Hinterland Sweater

This is my most ambitious knit to date. I have attempted two colourwork garments before (a hat and a sweater) and both of them were complete fails and are now sitting back in my yarn stash living their best lives as yarn once more. Therefore with zero successful colourwork projects under my belt I decided to give this a go.

Once again, an Instagram challenge has a lot to answer for and this time it was Through The Wardrobe Yarn Co‘s Size Inclusive Knit ALong (KAL) #SizeInclusiveKAL2020. I am firmly believe crafting is for anyone of any size. The size inclusivity discussion in the knitting community has been ongoing for at least the last few years and so when I saw a community challenge to celebrate all those designers who are working hard to extend size ranges and include more of our diverse and wonderful community, I knew I wanted to get involved!

The pattern is the Hinterland Sweater from Jennifer Steingrass of @knit.love.wool and I fell in love and bought the pattern when it was first released. When I saw this incredible test knit by JillKarina I had to copy the colour choices so full credit goes to Jill Karina for her inspired colour combination! I ordered the yarn from LoveCrafts in April and it’s sat in my stash waiting for me to build up the courage to cast on. I chose Lana Grossa Meilenweit Tweed in charcoal (which is now sadly OOS) and West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4ply in Nutmeg. (I made the Size 3 according to my measurements and actually only used 40g of the orange yarn so it might be a great scrapbuster if you have any fairly large scraps/half balls lying around?!)

I cast on at the beginning of September and couldn’t put it down, it was so exciting watching those trees grow! Then the body and the sleeves seemed to grow lightning fast as it is such mindless relaxing knitting! I absolutely loved the whole experience and am already scouring through Jennifer Steingrass’ patterns to choose another one as I enjoyed this so much!

I would also like to mention how much I love fingering weight sweaters! They add a layer of warmth but still have so much drape and don’t make me too hot, I just love them and don’t personally see me making anything above DK weight again as the one Aran weight sweater I’ve made is too warm and I never reach for it as I know I will be hot and sweaty in no time!

I cannot believe I made this, I feel like you can see the glee in my face in these pictures. It is far from perfect and I can see how my floats/tension improved as I went down the yoke but I have learned so much and I am ready to tackle more colourwork now, so if you have any favourite patterns or designers feel free to drop them in the comments below!