New Project

It's so terribly rare that I actually make a commercially designed pattern in the yarn it was designed for that I am still a little surprised at this sweater in progress. It is "Ljod" from Elsebeth Lasvold's Book One The Viking Knits (picture # 3 is the illustration from the book). This particular pattern is the reason why I bought the book in the first place several years ago.

I purchased the yarn during a stop at Knitterly in Petaluma last March, intending to do a very different design but it was just a little short of being enough yarn. I bought it in a moment of weakness as it was just the look I was after, but it really wasn't enough. So I pondered and puzzled, searched my pattern archives, and thought about what it was that I actually wanted to make, and I found this pattern. It's just what I wanted.

After swatching a bit and finding that, as usual, I needed to go down a needle size I actually got the recommended gauge and commenced knitting the back. Picture 1 is the back completed up to the neck; picture 2 is a detail of the love knot cable. It's pretty straightforward once I got a handle on the chart and I really like the finished results.

The shaping for the cardigan is very feminine; the triangular reverse stockinette gussets for the cabled areas decrease on each side every 4th row, while the side edges are also shaped through the waist area. A 2-stitch purl section continues up the body after each gusset is decreased away like a princess seam line, and shaping continues along this line as the body progresses. Once the waist shaping begins to increase again for the upper body the shaping is also done along these purl stitch lines as well as the side seams.

I've just begun the left front and will post more on the progress of Ljod after I digress in the next few days with a more serious project.