St. John Parisian Windowpane Jacket, $1500
My knitting mood has been wildly see-sawing lately. First, I went through a puritanical phase, where I vowed to knit only from my stash and save up money to buy a polished jacket for work. That resolution lasted all of three weeks. The problem was, I started looking at jackets to motivate myself to keep on cold sheeping, and I discovered that the tweedy, stylish jackets I liked in stores were ranging in price from $500 to $1500! Wow—either my taste has gotten snobbier, or prices for women’s clothing have shot up since I last shopped!!
Lafayette 148 Wacey Weave Lucinda Jacket, $548
Kim Hargreaves solved my dilemma by producing Cherished, a drool-worthy collection of polished tweed jackets, blazers and cardigans. Not only were several of the tweed designs in the book elegant enough for me to wear to work, but the price tag for the yarn is only a fraction of the cost of the jackets I was admiring in the stores.
Besides, knitting the jacket myself, I knew I could create a beautifully
fitted piece without any costly tailoring fees. Having convinced myself
that buying yarn would actually save me money, I rushed out and got a
stunning batch of deep red Takhi Donegal tweed for $75.
I was plunged into despair when I started knitting the Takhi yarn, as it was just killing my fingers for some reason. To make things worse, the raspberry alpaca yarn that was generously gifted to me to make my lovely Saffron was provoking me to an intense allergy reaction which reddened my eyes and disturbed my breathing, finally culminated in a choking fit.
Forced to abandon both projects, I realized my plan to save money by knitting had turned out the opposite of what I had hoped. Instead of feeling frugal, I was left with two batches of unusable yarn on my hands, and my tweed work jacket was still nowhere in sight! Luckily, I am a member of The Official Sexy Knitter’s Club, which is a group of some of the nicest knitters imaginable. The divine rchrispy, one of the moderators of the group, suggested the perfect solution to my woes—a yarn sale on ravelry! Venturing out to the ISO/destash group, I discovered a list of witty one-line advertisements crafted by the wily huckesters seeking to offload Wollmeise, Madtosh, and a host of other luscious yarns. Inspired by the bustle of activity I saw, I inventoried my stash, listed price tags, and crafted my first ad inviting one and all to try my wares!
The results were amazing. Within a week, I was able to sell the batches of yarn I couldn’t use, plus one more, resulting in a net gain of $115. With the proceeds from my yarn sales, I was able to buy a really high quality tweed for the Kim Hargreaves jacket at the top of my list, and I still had $40 left over!
Absolutely thrilled by this outcome, I knitted like a demon on Goodwill, which I am planning to wear to work over some black and white print dresses. I used Rowan’s felted tweed aran yarn, which feels wonderful in the hands, in a beautiful, deep shade of plum.
Kim Hargreaves' Goodwill
For a good three weeks I dwelled in the kind of perfect bliss that I usually only find knitting Kim Hargreaves patterns. It was wonderful fun learning to cover buttons with yarn to match my jacket, and I even took crochet lessons to make sure I could pull off the crabstitch trim on the jacket with panache! Then I sewed the pieces of the jacket together, and my happy dream came crashing down. Although the body of the jacket is reasonably fitted, the sleeves look horrifyingly wrong.
I have to say, that much as I love Kim Hargreaves as a designer, and her book, Cherished, in particular, this is the most problematic group of designs I have ever knitted of hers so far. There have been multiple reports of errata for Cherished patterns by different members of the Kim Hargreaves group, but the pattern for Goodwill seems to be riddled with more errors than most. First of all, the instructions say to knit the body of the sweater on size 8 US needles, and the sleeves on size (2/3) which is clearly not right, as it gives a translation of 5mm for both. Secondly, the pattern does not require enough yarn. The other folks I know who are knitting Goodwill have had to run out and search for at least one or two more balls in the same dye lot, which is never an easy thing to find. Thirdly, and most tragically of all, my sleeves turned out to look wackadoodle in my opinion!
Who knows, perhaps this was user error, but I've never had this problem with Kim Hargreave sleeves before! I followed the pattern instructions verbatim, yet I ended up with a loosely fitted jacket combined with sleeves so tight that hardly a single layer of tissue-thin cotton fabric can fit underneath. Imagine if I had knitted the sleeves with size 2 needles instead of size 8--they would have been even smaller! So much for wearing a dress under this! Not to mention the proportion problems that the super tight sleeves create. First of all, the body of the jacket loose, so the exaggeratedly narrow sleeve creates an illusion that the midsection of the body is much wider than it really is. Just what all of us ladies want—for our torsos to look wide!
Second of all, the flared cuff is way too big in contrast with the tight-fitting arm of the jacket, giving a decidedly 70’s vibe. This wouldn’t be so strange if it the 70’s cuff sprang out, like an opening flower, at the wrist, but the way the pattern is written, the sleeve (at least mine) is about 4 inches above the wrist, which is a strange place to sport an unnaturally open cuff!
After throwing myself so whole-heartedly into this project, hoping to create a well-thought out jacket with unique details, I feel terribly disappointed. For the sake of finishing, I am going to unravel the sleeves and knit a dumbed-down version with a simple cuff and pass the flare by, even though that was one of the design details I liked most about the jacket. However, I just can’t see a flared cuff at the wrist giving me anything but a 70’s disco jacket, and to have the cuff end four inches short of the wrist is unflattering on my arm, and perhaps that of anyone who is not a six foot model with arms and legs that just won’t quit. Actually, the only reason it looks okay in the design photos is that the sleeve is extremely loose, so the flare doesn't create such a glaring contrast. If you don't want that, fellow knitters, you may need to add 1-3 inches to your sleeve width to get the look in the pattern photo, or perhaps this problem is confined to size XS. Since I’m rather a curvy gal of only five foot seven, I need to create an illusion of length in my torso, arms and legs, rather than shortening them and making them look wider than they are! As sad as I am to lose the flare detail, the point is to knit something that flatters me, so I will just have to settle for that.