I knitted an ugly sweater, on purpose!
I’ve only been knitting sweaters for s year so all my sweaters are quite precious so I don’t dare to wear them for work or anything dirty like that. All I want to wear is sweaters though so I needed to make one that I don’t have to baby. I wasn’t going to use a nice expensive yarn for this project, that’s for sure.
In my 20-something years of knitting, I have accumulated quite a surplus of yarn, mostly the sock quality because those are what I used to make mostly. I haven’t always been that careful of what yarn and colours to buy, so I had a huge box of 7 Veljestä by Novita(the biggest yarn company in Finland) in really random colours that I don’t actually want to use or wear. The sock yarn has 25% polyester to make it more durable, but it also makes the yarn not as nice and it does pill quite easily in use. Perfect for my Ugly Sweater project, but I would never otherwise use or recommend it for sweaters.
I dug into my storage for a pile of random colours and found a pattern that is actually really pretty if it was done with a nice colourway. I followed the pattern at start but changed some of the order if I remember correctly and continued the fairisle longer down the body and sleeves.
I started this sweater last December-January and set the project aside when I moved north and only wanted to do really beautiful knits. I finally dusted it off and finished this week with a struggle. Motivation really is the key and if I had done this from a nice Icelandic yarn and colours I like I would have done the whole sweater in three weeks max.
I just finished the sweater late last night and because it’s an ugly sweater and I don’t really care for it that much, I only weaved in the last and first yarns and basically just tied in all the colourway ends and cut off the excess, YOLO! I’m so happy it’s finally done and I can get back to my pretty knits.
I wanted to wear the sweater to work immediately so I’ve yet to wash and block it so it fits a little funky. I’ll wash it on the weekend and then it’ll relax to a better form and it will be longer.
Even though the colours are not what I’d typically wear or like, I feel like it’s pretty perfect for work because it’s not horrid but also I’m not worried about the oil, dirt and aluminium that’ll tarnish it.