I Do Not Like It, Sam-I-Am

I’ve started a new cardigan for Alice because she’s got a thing at the moment about wearing dresses (probably because I’ve dressed her in trousers for seven years) and you don’t really wear sweaters over dresses (do you? I think it looks odd).

So I found a nice pattern we both liked – the Silje Jacket from GarnStudio. It’s got a pretty little flounce at the hem and I thought the colourwork yoke would be a nice thing to aim at after a mile or so of stocking stitch.

So far, so hoopy. I ordered the yarn and, after agonising for the requisite amount of time about my colour-substitutions, this is what we’ve got:

The main body of it will be in the navy, and the majority of the colourwork will be the pale blue, the grey and the white. The orange and the mustard are accent notes in the middle of the zigzag to give it a bit of zing. It’s Drops Karisma, which is the first time I’ve knitted with a GarnStudio yarn, despite using their patterns a few times.

So I cast it on and the frill was fine. Switched to 4mm needle for the body – which ought to be a perfectly reasonable size for dk – and I Am Not Happy. I think because it’s superwash (something I will be noting more carefully when buying yarn in the future) and therefore doesn’t ‘stick’ to itself, it’s producing a very thin and holey fabric:

It might be something that gets fixed when it’s washed, but given that the superwash treatment is specifically designed to stop it changing when it’s washed, I somewhat doubt it. Two options: a) carry on and hope or: b) change down a needle size again and hope that the extra stretch you get from superwash will compensate for the smaller size * (again, because it doesn’t stick to itself this creates a less stable fabric so it stretches more). I don’t really trust that the colourwork is going to look nice – you need the yarn to kind of fuzz up and get friendly with its neighbour for good colourwork – so I’m going to wash what I’ve done so far and see what that does.

 

*Yes, there is an option c) ‘just don’t be so picky’ but I think we both know that’s unrealistic.