Jersey With a Soft Bow, COMPLETE!

Sound the trumpets (and forgive the ropy picture) for IT IS FINISHED!

Way back in April 2011, when I had finished my Madeira jumper and had about a month to go until the first Waltz on the Wye, I cast on the 1950s pattern 'Jersey with a Soft Bow' from A Stitch in Time volume 1. Rather optimistically, I intended to wear it at the event, and needless to say it was nowhere near finished by the time the event rolled round. As ever, things got in the way of it after that: freelance, swaps, work, reading. I decided to have a good push and finish it over Christmas.

After I'd completed the front, there was a little nagging voice in my head. Your tension's a bit loose, it said. Don't you think this is going to be too big? it said.

I ignored the little voice and knitted the back.

You know, it still looks too big, the little voice said.

I ignored the little voice and knitted the sleeves.

Crunch time came: all the pieces were done, and it was time to sew them together, and there was no avoiding the fact that the little voice was right, it was far too big. I could have sewn it up, but I'd never have been happy with it, so I reknitted the whole front and back. I've pushed myself over the past week to finish it, it's finally done and I wore it to work today. Although the reknitting took lots more time, it's worth it to have something I'm happy with. It would be awful to feel a vague sense of disappointment every time I looked at something I'd made.

The pattern itself was a dream; a combination of my loose tension and choosing a yarn other than the recommended one were what caused my problems. I used Fyberspates Scrumptious 4ply, a silk/wool blend which knits beautifully, has a rich sheen and feels lovely against the skin. It's not a cheap yarn, but I look after my clothes and decided it was worth the expense. The jumper was one of the nicest things I've ever had to sew up. The strong ribbing on the upper body and clear waves on the torso made aligning the knitted pieces really easy.

New vintage knitting book!
If you like vintage knits, Susan Crawford's new book, Coronation Knits, is out now, full of patterns from, and inspired by, the Coronation period. I'm one of the scheduled stops on the blog tour for it, so I'll review the book when my turn comes around, but in the mean time here are the stops so far:

Just Call Me Ruby (Susan Crawford)
Jen AC Knitwear (Jen Arnall-Cullford)
The Icelandic Knitter (Helene Magnusson)
Knitting Institute (Knitting Magazine)

Knitting Institute is the latest stop on the tour, so you can pick the next stops up there. On the 24th of June the tour moves on to textile historian Ingrid Murnane's blog, which I know will be fascinating, as Inny's done lots of research into knitting history. She wrote a fantastic piece for Simply Knitting magazine on London transport workers' knitting for the war effort in the 1940s, and I can't wait to see what she does for Coronation Knits!