I’ve knitted a magical, rainbow, unicorn of a jumper/sweater!
But, what is this, Carolyn?? I didn’t know you were into magical rainbow unicorns?! Well, of course there is indeed a story behind this…
my little “troll” progress keeper was my constant companion and cheerleader… 
So, in the past few months, idly hanging around on youtube I randomly got into the world of knitting youtubers, and watched a few videos… I think it was Katie of Inside Number 23 who introduced me to these wonderful things called knitting advent calendars … I thought they sounded like such a fun idea! at roughly the same time I’d been to Calico and Ivy checking out all the wool and other yummy eye candy they always have in there and seen and admired some gorgeous wool hand-dyed by a local lady going by the name of Dingo Dyeworks, and I mentally tucked the name away. Later on, in search of an advent calendar, I found that the same Dingo Dyeworks had produced one for this year. SO naturally… I bought one!
day 1; and I’m ready to party!!!
The advent calendar came in the form of 24 cute little boxes, each with a mini skein of wool inside; the colours of which were a complete mystery. There is also a 25th box, which is much larger and contains a full-sized skein of the same sock yarn, but I decided to base my “advent”-ure project on the 24 mini-skeins. The only thing you knew about them was that they were all on the Dingo Dyeworks “ridgey-didge” base; a fingering-weight 85% fine merino 15% nylon superwash, which I’d checked out in Calico and Ivy and liked. SO I laid my plans… to make a jumper, or sweater. I bought from C + I a skein of similar gauge yarn in an undyed cream colour and did a few swatching experiments, made a few calculations and a plan, decided I could indeed make a whole jumper from sock yarn. I knew knitting just a little bit every day would be perfectly manageable, and fairly painless. In fact, I always find the lead up to Christmas so full of stress and madness that I welcomed the thought of carving out a little bit of time in each day, to just devote myself to a quiet, happy and mindless project just for me.
If you follow me on instagram, you might have seen my daily “unboxing”, a single example of which is above… I had so much fun just opening the yarns and seeing that day’s colour! Honestly, even without the daily calming and meditative knitting session, and notwithstanding that I now am the proud owner of a divine new jumper – the texture of which is so baby-soft and so squishy, and basically too too heavenly to even describe… just opening the days’ little box each morning was also such an enormous joy for me. I also posted a picture in my stories each day of the day’s progress. If you want to see them all, I’ve saved the whole process in my permanent stories, called “advent”-ure, at the top of my page 
day 3…
I started from the bottom, and knitted the same number of rows on each sleeve and the body section each day, and then when I got to the appropriate place to start the yoke, joined them all together and continued in the same way, decreasing raglan style up to the neckline.
day 14…
Before opening the first skein I wasn’t 100% sure there would be enough yarn in each little skein to do the width of stripe I wanted, in this case my plan was to “fill in” between the stripes with a few rows of the undyed yarn I’d bought for the cast-on… but after day one I’d happily determined there was plenty! in fact I estimate I only used roughly a half of each skein, even for the widest sections.
day 17…
I’d decided to just knit each colour as it appeared and not second guess anything at all! so the delicious Unknown of it all was exciting and fun; but I have to admit there were one or two days I was like “whaaa??” However I’d checked out the Dingo Dyeworks advent calendar from 2017, which was so so beautiful, and I just had to put my trust in this years’ being beautiful too.
day 20…
It is a little different, to be sure! and while not all the colours were what I might have chosen and there was even a coupla days where I truly wondered where this was all going! Would this advent-ure be irredeemably unicorn-ly?! However I’m very happy to admit that my fears were unfounded and I feel like my finished sweater is now one of my loveliest and, dare I say, the prettiest that I have?! and the colour-story worked out quite beautifully in the end. I’m still about 99% convinced days 16 and 17 were mixed up! but that’s neither here not there really, since you can’t really tell that in the end result.
aaaaand, day 24!
Knitting on this every day was, as I’d hoped, a calming and peaceful, meditative and fun! interlude in the lead-up to Christmas for me, so I am so glad I decided to do this … yes, it resulted in a smaller pile of me-made things I could give my loved ones; I bought a few presents for my family this year and I refuse to feel guilty about that! and I still did manage to make a few things. And I have a beautiful and unique new jumper!
back, indistinguishable from the front actually, but you know…
Details:
Jumper; my own design, made from the Dingo Dyeworks 2018 advent calendar
Skirt; Vogue 1247, made from curtaining fabric, details here
Thongs; fipper, bought on our holiday in Bali
The post a knitting advent-ure appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.