Sweater Project #1 - 28 January 2025

A couple of days ago I wrote about an Earl Grey and Lemon cake I made. Today I’m writing about a different type of cake. Above and below you can see yarn cakes that I bought recently at an Aldi’s supermarket. Each cake was about £1.20 or a bit over 5 Steem for 100g. I bought 5 cakes because I thought that would be enough to make a V-neck sweater. Not only was this yarn very cheap but it also contained some wool; it was 80% acrylic and and 20% wool.

_{Of course it would be better to buy locally produced yarn but that 's what I could buy at the supermarket.}

The label also gives information on laundry care and knitting gauge. I was curious to see the pattern inside - I took a photo of part of it to show :

_{I have never knitted a snood so I may read the instructions carefully soon.}

The label and pattern indicate that I should use size 5 knitting needles, but I only had size 5.5mm so I decided to just use what I had - not sure what sort of difference that can make.

I set about making a sample swatch by casting on 20 stitches and then knitting until I had about a square. I cast off and measured the piece.

Apparently my swatch was 15 stitches by 20 rows per 10cm which means this is chunky yarn, but oddly nowhere on the label did they state that. With in mind I started looking for possible (chunky) patterns. As I couldn’t find any knitting pattern that would completely match my gauge, I decided to follow a free pattern that’s for a cardigan and that you can find below :

This is a very clear tutorial that starts from scratch : including showing how to cast on. Sometimes I wish tutorials were a bit more advanced than that. What I particularly liked about this video is that you can download a copy from Ravelry in a pay-what-you-want system, from £6 or about 30 Steem to nothing but you have to register to get it.

My plan is to adapt this pattern which is a bit similar to the cardigan I made in March last year. I described its making process here, here, here, and here and to convert it into the sweater I want.

I’m currently knitting the second size and will report with progress soon :

Thank you for reading !