Puffin Sweater

It was my birthday a couple of days ago, and my sister-out-of-law sent me this beautiful hand drawn card.

Inside she mentioned she hoped to see more of my knitting on my blog, which gave me the push I needed to get back to blogging. Plus, I have a recently completed project, or two, to share.

I've been planning to knit this jumper for three years, it has been on the needles since January, and I'm so pleased I have finally finished it.

The pattern is Puffin Sweater from Kate Davies' Colours of Shetland. It is knit from the bottom up, in 4-ply, which means there is A LOT of black stockinette knitting. Especially as I had to re knit the sleeve.

I managed to get the tension fairly spot on by going down a needle size, and had no problem with the body of the jumper. However, when I started on a sleeve things didn't go so well. It turned out a very odd shape (the rate of increase was too fast) and it was enormous above the elbow - I could get both my arms into it. I double the gap between increases, and finished with a fifth less stitches than in the pattern and it worked out OK.

When I finally got to the puffin detail, I had to cut out a couple of repeats, to compensate for the stitches I'd taken out of the arms, but it work out fine.

I had plenty of left overs from my puffin jumper, some of which went straight into a making a rainbow Scatness Tam, also from Colours of Shetland.

I'm off on a knitting holiday next week with my mum, we are going on a knitting holiday to the Faroe Islands (I know - exciting), and I think my new hat and sweater and going to be just the thing :)