Sipila Sweater

When I saw the Sipila sweater designed by Caitlin Hunter of Boyland Knitworks I knew I was going to cast on. I bought the pattern as soon as it appeared on Ravelry. I love Caitlin Hunter’s designs and have knit several of them.

I love almost everything about this sweater. The colour combination is glorious. The colourwork pattern is perfection. The style of the sweater is everything I could have hoped for.

But…

I am quite a tight knitter and I use bamboo or wooden needles as I have Carpel Tunnel in my wrists, and I had gauge problems with this lovely sweater. With Sunset Highway, I knit the colourwork yoke 3 times and unravelled each time as I found it was too loose-fitting.

I decided to use the unravelled yarn for knitting the Sipila. The main colour is WYS Signature 4ply Spice Rack colour Pennyroyal. The contrast colour is Opal Solid colour Sock Yarn colour 5191 Anthracite. I adore this colour combination.

The beautiful WYS sock yarn is a finer superwash sock yarn compared to the fingering superwash single ply that is specified in the pattern. I do love knitting sock yarn weight sweaters as I find them much more flattering to wear. The finished sweater weighs 355g and is perfect for wearing on a cool summer day.

I like my sweaters to be loose-fitting, so I cast on the size 5 which should have given me 8” of positive ease at the bust circumference and 2” of positive ease in the sleeve. I swatched with numerous needle sizes and didn’t get the specified gauge. So, in the end, I cast on and hoped for the best. This really is not a good idea.

When I separated for the sleeves after finishing the yoke, I tried the sweater on and loved how the colourwork yoke fitted. It looked great in the mirror but I didn’t want it to be too snug around my midriff, so, I decided to knit an A-line style body by increasing the needle sizes every so often. The smallest needle I used was 3mm and the largest needle used was 4.5mm and I pretty much used every size in between other than 3.25mm.

Although the finished sweater is beautiful, and I wore it for photographs, other than that one outing, I seldom wear the Sipila and it remains folded up in my drawer. Why you may ask? I would have preferred a little more positive ease in the finished sweater. My sweater had less positive ease than I intended it to have.

I added extra length to the body rather than the cropped style in the pattern.

The stranded pattern on the yoke is elegant. I used German short rows for the shaping at the back of the neck as I like how they look.

I opted for the long sleeve version of the sweater. On the sleeves, I left out the “dots” and just did the main colourwork pattern that came after the dots. The sleeves are attractive and neat fitting.  The rolled edge at the neck and cuff gives a polished finish.

It is tricky to know what the ideal amount of positive ease is and what I feel most comfortable wearing. I liked the fit of the colourwork as I found when knitting the Sunset Highway that having the sweater with 8″ of positive ease around the yoke wasn’t flattering on me. So how could I have improved the situation? Maybe if I had increased some more stitches after I finished the colourwork yoke (changed to knitting the size 6) it would have given more ease in the body. I have now knit several sweaters and I find it frustrating that I’m still a bit hit and miss with the fit.

Bamburgh Castle

We travelled to Northumberland for an amazing holiday in May 2019…

Bamburgh Castle is utterly magnificent sitting in a spectacularly windswept setting.

A long sandy beach stretches along the front of the castle with Harkness Rocks to the north of the beach.

We drove towards Bamburgh Castle from Seahouses as Neil had spent the morning visiting Staples to see puffins… We passed the castle from the south and turned right onto a small lane to reach the roadside parking area near Harkness Rocks.

We walked down through the sand dunes to reach the beach and the rocks. It had turned into a bracing day. We stood near the rocks to get a wonderful view of Bamburgh Castle as a backdrop to the photographs of Sipila. Harkness Rocks is a combination of rocky ledges and rock and tidal pools.  Of course, I accidentally stepped back into a pool of water and got my shoes, socks and Sipila sweater wet…

By the time we’d finished taking photographs and called a halt, I was shivering, but I’d my heart set on photographing Sipila with Bamburgh Castle as a backdrop. Neil was wearing a warm jumper, coat, scarf, hat and fingerless mitts (it is best if the photographer isn’t too cold). I was wearing my lightweight Sipila sweater with a lightweight tee shirt underneath and the wind just seemed to cut through to the skin. Neil took some great shots!

We had hoped for a brighter day for photographing the sweater and Bamburgh castle but as we travelled north from Seahouses, the weather had turned misty and cold and looked like it would rain. Luckily, it had been sunny for Neil’s trip out to see the puffins.