The beginnings of a sweater, hanging on my white door. Only the upper body to just under the arms is completed. 
A sweater hanging on my white door. Now both sleeves are finished. The body is still uncompleted. 
Close up of a sleeping gray cat. She sleeps on the sweater of this post. She always gets to use my things before I do. 
A close up of stockinette stitches on needles with a fun Bob of Bob’s Burgers progress marker. 
Gray cat again sitting on the blocking Meadowland sweater that is pinned to my pink blocking mats.
This February I had the wonderful opportunity to test knit the Meadowland Sweater for Tif Neilan. I had seen her teaser pictures on Instagram and applied to test knit on a whim. I was very surprised when I was selected! This sweater is knit with DK yarn held double with a strand of mohair. Luckily, I had some DK in my stash that I had been saving for something special. This yarn, the Birte base from Spirit Trail Dyeworks, is a sumptuous blend of merino, cashmere, and silk. I found it in the sale bin on a trip to the Charlottesville yarn shop Magpie Knits. I have to say, while I firmly believe that indie dyers and yarn shops deserve every penny from a sale, there is nothing more special than walking in to a yarn store and finding a luxurious yarn in a sweater’s quantity marked down to a price you can afford. I bought 3 skeins in the Jellybean colorway and hoarded it for at least two years, waiting for the perfect project. This lovely test knit seemed like the perfect opportunity to use this special yarn because, of course I wanted to splurge on this design I loved enough to knit *on a deadline*. Plus, with the postal system in my country still reeling from the pandemic pressures and incompetent leadership and management of last year, I didn’t want to risk ordering yarn.
Of course, I had to order yarn anyway because I didn’t have mohair to use. I took a chance and ordered two colors from two different brands as it is rather difficult to choose colors over the internet. Every device displays color differently and yarns photograph differently and I really wanted to be sure I would be happy with the colors. I choose a nice safe beige that I wanted to match the base color of my DK yarn and a blue color that I hoped would match one of the speckle colors. Imagine my surprise and joy that both colors were what I hoped they would be and either one would work! I swatched both and went with the blue as it was a bit more striking than the beige.
Knitting this sweater was an absolute delight. I was prepared to “put up with” working with mohair yarn. I had been unjustly assuming that working with mohair held double was like knitting with eyelash yarn. That is not the case! It did blur my stitches on the needle a bit, due to the natural halo of the yarn, but it really wasn’t hard or annoying at all. In fact, it just made me want to knit more patterns that call for mohair yarn.
The actual design of the sweater was amazing, too. The sweater is knit top down in the round and neck is shaped using short rows, the first time I had used this technique. It made for such a nice fit. The pattern calls for holding the mohair doubled with the DK but every so often you knit one row with just the DK. While knitting the pattern, I thought smugly to myself “well that will make no difference because the mohair has a halo so it will make everything look the same regardless.” Dear Reader, I was wrong. Instead, it imparts the faintest suggestion of stripes and is beautiful. It also has the added benefit of breaking up what would otherwise be endless stockinette until the bottom edge. Speaking of the bottom edge, I love it. The bobble row took me forever to knit and did kind of murder my hand but it is just the little something the sweater needed.
This is the fastest sweater I have ever knit, I believe. Now I was on a deadline so I pretty much became project monogamous. I pretty much did no other crafting during the month of February, solely focusing on this one knit. It was fun for me to be able to have such a short turnaround on a project. I mean, even without the deadline I would have been motivated to get it done quickly. However, my hands required almost a week of rest before I started crafting again so I think it’s not wise for me to expect to always get a sweater done in a month. And I’m okay with that. I’m super happy with my finished sweater and it was really fun to test knit a garment for a designer that I have admired for quite a while.
