Smitten

 

I think that it's safe to say that when you knit the same pattern three times in a row, you are officially infatuated with the pattern.  Which, of course, means that I'm infatuated with the Bloomsbury Pattern because this is the third one that I've made it in the last several months.  O often wears hers, although sadly it seems like she's growing out of it at a super-sonic rate.  And my first Bloomsbury is on regular rotation and probably gets worn at least once a week. 

After finishing that one I knew that I wanted to make another one in a lighter color with a softer, squishier yarn.  Manos de Uruguay was the perfect choice and I love that it's kettle dyed giving the sweater just a little bit more depth.  And the yarn definitely lives up to the squishy factor that I was looking for.  It's a single ply merino that is incredibly soft, although I fear that it'll probably pill pretty easily in the future because of this.  We'll see.

I mostly just followed the pattern as it was written although I confess that I'm often not a stickler for counting rows (knit 14 rows for the collar?  Eh, this looks about right).  The pattern and I did get off to a bit of a rough start since the set up rows require a bit of concentration and I stupidly decided to start the sweater while watching a Harry Potter movie.  Needless to say, there was a lot of starting over (and cussing).  I also stupidly didn't read the pattern all the way through before starting the sweater (which is basically knitting 101), and because of this I missed adding in some of the lace pattern and, once again, found myself ripping back.  Once the basic pattern was set up, though, it was smooth sailing and a really enjoyable knit.  I've already worn the sweater a couple times and I can officially say that I'm smitten. 

Smitten enough, in fact, to venture outside in some sort of Pacific Northwest snow/sleet to take these pictures.