I'd had the Noro sock yarn in my stash for a while and thought it would work well for this pattern because it's self-striping and I knew there would be enough yardage for long sleeves. I didn't bother to do a tension square, I just crossed my fingers that it would fit and despite the fact that with hindsight I think read the pattern wrong and didn't start the body increases soon enough, and didn't do all the increases before casting off for the armholes, it fits fine. So that's good.
The actual knitting didn't really take very long but was done in fits and starts. As with the Land Army-ish jumper I wanted long sleeves, but decided to knit them bottom-up since I knew I had enough yarn and also because I couldn't be bothered to work out how to reverse the pattern and knit it upside down. This is the first time for ages that I've knitted bottom up sleeves and they really didn't take long at all. Mainly because I can knit more quickly on straight needles than I can on circulars. There was some unravelling and reknitting to get the stripes to match at the side seams and on the sleeves, but not that much and I think it was definitely worth doing.
This was a very easy pattern, it's only a two-row repeat and is easy to memorise and to knit. I'd like to do more versions of this, possibly also a cardigan, with proper stripes rather than self-striping yarn. I keep playing over differing colour combinations in my head... and changing my mind...
I knitted the neckband in the round and picked up fewer stitches than the pattern suggested so I was a bit concerned that it might not go over my head, but it does fortunately.
All in all I'm very pleased with this and think I'll get plenty of wear out of it.
And now I'm off to sort fabric to swap at the SewBrum meet-up tomorrow.
