A Fresh Start

In another week summer will officially be over and autumn will be upon us.  I love this time of year, when the temperatures cool down and Mother Nature treats us to one last blast of colour before the grey of winter settles in. 

Fall also signals the return of sweater weather and, for us knitters, sweater-knitting weather.  For the last week or so my fingers have been itching to cast on a sweater, particularly Hallett’s Ledge, which was featured in the latest edition of Twist Collective. 

I really wanted to use some yarn from my stash but the only thing I had that was comparable to the Rowan Felted Tweed Aran that the pattern called for was some Joe Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed.  While lovely, I didn’t feel that the cranberry colour really suited this design; I kept picturing it in a light neutral, similar to the original design.  In fact, I couldn’t stop envisioning it in the very yarn that was half knit up into my Fylingdales cardigan.

Begun way back in January 2009, this sweater has spent most of its life languishing in a partly-knit state.  Every so often I would pull it out and knit a few inches but would soon grow bored with its repetitive stitch pattern and shove it back into its bag.  I really like the basic design of this sweater but the fact that it has drop shoulders kept niggling away at the back of my mind and I wasn’t sure that I would even like the finished product, should I ever manage to actually complete it. 

The yarn is also Jo Sharp Silkroad but in a DK rather than an Aran weight.  But the yarn is not your usual DK—it knits up more like a worsted and I didn’t think it would be too difficult to rework the numbers.  In fact, a quick check of the pattern showed that one of the cast-on numbers corresponded almost exactly to my required number of stitches making it relatively simple to sub in my preferred yarn.  Easy peasy.

So with very little regret and a great deal of relief (no more UFO on my conscience) I frogged Fylingdales, reskeined the yarn, and gave it a good soak to restore it to its original condition.

 

Then I picked up an unused skein and cast on for Hallett’s Ledge.

Now that I’ve given this yarn new life I am determined to knit it up into the sweater it was meant to be.  It has spent way too many months at the bottom of a knitting bag and deserves to see the light of day.