I’ve knitted a magical, rainbow, unicorn of a jumper/sweater!
But, what is this, Carolyn?? I didn’t know you were into magical rainbow unicorns?! Well, of course there is indeed a story behind this…
my little “troll” progress keeper was my constant companion and cheerleader… 😉
So, in the past few months, idly hanging around on youtube I randomly got into the world of knitting youtubers, and watched a few videos… I think it was Katie of Inside Number 23 who introduced me to these wonderful things called knitting advent calendars … I thought they sounded like such a fun idea! at roughly the same time I’d been to Calico and Ivy checking out all the wool and other yummy eye candy they always have in there and seen and admired some gorgeous wool hand-dyed by a local lady going by the name of Dingo Dyeworks, and I mentally tucked the name away. Later on, in search of an advent calendar, I found that the same Dingo Dyeworks had produced one for this year. SO naturally… I bought one!
day 1; and I’m ready to party!!!
The advent calendar came in the form of 24 cute little boxes, each with a mini skein of wool inside; the colours of which were a complete mystery. There is also a 25th box, which is much larger and contains a full-sized skein of the same sock yarn, but I decided to base my “advent”-ure project on the 24 mini-skeins. The only thing you knew about them was that they were all on the Dingo Dyeworks “ridgey-didge” base; a fingering-weight 85% fine merino 15% nylon superwash, which I’d checked out in Calico and Ivy and liked. SO I laid my plans… to make a jumper, or sweater. I bought from C + I a skein of similar gauge yarn in an undyed cream colour and did a few swatching experiments, made a few calculations and a plan, decided I could indeed make a whole jumper from sock yarn. I knew knitting just a little bit every day would be perfectly manageable, and fairly painless. In fact, I always find the lead up to Christmas so full of stress and madness that I welcomed the thought of carving out a little bit of time in each day, to just devote myself to a quiet, happy and mindless project just for me.
If you follow me on instagram, you might have seen my daily “unboxing”, a single example of which is above… I had so much fun just opening the yarns and seeing that day’s colour! Honestly, even without the daily calming and meditative knitting session, and notwithstanding that I now am the proud owner of a divine new jumper – the texture of which is so baby-soft and so squishy, and basically too too heavenly to even describe… just opening the days’ little box each morning was also such an enormous joy for me. I also posted a picture in my stories each day of the day’s progress. If you want to see them all, I’ve saved the whole process in my permanent stories, called “advent”-ure, at the top of my page 🙂
day 3… 🙂
I started from the bottom, and knitted the same number of rows on each sleeve and the body section each day, and then when I got to the appropriate place to start the yoke, joined them all together and continued in the same way, decreasing raglan style up to the neckline.
day 14…
Before opening the first skein I wasn’t 100% sure there would be enough yarn in each little skein to do the width of stripe I wanted, in this case my plan was to “fill in” between the stripes with a few rows of the undyed yarn I’d bought for the cast-on… but after day one I’d happily determined there was plenty! in fact I estimate I only used roughly a half of each skein, even for the widest sections.
day 17…
I’d decided to just knit each colour as it appeared and not second guess anything at all! so the delicious Unknown of it all was exciting and fun; but I have to admit there were one or two days I was like “whaaa??” However I’d checked out the Dingo Dyeworks advent calendar from 2017, which was so so beautiful, and I just had to put my trust in this years’ being beautiful too.
day 20…
It is a little different, to be sure! and while not all the colours were what I might have chosen and there was even a coupla days where I truly wondered where this was all going! Would this advent-ure be irredeemably unicorn-ly?! However I’m very happy to admit that my fears were unfounded and I feel like my finished sweater is now one of my loveliest and, dare I say, the prettiest that I have?! and the colour-story worked out quite beautifully in the end. I’m still about 99% convinced days 16 and 17 were mixed up! but that’s neither here not there really, since you can’t really tell that in the end result.
aaaaand, day 24!
