I have the BBC weather page permanently in the background, the good news is that for us there’s only light snow in the forecast. Someone had told my son that there would be 10″ falling last night and I tried my best to convince him that it might be true in some places but not here. He wouldn’t listen and was disappointed to open the curtains this morning and find that it was school as usual. Told you so. Even though we’re not knee deep in snow it is still cold and windy. At times like this I think wool is a fantastic resource and the more of it I can cram on before I leave the house the better. If I have to stand idly about while my companion sniffs at lamp posts at least I can be warm while doing it. The weak point in my armour is my gloves, I didn’t knit them and I suspect that they have little or no wool in them because they aren’t very warm. This would normally have me casting on for fingers but my maternal instinct has taken over. The child must be kept warm and wrapped in wool, even though he wanders about in shirt sleeves all year around it doesn’t stop me from trying to wrap him up.

I had always intended to work this sweater from the bottom up. Top down would mean that I need to think about the collar first and I wasn’t ready for that so bottom up was the better option. I kept asking him the occasional  question – do you want a hood? what about a kangaroo pocket? long cuffs with a thumb hole? but I seem to have got it right with the first sketch. All the time I was spinning the yarn I was looking at patterns to see if there was anything else I wanted to incorporate into this sweater. I came across the Cambridge jacket very early on and it was almost exactly what I wanted, it’s got a full length zip and no ribbing at the bottom but that’s not exactly hard to change. That gave me another option in that I could amend that pattern rather than starting off with a blank sheet of paper.

There comes a point when it’s not worth the effort, if you have to modify a pattern too much then you might as well work it up from scratch because it’s just as much work. The clincher was the yarn. The Cambridge jacket is designed for a tension of 19.5 stitches per four inches and my handspun knitted to 20 stitches to four inches. Suddenly it made a lot of sense to make minor amendments to someone else’s pattern especially as it got me out of having to come up with the collar. If my sweater is going to end up looking vaguely like someone else’s design then it might as well be that design I use because I don’t make a point of ripping off other people’s work and I’m not going to start now. It’s going to need some adjustments to the sizing, I’ve already changed the bottom of the body and closed up the front but it’s all minor stuff. I’m already thinking about the sleeves and I’m considering working them down to the cuff. I’ve never worked a sleeve down with short row sleeve cap shaping so that will be something new to look forward to.

The other thing I’m looking forward to is finishing the socks I have on the needles because I really do need new gloves.