Hello Internet Friends!

I’ve been on a bit of a knitting roll recently so today I’m sharing my second knit city 2019 knitting project, a Woodbine sweater from Issue 9 of Laine Magazine. This pattern happens to be the one chosen to feature on the cover of this issue, so it was the first thing I saw when the new issue became available. I really loved the way the plain stockinette and lace work contrasted in this sweater because it was knit with an thicker aran/worsted base instead of something like light like a fingering weight. Since I’m clearly having a mohair moment I was also very much attracted to the subtle halo surrounding the sweater given by the lace weight mohair held with the aran/worsted base yarn.

The sample knit for the magazine features two very closely colour matched aran weight bases, and the addition of one colourway of mohair to the entire sweater which can really mask the fact that two colourway are used in my opinion. I decided I wanted to really play up the colour contrast between the lace and stockinette parts, so I was on the lookout for some very contrasting colours. I was initially inspired by the scallop colourway from Qing Fibre but couldn’t get my hands on their yarn very easily. My plan was to use a variegated/speckled yarn for the plain stockinet sections and pick one of colours from the variegated yarn for the lace portion.

With knit city fast approaching I decided to hold off buying anything until I got a look at my knit city options. I quickly spied the ‘moment of madness’ colourway at the Black Cat Custom Yarn booth and knew I had found what I wanted for the plain stockinette section. For the Lace I decided on featuring the bright blue/green portions, I could have gone a bit tamer and used the main pinky/orange from this colourway but decided I really wanted to make the lace standout. I settled on a matching blue/green called ‘Ysera’ also by Black Cat. Unfortunately they didn’t sell any mohair so I went around searching for a mohair to match each colour, settling on ‘one stab’ and ‘ghost dance’ both from from The Farmer’s Daughters Fibres.

Now that I had my yarns selected I needed to figure out what size to knit since I am between the size 2 and 3 of the pattern (I bought enough yarn for size 3 just in case). The pattern calls for between 6-8” of ease, if I made a size 2 I would only have 4.5” whereas if I went with the size 3 I would have 8.5”. After consulting the pattern construction notes I realized that since the body lace portions are knitted first and then the sides are knitted off the edges of the lace in order to get the width I wanted I simply needed to add a few extra rows to the side stockinette portions before binding off the side seam. Easy peasy! So I ended up following the directions as written for the size 2 with the exception of the side instructions where instead of knitting until the side measured 4.75”, I knit until it was 5.25” inches to give a final bust circumference of 44.25” giving me an ease of 6.5”.

This sweater knit up so quickly because of the large needles and easily memorized lace motif. Looking at my ravelry notes, it took me around 20 days from start to finish knitting (it then sat around for about a week waiting to be blocked…) I really love how fluffy this sweater feels because of the mohair! It’s also slightly more toasty than I would have thought again I think due to the added mohair. In terms of styling I do wear this sweater with a tank top underneath due to the lace portions and not wanting my bra to really peak through. I toyed at the beginning of starting this project with the idea of inserting a fabric lining to at least the front of the sweater, but so far I’ve been liking just using a tank top. Since the sweater is so toasty it’s nice to have the option to take it off if I get too hot during the day, which happens when I have just come in from outside for example and then I can pop it back on when I cool down.

I hope you guys like my crazy colour selections for this sweater! I’m trying to slow down a bit on the knitting so that I don’t blow through all of my knit city purchases too quickly, so stay tuned for some sewing projects being posted soon!