Written in the stars?

Once again the faithful meeting of yarn and pattern. In my favorite ebay shop (Kingcraig's fabric, you know from Scotland) there was a bunch of yarn on sale. I was different from their usual fingering or worsted as it said "Hunters chunky". I had no idea what they mean by that, but it was all wool, it was red, it was tweedy, and it had great price...The only problem, it was only 380 gramms, which is just not enough for a full sweater especially from this weight. Then Angela reminded me of oneof my old favorites. Someting I saved a long time ago, thinking, sometimes when I will come across the right yarn...

The pattern is Kristina Sutherland's Star cross'd love but once again I made so many modification. Mostly because the pattern only comes in size XS (I am no way that small) and for bulky yarn (this yarn was called chunky, but though it is thicker than the usual scottish yarn, not that thick). At the end I think I left the basic structure , and recalculated the numbers, changed cables, knitting directions here and there, to make it totally seamless, and even changed the shape a bit to better suit my body and taste.

Started with the back, adding some ribbing and narrow cables between the big ones to accomondate the bigger size. Changed the middle cable to a three stranded one for symmetry. And increased under the arms to get a real arm-hole. For the front I picked up stitches from the shoulder, knitting the big cables (and a small one for the size) downwards, adding the arnhole shaping underarms. When I picked up the stitches for the collar once again I rearranged the stitches and cables to get them even and symmetric. The same went for the body stitches and decreased and increased for wais shaping, then at the waist ribbing (which is actually 1 by 1 cables, twisted every sixth row, I added some stitches here and there so they can flow out of the patterning AND more of an A lined shape. The sleeves were picked up and used short rows for shaping them.

The pictures don't really give back the lovely red the yarn actually is. It was spun from shades of red and bordoeaux, with tine specks of purple/blue thrown in.

It was a bit "harder", scratchier than the other scottish wool, but then it all changed when I washed it. Once again it bloomed gorgeously, but you've already heard me wax poetic about that.

We had a perfect photo-shoot planned, the perfect place picked out (the stars of Chris's school), I dressed up in total style (buble shaped skirt from Promod, red thights, and boots, even had some make up on) but the light would not cooperate. And there days it is just way too cold to do outside shots. Sorry about that.