Pattern: Oshima by Jared Flood
Yarn: TFA Blue Label in Atlantic and Red Label in Stained Glass (one of a kind) held together throughout.
Ravelry project page here.
A sweater is a big commitment. It's not often that I see a pattern, fall head over heels, and then cast on and cast off within a month. But this sweater really grabbed ahold of my knitting mojo and wouldn't let go. It's perfection. What I fell for when I saw this pattern was the unique shoulder shaping and the crisp diagonal lines created by it. Of course the texture and the cowl are obvious features to love, but it is those diagonal lines along the back shoulders that I'm obsessed with. They are just so neat.
Jared didn't skip a single detail in designing this garment. The beautiful increases on the shoulders done in brioche stitch, the decreases on the sleeve cap done a few stitches inside the edge of the fabric to created yet another place of interest. Now that I spend a fair deal of time working on my own designs I have a renewed appreciation for other designers work. Knitting from one of Jared's patterns is always a learning experience. It makes me want to be a better designer, a better graphic artist, a better photographer, heck, I'll say it, a better person! It's always worth it.
Now a word about the yarn selection. As you know, this was not an easy choice for me to make, but man, do I think I made the right one. I could not be any happier with the colour of this sweater. From a distance, it looks like a pretty, tweedy atlantic blue sweater, but up close you get those hits of shiny watercolour greens and purples from the Stained Glass colourway. They work together like magic. Absolutely stunning. Knitting with two strands held together is great because you get to knit a sweater on 6mm needles, which means that it works up fast! It also opens up a whole new world of possibilities in terms of colour. This is not the last you'll see of two colour knitting on this blog! I am overflowing with new colour pairing possibilities.
The brioche stitch is another aspect of this sweater that I have yet to get enough of. The texture is beautiful and would not be possible to duplicate with any other stitch. It is at the same time super crisp yet really fluffy. An impossible to achieve combination, yet somehow it works.
So really, I have nothing but love for this sweater. It is warm and cozy and perfect and blue. And I really, really love it.