New Year Sweater ...or DaVinci's Demons

As I already told you here here here and here too (in other words, kind of in every January for the last few years, the story of the new year's good luck sweater, for which the Idea I got from my friend Angela

In fact I told the story so many times, not only here on teh blog, but in different Facebook-groups as well, that so many liked the idea, that I made a group for it, and what is more the group has a lively membership and discussion for now (to my biggest surprise and happiness).

In essence we start the new year as we mean to go on, right? In my (our) case that means a lot of knitting. The first thing I do in the new year is to start a new sweater, and so untypical for me, I do not knit other things until it is done. However circumstances (shcool, exams, thesis, other jobs and whatnot) caused me being way behind with my DROPS translations, So much that on December 31sth after working for about 16-18 hours I was uploading the last patterns around 11.40 PM... After that I could hardly keep my eyes open, much less count to as many as it needed to cast on anythig, especially a sweater.

So on New Years day I started it early afternoon... then saying "I deserve a bit of rest" I managed to knit a lot, in a good speed and break my own (a cardigan in 4 days) record. Finished in 3 days and it was already blocking on 4th of january aftenoon.

I was thinking what should I make as for this new-year's project. The color was fixed, "good-luck red". I had something on mind, as I was planning to do a dark, blackish-red version of the Lion Neck cardigan, but just a couple of days before I found a similar style sweater from cashmeere in a second hand shop, which I simply could not leave ther. I needed to find something else. I went through the DROPS database, I even asked (and got) help from the group, I even bought, on a sudden crazy moment yarn for an other red and white version of the Nordic Summer, still--- One of my new years plan/hopes that with finishing shcool I want to spend more time and energy on creative/crafty stuff, even return to designing, so I put together something from my head.

I had a fixed amount of yarn (400 gramms) and the the design took that into consideration. Done it top-down, because if I knit the shoulder and the sleeves, then I can knit the body as long as I want (as long as I ,y yarn last). Lace make it looser and the yarn go further, it can be also blocked better, The pattern I used is a version of a pattern from a sock.knitting book, I made it a stitch wider and mirrored it and put the two halves along each other. For waist shaping instead of teh sides I decreased and increased right next to the lace, and to emphasize the A line shape I increased some stitches between teh lace panels as well. .

If I would have one more ball I would have knitted it somewhat longet, but this way I ended up with about 15 cm to spare after binding off.
And what DaVinci has to do with all this? I watched the entire third season while knitting this. Crazy man, but a great man.

Photoes: Christopher Laurent Deli