Nov 16 2008
swirled pentagon pullover
The brick down here in Bay Ridge is different. It’s darker, or redder, or arranged differently—I can’t quite put my finger on it. But it’s distinctive and really pretty. And when I fell in love with this wall, I knew immediately I needed to knit something and take my FO shots in front of it. And now. The yarn I bought at Webs was the perfect color, and the geometry of Norah Gaughan’s Swirled Pentagon Pullover was perfect.
Totally perfect.
Swirled Pentagon Pullover (my Rav page)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Colrain in Steel, bought at Webs in October
Needles: US 8
Skeins: 10 (9.25 or so, I’d say)
Started: Sunday, November 2
Finished: Friday, November 14
Notes: I didn’t get gauge exactly, so I knit the small size to get basically the extra-small. I knit the body in the round, adding one purl stitch for a faux seam (I’m not sure why I wanted a faux seam, but I like it). The sleeves are semi-deliberately too long, which I like—makes the whole thing more cozy (I knit them in the round, so I worked 10 rounds in between decrease rounds, rather than decreasing on the 10th round). And the turtleneck part isn’t the 9 inches called for, because that was strangulating me; I think it’s more like 7.
Otherwise, I followed the pattern exactly. I will always trust Norah Gaughan—when picking up stitches for the neck, I initially didn’t trust the number given in the pattern for some reason. So I decided to just pick up what seemed natural, making sure it was a multiple of 4. And then I counted my stitches—92, exactly what the pattern said!
Oh, there is a small typo in the pattern—my trust doesn’t go too deep, apparently. The half-pentagon for the back yoke says something like “continuing in 2×2 rib” but that is wrong—it’s got to be 1×1 rib just like all the others.
I wore the sweater to my grandmother’s surprise 80th birthday party yesterday, and though I yammered on to anyone who would listen that I’d finished it the day before, the response was generally, “Wow, I thought you got that at a store!” Which, I have to say, was the best compliment I could have gotten. And now it’s in all the family portraits!
