Comfort knitting

Life has been busy.  I wrote my first paper for b-school last week, and my reading list has gone through the roof.  I needed a simple project to knit – something peaceful, something easy.  I was not only looking for comfort knitting; I was looking for comfort.  I wanted to knit a sweater for myself that would be easy to wear, something to throw on with my jeans while I was busy studying.  I didn’t want much shaping.  I also wanted a pattern that I could be absolutely sure of – no fiddling, no reinterpretations, no maths, no mods.  Something that I knew would fit perfectly just as it was written.  In short, I wanted something by Carol Feller.

Last year, I knit only four sweaters.  The year before I knit eight, and two were designed by Carol Feller.  Those were my Killybegs cardigan:

IMG_4937

and my Ravi:

IMG_5469What I needed to fill my comfort knitting craving was another helping of something Carol.  This something:

Carpino_1_medium2This is Carpino, designed by Carol Feller for Brooklyn Tweed and published in Wool People 6.  It is knit with BT Loft, a yarn that I had wanted to try for a while (it’s basically a fingering weight version of Shelter).  I ordered the yarn on a complete whim (from my favorite, Loop, in London) and it arrived the very next day!  Doug was in Denmark and the girls are both in Canada, so I had to shanghai a co-worker during our lunch hour to help me wind a ball.  Despite the paper I was busily researching and writing (or maybe because of it) I cast on immediately.

Today is a lovely, lazy Saturday.  The paper is submitted, Doug is back home and the sun is shining (at long last!).  I have finished the yoke, divided off the sleeves, and started knitting the body, so I was able to try the sweater on for size:

2-IMG_8195And what do you know?  The fit is perfect.   No fuss, straight-up comfort knitting.  The only uncomfortable thing about this was standing in the wind in the cold (4 degrees today) in a tank top and trying not to shiver while Doug took these photos.

3-IMG_8185The photo above shows the beautiful shaping of the shoulder. It also picks up the flecks of colour in the yarn – see the reds and blues?  Boy, do I love tweed!  (There is definitely some rolling going on at the back neck, which I hope a good block will fix, because I really like the I-cord edging on the pattern, and don’t want to put in ribbing to control this.)  Rarely does a sweater fit just right at this point and I often find myself ripping back to before the division and recalculating things.  Even the fit across the back is good:

5-IMG_8187This yarn is one that knitters either love or hate.  So far, I seem to be in the “love” camp.  The yarn is very fine and breakable and I think some knitting styles must “pull” at the yarn too much causing it to snap.  I haven’t had any trouble and find it amazingly soft and pretty.  I will need to wash and wear it a bit before I can make a true judgement, but so far so good.

The pattern comes with some comments from Carol.   She says

“I love the casual nature of sweatshirts but I wanted to add just a little more interest.  The addition of a honeycomb lace panel at the front and delicate shoulder shaping makes this a very distinctive knitted sweatshirt.”

Yes, that’s just what I was looking for – comfort knitting at it best.