s part of the charm of hand-dyed yarn. This is my TV knitting this winter – round and round – and here’s how far I’ve gotten:

Wild Grass pullover in progress, knit by Deborah Cooke

The colour of the blue is more true in this shot. You can see how I changed the ribbing pattern on the neck, so that when it’s folded over, it looks consistent. It’s a 3-1 ribbing, but I wanted the top edge to look like the bottom one when it was folded over. You can see that I reversed the stitching partway up the neck, before the fold, in the top picture.

Here’s how it looks folded over.

The edge of the turtleneck is a cast-off edge, so I cast off with a larger needle to ensure that it would stretch. I think I’m going to take it back and use a smaller one – right now, it’s a bit frilly, a good sign that I used TOO large of a needle.

I do love the colour combination.

Now that the body is off the needles, I’m going to knit the sleeves before putting those stitches back on the needles. That way, I’ll know how much yarn I have left for the body. Maybe I’ll be able to make it longer. We’ll see. In the meantime, ’round and ’round I go!

Juicy Gloss is a top-down cardigan designed by Asja Janeczek, which I cast on in Koigu KPPPM in April 2018. (Here’s my project page on Ravelry.) Yup. Three years ago. I’ve blogged about this one a few times – Juicy Gloss in Koigu, and Juicy Gloss in Progress – but (as is so often the case) I stalled out when it was time to knit the sleeves.

Here’s what it looked like the last time I showed it to you:

Juicy Gloss by Asja Janeczek knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

It’s a long cardigan, longer with my modifications to the front, and the colour variegation is very pretty. Here’s a detail shot of the Koigu – it still doesn’t do the color justice:

This cardigan was marooned on Sleeve Island for a while. I think that happens because there’s always counting to do with sleeve decreases and I tend to knit while watching television – it’s easy to lose track and even easier to just pick up another project with a few thousand miles of stockinette to knit. In this case, I also realized after I knit the first sleeve to the elbow that it was too wide. Projects that need to be frogged and reknit often end up in time-out for me.

I frogged back to the armhole and decreased an additional 8 stitches from the sleeve at the underarm. The pattern specifies to knit two inches before beginning the sleeve decreases but on this version, I started the decreases right away. I was working four rows, then decreasing on either side of the marker (at the middle underarm) in the next row. I did that twelve times. If I’d wanted the elbow length sleeves like the pattern, I could have continued to the specified length and done the cuff, but I wanted long sleeves.

I continued, working 5 rows between the decrease rows. I did that fourteen times. The sleeve needed to be 34cm long, so I knit 62 rows to get the length then worked the I-cord cuff as specified.

Here’s one finished sleeve (although the ends still need to be sewn in):

Juicy Gloss Cardigan knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

I could have continued the decreases and made the cuff fitted, but I know I’ll push up the sleeves.

When I blocked the sweater, the Koigu stretched like mad. It seems that the yarn loses its “boing” when wet. It’s freaked me out before, but I just had to let it dry as planned. When it was just a little damp, I put the sweater in the dryer on the Touch Up cycle. That’s 15 minutes on low heat on my machine, and I checked it every five minutes. It came out perfectly after ten minutes, then I left it overnight to be sure it was completely dry.

I still have to sew in the ends, but here’s the finished cardigan!

It looks a little lighter at the top right because there was a bit of sunshine there.

Here’s my Ravelry project page with the modifications.

What do you think? I’m really pleased with this one.

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Wild Grass Pullover

Juicy Gloss Cardigan Done