Weekend WIP

I've been knitting up some angora I bought from Fivemoons in 2013. This is the last of my Fivemoons stash so getting it on the needles meant I felt no minimal guilt about buying some more from her at Wonderwool this weekend (coincidentally, our fifth anniversary in the bunkhouse).

That's just the teaser, because I wanted to show off how luscious the yarn is to begin with. I have been hankering after an angora sweater for a very long time, probably since CanaryKnits made an angora argyle and shared it on her blog and that is coming up to a decade ago. This yarn is a slightly sturdier angora than the one she used, being blended with 40% merino and 20% nylon, but it is still pillow soft and knitting up with a gorgeous halo.

I chose the Elizabeth I pattern from Alice Starmore's Tudor Roses - a delightful book probably more suited to a coffee table than actually being knitted from, simply due to its enormous size. Since I'm just reading Bring Up the Bodies and teaching y13 about Elizabeth I, it seems fitting - this really has been the year of the Tudor. I added a few extra rows before I started the centre panel, of course.

The shaping looks wildly feminine here - it's exaggerated by the curved hemline. The 20 extra rows should have added about two inches to it but may have exacerbated my usual yarn chicken situation: I was already about 100m short on the yarn requirements for the XL. However, the sleeves are very full and long, and I may attempt to adjust them. We'll see.

I have made great gains on this in the final week of the Easter break, and am about 26 rows away from dividing for the armholes (what you can't see here is that I am knitting it in the round instead of in pieces - while I'm sure the side seams would give it a better structure, Starmore points out that Elizabeth's clothes would have been expertly made and if she'd ever seen me sew a side seam I think she would insist I avoided doing it on this garment, for the sake of historical accuracy). I'm finished one skein and am now knitting from a mixture of two more, which looked worryingly different in the skein but aren't looking too different when knitted up.

Unfortunately I now need to lay it aside as I'm test knitting a top down raglan v neck sweater for the designer of this sweater I knitted last year. Hopefully that one will be quick and I can get back to the bunny.