My Valiant effort at knitting a great sweater

19 December 2008

As I’ve posted here before, I’m been working on knitting a sweater designed by fabulous UK knits designer Kim Hargreaves. It’s called Valiant. What I may not have mentioned is that my record of success in knitting sweaters is pretty absymal. I’ve been successful with vests and shells, but the addition of sleeves seems to throw a wrench in the works. So I’m absolutely delighted to report that I’ve finished Valiant. And it’s a viable sweater!

Now, it’s not as big as I was expecting. I think I’m having an issue with knitting too tightly. I did knit a couple of gauge swatches and used one size smaller needles as a result. I’m thinking that was a mistake.

So it’s not a big, bulky sweater. And it’s more of a turtleneck than a cowl. But it’s very pretty nonetheless.

Behold.

This sweater's really all about the neck.

And here's the neck. Such a prettty pattern!

In other knitting news, there’s been a huge improvement in my felted knitting basket (the one I blogged about a couple of weeks ago). I loved the bag, but it was floppy, unable to stand up on its own. Unless it was chock full of stuff, it more or less melted into a blue, orange and brown puddle. I didn’t know how to fix that. Enter my amazing friend, Bobbi. She’s an incredible seamstress and is very creative. She has a fabulous etsy shop (there’s still time to buy Christmas presents from her!) that you need to check out.

Bobbi and I belong to a craft club, a group of women who get together once a month. We sit there and do our own craft thing while enjoying one another’s company. There’s food involved. And often wine. The club met on Sunday and I brought my bag to show off (and to transport my current knitting project, another felted bag). Bobbi and I brainstormed solutions for my problem. And she turned them into a reality. Within a matter of days.

She took needlepoint canvas (which is made of plastic mesh, not canvas) and created what she calls an armature (I love that) to give the bag some structure. She was coming over for some hot chocolate and a chat anyway, so she brought me a selection of fabrics from which to choose. And she also brought her sewing machine. So awesome.

I picked out some fabulous fabric, she sewed it together, put it around the armature and sewed it all into the bag. I’m thrilled to bits at the transformation. Here’s the new and improved bag.