Transitions
Spring garments and test knitting The Knit Purl Girl's Feather Sweater
I grew up in Los Angeles, which is not a place known for its dramatic seasons.1 It wasn’t until I moved to Iowa for university that I got my first taste of crisp autumn, bitter winter, and blissful spring. For the first time in my life, I understood why one of Mum’s favorite songs is “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. It’s a celebration of the wonderful that is those first warm, sunny days when the earth seems to come back to life.
Since I’ve left LA, I’ve become the kind of person who responds strongly to the spring. Although the grey, cool winters here in the UK don’t affected me as badly as some, I can rely on the blue skies, sunny day to boost my mood. I will do whatever I can to absorb as much sun as possible to the point that my husband and I joke that I must be part plant.
Along with spring comes the urge for freshness. I want to throw open the windows to air out the house, spring clean in the form of decluttering, and generally make my life feel fresh and new.
As a knitter, it’s probably no great surprise that with the change of the season comes a change in what I want to knit. In the autumn and winter, all I want is to work on deep, moody jewel-tones with cozy textures that make for jumpers. However, this time of year all of that goes out the window and I want light colors (aka lots of neutrals), more drapey fabrics, and simple, clean lines.
Moving from NYC to London meant an adjustment in terms of my wardrobe and, seven years on, I think I’m nearly there. New York’s bitter, cold winters give way to humid, hot summers. Wearing even silk and linen summer knits in June, July, and August—and even late in the spring—is deeply uncomfortable for someone like me who feels the humid heat profoundly. Knitting was solidly an autumn to winter activity when I lived in New York in a way that it doesn’t have to be in London.
It is a myth that it constantly rains in the UK. We do have days that vary from pouring rain to mizzy grey, but we also have beautiful spring and summer days. However, outside of heat waves we do not have the oppressive heat that New Yorkers and Angelenos deal with for a good portion of the year. In London, I can justify wearing knits in summery yarns and, in fact, sometimes a transitional knit is exactly what I need in my wardrobe.
This year, I’ve decided to be a little more intentional about transitioning my knitting from winter to spring a little earlier than usual. Rather than knitting up another wool jumper in February, I started a Cumulus Blouse, which uses two strands of mohair held together. However, I set that aside in March for the ultimate spring knit, The Knit Purl Girl’s Feather Sweater.
I was fortunate enough to get the chance to test knit this jumper over the month of March and, which The Knit Purl Girl has since released on Ravelry. It is an oversized drop shoulder jumper knitted with three strands of mohair held together at a very open gauge (14 stitches per four inches). It creates a jumper of contradictions: warm but airy, cozy but incredibly light.
When I saw The Knit Purl Girl advertise for test knitters on Instagram, I knew that it would be the perfect transitional garment for the spring—something I do not currently have much of in my wardrobe. Even better, I had just placed a large order for Soft Silk Mohair from Knitting for Olive in Cloud for a different jumper, and I knew that it would work perfectly for this test knit.
I enjoyed knitting the Feather Sweater immensely. It looks like a simple garment but, this being my first contiguous drop shoulder garment, there was more to engage my mind than I expect as I learned how jumpers of these kind are constructed.2 Even better, this jumper had a number of firsts for me when it came to techniques:
first drop shoulder construction where the back panel is knitted first and then the front is picked up at the shoulders
first tubular bind off (hem and cuffs)
first sewn collar
first time inserting German short rows into a sleeve cap to create shape
first test knit
I tried to be as true what I take to be the spirit of test knitting as possible3, although I will admit to reading a German short row instruction wrong and inadvertently increasing the size of the shaped sleeve cap. This was easily fixed on the fly with a few rapid decreases once I finished the main sleeve decreases and was also, I should point out, entirely my fault.4
The jumper came off of the blocking mats just before the Easter bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I was able to wear it to dinner that Friday and also on Easter Sunday with my in-laws. I found it perfect worn with a leather jacket for the 10 to 15 C degree swing we seem to be in at the moment. It has that cozy, oversized but not too oversized fit that looks great with jeans but manages to still be polished.
I am now on the hunt for other spring and summer staple patterns as well as lighter yarns such as silk, linen, and other compositions. I’ve already popped Cookie the Knitter’s Umbria Summer Top and Irene Lin’s Roving Summer Top into my queue, but if you have other recommendations as to where I should look, please leave a comment!
We do, in fact, have seasons, but there is a joke that they go something like this: fire season, flood season, and earthquake season with the Santa Anas thrown in for a bit of variety.
Garment construction continues to be a fascination for me and is something that I’m trying to understand more of as I try to hone in on what I like and why I like it, especially when it comes to fit.
Following the pattern as the designer intended to check that the pattern writing is accurate and clear.
Much to my amusement, I wound up having to replicate my mistake on the second sleeve or risk having a noticeable different in sleeve size. Needless to say, when I made the mistake intentionally I could not understand why I’d misread the instructions in the first place…