Before I talk about the sweater itself, can I just reiterate how nice Cascade Eco Wool is to work with?

First, it comes in enormous hanks. It’s like the yarn company is saying, hey, we know that you need a whole bunch of yardage to make a nice warm sweater, so here’s a ton of yarn so you can knit yourself a sweater without having to weave in a bunch of ends.

Second, it’s smooshy. It’s a bulky weight 100% wool that knits up to be soft enough to wear against your skin and looks nice, but it’s bulky so it has that squeezable smoosh factor.

Third, it’s un-dyed wool that came off someone’s sheep and wasn’t treated a whole lot before it got to me as the end-user. I like the idea of having fairly basic wool that’s largely untreated, without having to buy some sheep and sheer, clean, card, and spin the wool myself. With this project, that closeness happened pretty literally because the one of the two skeins had a good amount of hay in it. It was clean hay, but hay nonetheless.

When designing this project, my goal was to create the sweater equivalent of a sweatshirt. This is a top-down, knit-in-the-round, one piece sweater. It had a grand total of 8 ends to weave in (the neckline, hemline, two sleeves bind off edges, two armpit ends, plus the two ends when I added the second skein of yarn midway through the body). Knitting-wise, this was the easiest sweater I’ve made. The most complicated part was standing with the sweater on, trying to decide exactly how to place the buttons.

This sweater was knit on US 10 1/2 circular needles (a 16″ and 32″ circular were used). The neckline looks a little square, but when worn sits like a boatneck. I started with 80 stitches and increased one both before and after the stitch marked to separate the sleeves, front, and back of the sweater. The great thing about knitting top-down in the round is you can essentially try on your sweater at any point. Even though I’d done the math and checked my gauge, it was good to try on the sweater and make sure it was all working on.

The neckline has 2″ of garter stitch and the sleeves and bottom edge are each bordered with 5″ of 2×2 ribbing. Other than that, the sweater is stockinette stitch, which was a lovely, mindless knitting experience (and who doesn’t need  a little mindless in their lives?).

Happy Knitting…