Star and Brick Stitch Jumper

This project has been in the making for a long long time now.

About 2 years ago (September 2016 is the exact date according to my old emails)  my mother in law told me that her favourite woolen mill - Bendigo Woolen Mills -  was having a sale and asked if I wanted any yarn as a Christmas gift.  Oh course I said yes and I chose 2 balls of  of the Chestnut Collaboration and 1 ball of the Peacock Blue Collaboration (these are no longer in production but they are basic worsted weight 100% wool).  When the wool arrived the chestnut colour wasn't exactly what I had been expecting, but I figured I had it now I may as well use it and got to work.

I decided that I would really like a jumper with a lot of texture.  In my Ravely browsing I had come across the Tundra Jumper which I loved   The combination of the star stitch and  the brick stitch patterns were really cool.

The Tundra jumper was going to take way more yarn than I had so I decided to just draft a basic jumper from scratch.  After some swatching to determine gauge I got started.  Starting with the chestnut colour I made the back piece, the front piece and started one sleeve before realising that I  wasn't going to have enough yarn.  I switched to the peacock colour to finish the sleeves, but that just used up all the peacock yarn too and I had nothing left to finish the collar and the bottom band.  OK back to the drawing board.  I shoved my half made jumper into the corner and basically forgot about it for a year or so.

Then this March my Mother in Law told me she was ordering some more wool from Bendio Woolen Mills and asked if I wanted anything.  I asked if she could get me some more of the yarn and she was able to - saviour!  I then just had to wait for her next trip to the US to get it off her.

In the mean time I realised that that small mistake that I had made half way up the front piece - that I had told myself at the time wasn't too noticeable - was in fact too noticeable, so the first thing I did when the new wool arrived was to start the front piece again from scratch.  I thought about just trying to rip out to the mistake but then trying to figure out what row I was on and decipher my hand written pattern was too hard so I just started it over again.

I then went and ripped out the sleeves back to where I had finished the chestnut colour and re knit those - so basically this jumper was almost entirely knit twice!  The only piece I didn't do twice was the back.

At the bottom of the sleeves and the front and back pieces I added a cuff in the brick stitch using the chestnut colour as the mortar and the peacock blue as the brick.  It just adds a pop of colour to an otherwise plain top,

I sewed up all the seams. Up until now I've hated sewing up knitting, it has never ended up looking good.  But after watching a few youtube tutorials I think I did a pretty good job with this one.  Some of the seams are barely noticeable.

The final step was the collar - to keep in line with the rest of the jumper I ended up doing this twice.  The first time I decreased too much and the neckline ended up being more rounded than I wanted and too tight so I ripped it out and did it again.  This time it's ended up a smidge too loose, but I can live with it for the time being.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was the shaping I did through the front piece.  The back I just added shaping in at the side seams, but for the front I tried adding in darts at the bust line and I was really quite happy with the way this turned out.  It gives a really good fit to the jumper.

When I finished off my jumper I realised that I still had quite a bit of yarn left over so I decided I would make a matching beanie rather than just stashing the small piece of yarn.

I thought about using the brick stitch again but then decided to see what else I could find.  After extensive Ravelry searching I found the Uljan Beanie.  For a change I just followed the pattern exactly as written. I really like the way this turned out.

I STILL had yarn left over so I figured I may as well have a pair of mittens too.  I decided I would use the same stitch pattern as the beanie and just made it up as I went along.  These ended up a smidge tight - I think I pulled the floats a lot tighter knitting these than I did the beanie.  But they still fit.

While there is still (amazingly) a bit of wool left over I've decided to skip the cowl for now!  maybe once I'm no longer totally bored of working with the same color combination I'll go back to it but for now I'll just enjoy my matching jumper beanie and mittens.