Here I am on Christmas Day dancing for joy in my new Christmas Jumper.  This is the Perfect Christmas Jumper by Susan Crawford.  I started this at the beginning of December and in my eagerness neglected to swatch (who needs to swatch when you’re using the called for yarn, I scoffed!).  A week later, I had a three-quarter completed jumper which was not the right size.  Except, it took me a little while to accept this.  I even sewed up the side seams!  I think it took my husband’s diplomatic assessment that perhaps it was too big to make me face the facts and rip back.

So…with a steely determination I cast back again with less stitches and turned into a veritable knitting machine for a week and managed to finish this on Christmas Eve!  The modifications I made were to add waist shaping (I really need this in my sweaters for them to  look flattering) and make the sleeves narrower (I prefer a close fit).  What this knit has taught me (other than always swatch) is that I am rather particular about the style of sweater I choose to wear and that I need to be aware of this when knitting other people’s patterns and modify them accordingly.

I found stranded knitting rather challenging but effectively knitting the sweater twice helped me to perfect my technique.  I struggled with tension especially over those very long floats at the beginning, but definitely settled into more of an even rhythm over time.  I was unsure about how to treat the stitches at the ends of each stranded section.  I ended up wrapping as you do for intarsia.  Whether this is correct or not, I’m not sure.  But then most traditional stranded work is done in the round, so maybe a hybrid of the two techniques is what is required here. If anyone could explain this to me, I would be most grateful!  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the challenge this sweater posed for me, and would like to try more colourwork projects in the new year.

You can find my Christmas Sweater of Joy on Ravelry here.