Knitting on this every day was, as I’d hoped, a calming and peaceful, meditative and fun! interlude in the lead-up to Christmas for me, so I am so glad I decided to do this … yes, it resulted in a smaller pile of me-made things I could give my loved ones; I bought a few presents for my family this year and I refuse to feel guilty about that! and I still did manage to make a few things. And I have a beautiful and unique new jumper!
back, indistinguishable from the front actually, but you know…
Details:
Jumper; my own design, made from the Dingo Dyeworks 2018 advent calendar
Skirt; Vogue 1247, made from curtaining fabric, details here
Thongs; fipper, bought on our holiday in Bali
Your jumper is divine! The colors balanced perfectly and the fit is excellent. And with your creative spirit I wouldn’t be surprised to see you venture into dyeing your own yarn – it’s so simple and accessible, as even with food dyes and vinegar one can achieve wonderful results.
What a brilliant idea and yes I watched it every day. I wonder if they would ship this to the UK.
Knitting wise that is the most wonderful jumper I have ever seen on a blog – Whoop! Jo xxx
What a brilliant idea for a smashing sweater! And a wonderful use of the mini skeins.
It was fun seeing you open up the boxes and I had no idea what you were knitting. What a great idea and you now have a really lovely jumper/top to wear.
Oh wow, your jumper turned out beautiful! And such a lovely idea to spend some time each day meditatively knitting. 🙂
Your jumper is just gorgeous! I watched the “unboxing” every day on Instagram and was so excited to see the new colours! You are so disciplined in knitting them up right away – I’m afraid that I would have just wanted to touch them and squeeze them and keep them “pristine” without knitting them up! In this way lay a hoarder! Haha!
That’s beautiful! I love the random nature of just knitting whatever came out of the box. I’m also impressed at knitting a whole sweater in less than a month, but I’m also ridiculously slow at knitting and am averaging one sweater every 3 years currently.
Such a pretty sweater! The colours go together so well! 🙂
What an amazing project! Honestly when I saw a few of the progress stories I thought you were just knitting a scarf (which still seemed pretty cool!) we’ll done you!
That’s what I thought too! This is way more exciting – not that I don’t love a good scarf.
Carolyn I can’t tell you the amount of pleasure I derived each day to see the color revealed in your yarn advent calendar video. And I had no idea you were knitting a sweater. As the colors unfolded I thought “I would like a sweater just like that” and then the final item exceeded my dreams. In fact this whole adventure has convinced me to try knitting again (for maybe the 10th time 🙂 but how long until I can make the sweater of my dreams. In any case – I love this so much, it is so pretty!!!
I loved watching along and for a long while was convinced you were making a scarf. I think I gasped when I saw it was a jumper. It’s gorgeous and suits you very well.
I love the idea of chunking a reasonably big project into manageable portions like this!
Absolutely gorgeous Carolyn.
You always make such beautiful amazing stuff. Happy New year’s to you and your famiy. I loved the Christmas presents also.
Omg that is brilliant. You are a true creative, thanks for sharing!
The finished sweater is absolutely beautiful Carolyn. Such a brilliant idea to make the time to knit it as you go, as otherwise I think there’s always a risk that the yarn just goes into the stash after unboxing and stays there a long time.
Wow that’s just lovely. Maybe my resolution for 2019 should be to actually knit something that looks like something. If I thought I could ever make a jumper like this, I’d be on it now!
I had never heard of such a thing as a knitting advent calendar! How interesting… a very colorful sweater that looks fun to wear.
You’re jumper turned out beautifully! I would love to learn how to knit but sadly is a skill that I can not wrap my head around.
I think this sweater is “unicorny” – in the best possible sense! I love its whimsy and brightness. It’s totally cheerful and I imagine it suits the light pattern in your part of the world very well.
Gorgeous Carolyn, i’ve Never heard of such a thing. So clever and I do love the manliness of the yarn. Happy 2019! X
*ummm marliness actually, not manly at all obvs!
A gorgeous little jumper and what a great idea to used the Advent Calendar yarn for this.
This is SO COOL! I love it. What a neat idea.