Last winter it became obvious that Miss Brittany is growing like a weed (she's just hit 4'11" at 11 years old) and would need at least one new hand spun, hand knit jumper this year so I decided to crack open Priscilla Gibson Roberts' book "Knitting in the Old Way" and give designing jumpers without my prescious computer software a go.

I don't know why I didn't try this years ago.

From the beginning:

First, a photo of what I've done so far.

I made the purple yarn starting with a filthy, but lovley and fine, merino fleece that I bought in an antique shop. It was so old that the lanolin had gone hard, but after persevering with washing instructions from friends, it came up beautifully soft. I then dyed it with Landscapes dye (colour Sarsparilla I think), carded it, spun it into a 2 ply "rustic look" (ie: I left in the bits that cause slubs) thickish worsted that we call 12 ply in Australia, and fulled it so it wouldn't pill.

The red and orange are from the scrap box. I think the red has kid mohair or something in it with wool and some other mystery fibres. It's a lot smoother than the 100% merino. I dyed the red with landscapes "Desert Pea" and the orange is lots of different scraps of wool dyed with colour Citrus. Both the red and orange have angelina fibre in them too.

For the pattern I'm using plan 11 (raglan jumper) from the 2nd edition of Priscilla Gibson Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way. It's so nice to finally understand "how" the different parts of a garment work together and be free of having to use antyhing more than a pencil, a scrap of paper and a tape measure to make a pattern. I still love my software (I use DesignaKnit Pro 6, and am saving up for version 7), but I don't have to rely on it any more.

Miss Brittany has also requested that I put zig zags on the sleeves and top somehow, so I'm thinking of repeating the same stripes across the yoke and the top of the sleeves. I need to figure out a slight variation of the zigzag or fiddle with the numbers so I can get it to centre properly though.

I usually like to spin a perfectly smooth 2 or 3 ply fingering weight yarn, so spinning a textured thick yarn like this is quite a change for me but the effect is exactly what I wanted and I'm very pleased with the results so far! Plus it knits up really quickly. I only started it yesterday and I'm over 24cm into the body already.

I'm on a bit of a bender as far as figuring out patterns for different garments from scratch. So far I've figured out hats (over 40 different styles in 17 sizes!), fingerless mitts (which will be featured in the first issue of Southern Cross Knitting), and raglan jumpers. Socks don't interest me much, but I might try figuring out how to custom fit them. Just from an academic interest point of view, you understand...