1932DiamondCashmereSweater
Yarn Used: 3 ply sapphire blue 100% cashmere hand twisted from 1 ply cashmere from ColormartUK for me. I believe I used about 100g but don’t quote me on this. I had two large balls of cashmere either 50g each or a little over.

Gauge & Needle Size: Ribbing on size 3 needles, lace on size 5.

Time Spent Knitting: Though I procrastinated the finishing of picking up stitches for the kneck and sleeves, I doubt this was more than 3-4 weeks work. Lace knits up really fast when it is a simple pattern like this.

New Skills Learned: The sweater was knit basically in one piece. You start with the back ribbing, work up the back, cast off for the neck, add some for sleeves, cast those off, add more stitches around the neck again and down the front you go. One weekend day I really got going and finished the whole front in one day! Pattern was pretty easy that I think someone who wanted to make this larger could keep the proportions and just add repeats of the pattern tot he width and height after swatching.

Frusterations or changes / clarification made to pattern: Lace pattern selvage edge was incorrect in instructions. Luckily earlier in this pattern book there is instructions for this lace pattern. Another problem was once you cast off for the neck you are left with no selvage edge on the lace. (The selvage edge is garter stitch.) Now that could be fine but there is yo’s at the end of the pattern. Basically I improvised with a odd way of increasing by putting yarn forward as if I were to yo at the end of a row but knitting into it on the next row right away. It made a long string of knitting but was fine to pick up stitches into for the neckline.

Another improvisation was doing the sleeve ribbing by picking up stitches on double pointed needles, though the pattern did not specify to do so. Unfortunately I only had alluminum needles around in the size needed. I quickly noticed though the same size, I knit tighter on alluminum. I adjusted by knitting a bit looser and everything came out a’ok. The sleeves maybe took an hour each side. It really made me less fearful of circular knitting on dpn’s. I’m almost ready for my first pair of socks!

One other note. If anyone ever knits this up and finished off the sleeves, when they say “cast off loosely” , they sure mean it! I cast off with size 8 needles and no pulling at all. The sleeves just fit and worked better after blocking. I learned this after casting off once with size 5 needles. I had arm holes the size of baguette! Live and learn!

In the future: I learned I hate aluminum needles. I did the lace on aluminum. They seemed so slippery, heavy and the paint finish was chipping off on a new set of needles. In the future I will try to stick to bamboo needles for knitting.

Also, I think for this airy of lace with so many yo’s I won’t use such a softly twisted cashmere. I’m not disapointed with the finished product though. It’s soft as a babies butt and the color is royal.