Striped Stash Yarn Choux Sweater [sweater pattern by Jessie Maed Designs]

Choux Sweater Ravelry Link Here

I love this sweater pattern design by Jessie Maed. I love a lot of her designs and the Choux Sweater combines my desire for a loose, comfy, basic sleeve, loose arm opening and no seaming after you're done knitting. Getting to wear a sweater right off the needles rather than having to get around to blocking and sewing the pieces together is... magical. I knit to relax and get away from my more detailed forms of fiber work. This sweater pattern has the delight of immediate gratification when the knitting is done. I did have to stitch in a bunch of ends before this one was ready to wear, but I can do that with little effort while watching tv. 

I'm never totally sure about how a pattern like is going to come together, or how much I'll end up liking the style and fit. So I decided to go with stash yarn for the first run on the Choux Sweater. I don't have 3 skeins of any one stash yarn (probably not even 2 skeins)... so stripes. I have a lot of blues. Likely because I don't tend towards blues, turquoise yes, but not basic blues, so they've piled up. I got all the blues and their variations together, created a sample and washed it. (If it won't survive the washing machine in a lingerie bag, it's not worth knitting). I figured it was good enough, but as I started knitting the actual full-sized sweater, I didn't like it. I added a variegated sock yarn that has blue, turquoise, pink and plum, that solved my color problem. Just a little spot of pink/purples made it so I was excited about knitting this. I also sampled the stripes in single rows and double rows. I have something else large from a few years ago that I had started in single rows that I'm ripping out now, I like it for the Tin Can Knits beanie that I live in at work in the winter, but for a whole sweater I decided to change yarn every 2 rows. 

First Try-On

"You're knitting with pretty big needles for you" my friend Jenn commented as I cast on this project at our local tea shop in Old Town. She's right, knitting any bigger than size 4s is unlikely for me, even 4s are pushing it. Maybe it's just the fingering yarn size that kept this still fun to knit. I also don't really like heavy sweaters. I used to think I hated wool sweaters, but it was the weight and density that I used to find uncomfortable and suffocating. This is wool, so it's warm, but with the larger needles it's somewhat light, almost airy. A perfect comfort level. 

I have, in the past, created my own dolman style sweater that the COVID lock-down helped me finish. I was trying to keep track of how I knit it, but that wasn't fun. I knit it bottom-up and stitched the top of the arms up to a loose neck opening. I do love that sweater, but I didn't love figuring it out, and it's a bit bulky. I wanted to create a similar sweater but I wanted to work off of someone else's pattern. Jessie put this sweater out just in time (I bought 3 sweater patterns from her Ravelry shop during her birthday sale, hoping one would be ideal, the other 2 are raglans). I started this on a mini ski trip with a friend, messed up the middle area gsr pattern, had to pull that out and restarted. Tracking this on Ravelry, it looks like I finished this in about a month and a half. That's pretty good for me for a whole sweater. I have the size 9 needles and a great pattern to thank.  

Detail of stretchy bind off that I took out

The pattern suggested a stretchy cast-off for the bottom if you tend to knit tight. I do knit tight, so I used Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind off (there's a lot of links if you google that one). Upon my first try on it was TOO stretchy and I didn't like the way it hung. So I took it out and redid it with my normal bind off, which isn't really stretchy, but it fits my hips and that's what matters. 

My next blog post will be about the matching earrings