The Little Black Sweater

New off the needles- a sorely needed go-with-anything knitter’s answer to the Little Black Dress. If Audrey Hepburn had been a knitter, I’m sure she’d have approved. The pattern is the Basic Chic Pulli by Bonne Marie Burns- a top-down raglan sleeve sweater knitted in the round. This is a great wardrobe builder pattern and I’ve a feeling I’m going to be making more of these :) My LBS is knit in Elann’s Pure Alpaca (in, er, black). The yarn’s a lot fuzzier than I was expecting. I thought alpaca was supposed to be non-itchy? But at the moment it’s a bit like wearing a hair-shirt. Maybe that’ll lessen once it’s been washed and the fuzziness settles down…

I made a few changes to the pattern:

1. I added one extra decrease round into the section of decreases to the waist for a more nipped in look and accordingly an extra increase round over the section of increases at the hip)
2. Overall length is a about an inch and half longer than the pattern length. Next time I may add a couple of increases over this extra length to accommodate my pear shape hips!
3. The neck edge and bottom hem edge are both worked in k2 p2 rib for an inch.
4. Sleeves are elbow length.

Lots of firsts for me in this project:

• knitting in the round on circular needles

• using double pointed needles

• first long tail cast on

• Things were going so well I actually bothered to teach myself how to weave in ends properly using this tutorial from Knitty.

I feel quite twitchy now knowing I don’t have a project on the needles. What to knit next?