Christmas in August
Every year should have a mammoth knitting undertaking that makes me wonder if I’ve bitten off more than was sensible.
This year it’s been knitting a fairisle cardi in flat pieces, in a non-wool yarn, and then learning to set in sleeves to get the thing assembled. All while the recipient was 180 miles away and thus quite unavailable for fittings.
But it didn’t turn out ‘alf bad, if I say so myself.
This is my lovely mum graciously wearing a Christmas cardigan in August so that I could photograph my handiwork. The pattern is Marie Wallin’s Ninian.
Last Christmas (urgh... last Christmas...) mum mentioned that she might like a Christmas cardi, so what could I do but try to oblige in time for the next festive season?
I picked Ninian because mum likes a V-neck and dislikes anything too thick and bulky, meaning 4ply was the way to go, yarn-wise. I wanted a pattern that wasn’t overtly Christmassy (no reindeer, no trees, no santas...), so that it could be wearable beyond December. Oh, and the much missed Liz had Wallins’ Shetland book and was willing to lend it, which kinda helped a bit, too.
I completely reimagined the colour scheme for the cardi to turn it from ‘subtle modern twist on traditional Shetland design’ to ‘Christmassy without being completely gaudy’. It took several goes to get the new colour scheme right, and some of the yarn colourways I bought weren’t used in the final iteration at all (charcoal and bright leaf green both bit the dust because they just wouldn’t play nicely with the others).
The overall effect was inspired by a Vogue Knitting pattern for a Christmas cardi, from which I particularly stole the addition of dark teal into the more expected Christmas palette of red and green.
The yarn is Hjertegarn Blend Tendens, which is a 50/50 cotton/acrylic 4ply blend. Mum doesn’t wear wool, so I had to branch out into non-animal fibres for this. I was pretty wary about how they’d work for stranded knitting, but it actually wasn’t a problem at all: it played very nicely in the pattern and wasn’t hard on the hands to knit with. I did modify a couple of rows of one of the motifs to remove a 13-stitch float, which I thought would be a bit too long in a non-sticky yarn.
I picked the Hjertegarn because it comes in a really wide variety of bright shades, and not just a handful of baby pastels. I’d not bought from Rito Hobby before, and was a little nervous about them seemingly being a Denmark-based firm (post-Breixt import charges are a mystery to me), but they have a UK-based office or something, so it’s just like buying from a UK company, except that the parcel originates from Denmark somewhere.
My swatch cheerfully survived machine washing, and the yarn played nicely with steam blocking, too. What’s not to love?
The project overall turned out incredibly bittersweet: I’d be throwing ideas for it around with Liz for a couple of months, and she lent me a stack of fairisle books, and then I’d barely started knitting in earnest when she died. I’d be very much looking forward to showing her the work in progress when we met on the village green for tea, and -- frankly -- to having her guide me through the making-up process. Still, I muddled through it all and the seams turned out surprisingly well, all things considered. I’d only ever mattress-stitched cuddly toy clothes before, and there’s rather more room for manoeuvre there.
The sizing worked out well, too. It’s helped by mum and I being pretty much the same height and arm length. But even so, I didn’t fancy starting all over again if it’d turned out to be way off!
Project stats
Pattern: Ninian, by Marie Wallin, in the smallest size
Yarn: Hjertegarn Blend Tendens
Needles: 2.75mm for the ribbing, 3.25mm for the rest
Mods: completely reworked the colour palette, small change to one motif to reduce float lengths, worked arms and body shorter than stated, skipping over the lightly-patterned sections immediately after the ribbing.
Started: March 2021, finished August 2021:
