OWLS

Kate Davies' Owls pattern is now a knitting classic. I've been very late to the knitting party, but here is my first version of her lovely fitted jumper, knitted in 12 ply Guanaco. 
It took just under 5 x 100g skeins for the size S - a little less than the pattern called for, which surprised me as my tension was a little under the gauge.



Its a very quick knit, for a jumper, which is the very pleasing thing about knitting with 12ply.



There are plenty of 12ply patterns about, due to the speed of knitting with these chunky yarns, but very few of the patterns are so beautifully fitted. See those nice darts at the back waist!  Most 12 ply jumpers have a very cosy and oversized look - dare I say boxy...



The most delightful part of this pattern for me, are the owl cables.



These cables give just enough embellishment to make the jumper interesting to knit and wear, but are not too complicated for a relatively inexperienced knitter.
This is such a quick jumper to knit that I might be able to squeeze in another one whilst it is still cold enough to wear a snuggly alpaca/wool top layer

Raglan rib jumper, in Crofter Chunky

A friend of mine wanted to knit her teenage daughter a jumper in Crofter Chunky, having made a few scarves from this lovely soft yarn.
My go-to scarf pattern for Crofter is a 2x2 rib, on generous 7.0mm needles, to give a loose and drapey, snuggly scarf.
Naturally a jumper needs a firmer tension, so it won't fall apart with wear, so we went looking for a pattern.
There were none in the Crofter pattern books in 2x 2 rib.
There were a few on Ravelry in 2x2 rib, but none in smaller sizes that we could discover, and none were quite right - with raglan sleeves and a loose polo neck, as requested, so I made one up.

Sorry, you can't see much jumper here, so I will show you again.

I knit this for my own teenage daughter (size 6-8 in Australian women's sizes), using a much tried technique known as winging it.

I knit from the bottom up, in seperate pieces, to take advantage of the self patterning effect of the Crofter yarn. The repeats are not particularly long in this yarn, and if there are two many stitches to a row/round, the self patterning effect turns into an all-over colourful, non patterned look, which is quite appealing in its own way, but not what I had in mind. I wanted stripes.

Unfortunately, I mislaid the last 3 balls of this colourway (Misty Moor 61) and so did not have enough yarn to keep breaking the ball and winding on during the sleeves in order to make the stripes continuous across the front and back yoke. ( I later found the balls in a scarf kit, with rather annoying timing!)

My daughter did not even notice this stripe mismatch.

I will be trying out this pattern again in a different yarn, I think it has real possiblites. This is just as well, as my friend went home and looked through some magazines, and found just the pattern she was looking for - only about 3 sizes too big. I guess we will be sitting down with a calculator some day soon in order to convert it.