And here she is: my first piece of knitted clothing, fresh off the knitting needles! I’ve been checking out knitted tees for some time and have a couple of patterns I really want to make but no yarn yet – and some yarn I want to use, but no pattern for that weight. I went to Tolt Yarn and Wool for the first time a few months back with a good friend intending to buy some yarn, but I was just couldn’t find what I was looking for, which is crazy in that amazing shop. Perhaps it was the abundance of choice that led to my indecision, I don’t know.

Anyway, We are Knitters were having a big sale and I had a newbie discount code on top to use, so I thought I’d buy a couple of kits and just get stuck in. It did mean that I was picking the colours based simply on the computer screen, but I went for it anyway. When the yarn arrived, the colours turned out to be very accurate compared to the screen image, so I was super happy with them.

The We are Knitters kit contains the yarn, pattern, needles (optional), sewing needles to sew the piece together, a label and some stickers. The packaging is cute and the instructions are nice and clear.

My first attempt ended up with me frogging it. I lost track of my rows and thought I’d corrected it twice, but did it wrong both times. Lesson learnt: find a better way of tracking rows when you’re knitting a larger garment. I decided just to do it the caveman way and scratch lines on slabs of granite,  pieces of paper.

The tee is very simple and therefore ideal for a beginner like me. It basically comprises two rectangles, which have sections of rib knit, stockinette stitch and moss stitch. The contrast is attractive though and the sections small enough that I didn’t get too fed up with the same stitch. Nevertheless, I actually started this blog post in May and knitted up the front very quickly and… look! It’s October!

From what I can gather, this is not an uncommon problem in knitting: that you knit up the first one of a pair (front/back, socks, etc) fast and then the second one becomes slightly more of a drag because it’s effectively the same thing again. I was excited to finish all the same, and, even though I was actually not that optimistic that it would be that nice on me, I really like it!

The wool is lovely and soft, so I get a nice bit of drape to avoid the whole rectangle effect somewhat – and boy, does it feel fancy. This feels like the sort of $300 sweater I would pick up in a high-class store, stroke, and replace. And it’s MINE, ALL MINE. Ah, the beauties of making your own clothes… happy sigh.

As far as the knitting went, I feel like I’m too inexperienced still to give any decent notes, but it was fairly straightforward. The instructions are quite brief, so I did have to look a few things up, but the techniques are quite straightforward. I made the largest size and thought it might be snug, but as you can see it’s roomy enough. The neck is small – as in , take off my hair clip and glasses to put the tee on-small – and I noticed on Ravelry a few other people said that. It’s fine once it’s on though. The armholes are a good size and if I take any big learning away from this, it’s that I definitely need some tuition on seaming and finishing pieces. I did my best, but it’s not marvellously neat.

The sleeves are finished by picking up stitches and knitting a few rows of rib knits and the neckline the same way with a regular knitting row. The two resultant pieces are then sewn together from underarm to hem. I haven’t blocked this piece, but I will do so.

I wanted to get this blog piece up as I haven’t posted anything for a number of weeks now, and I apologise I haven’t replied to some comments on previous posts yet. I will do so now, but the recent occurrence of Seattle Frocktails took up literally all my spare time (and then some) the last few weeks. We held the event on Saturday and it was a great success, so that was something of a relief! I’ll post something more substantial on it with some pics soon, but for now I’m glad things are settling down and I can get back to “regular” sewing. Talk to you soon! 🙂