This blog has been rather sadly neglected of late. I can only hope to remedy that now!

Today’s post has been over 6 months in the making – it’s a brand new knitted sweater! I’ve been really enjoying knitting of late as there’s something so satisfying about how little loops of yarn can turn into something so wonderful!

I’d used one Kit Couture kit earlier in the year to make the Stjernøya Slipover, my first attempt at the fair isle knitting technique. It went so well I decided to splurge on a second kit (it helped that they were on sale at the time)! I went for a bigger project this time and picked the Kalsoy Sweater.

I started this project back in February/ March (I can’t even remember exactly because it was that long ago!) and only finished it this September. I’m never much inclined to knit over the summer so my projects that aren’t finished by May tend to have a long delay until it’s cooler!

It uses a pretty colour stranded pattern worked in the round and in stripes. Whilst the pattern looks complicated, like with any knitting pattern, once you’ve worked a few rounds it comes much more easily as you go! The instructions are relatively minimal and I’d definitely class it as an advanced pattern because of that. I had to use a lot of common sense especially with the sleeve and the yoke to get the colourwork pattern and the increases/ decreases right.

That being said I was obviously able to complete it and I’m no knitting expert so it’s 100% doable if you’re willing to put in the effort.

The technique of knitting in the yoke round until almost at the tops of the shoulders then setting in the final bit of the sleeve head was new to me as well as the split collar. I’m all about learning new techniques and I found this all fascinating!

The background has come out a little greyer in the photos but it’s a light turquoise blue in reality. It’s a real quirky mix of colours. I mostly picked it because I loved the sample off the website and for whatever reason I find it really hard to visualise what the whole sweater would look like from the little colour swatches they offer.

This is the ultimate cold weather sweater in my wardrobe at the mo. Super warm and snuggly and it has that lovely scandi vibe going on!

For reference I made an L on 5mm needles. The gauge was about right for my knitting style and the fit was as expected. I’ve not blocked it. Don’t judge. 😅