Wicked

Well I finally bit the bullet and cast on my Wicked, a top-down raglan pattern from Zephyr Style.

I’ve been itchin’ to take that photo for ages, as my favourite mug was so fitting.

This was my first adult-sized knit, so I was quite nervous.  So many patterns are just hit or miss, but when you are using a large amount of yarn for a pattern, you want to have a nice result.

Since I knit mostly small items, I don’t have large amount of any one yarn.  A friend posted a link to a TradeMe auction for 13 balls of  pink Wendy 100% cotton yarn, with pickup just a 35 minute drive away.  PERFECT.  I was heading out to a knitting night almost two weeks ago that was in the same area where I needed to go to pick up the yarn, so picked up the yarn, headed to the knittaccino, and walked in with my new stash of yarn.  I was proudly showing it off when a few people started laughing.  Turns out the woman who listed the auction was in the room.  New Zealand is small I tell ya!

So the cotton yarn was DK, instead of the recommended worsted weight, so planned to go up one size in the pattern.  I ended up doing the raglan increases for the smaller size (L instead of XL) and it was fitting fine.  I did 6 decrease sets, some straight rows and 16 increase sets (oh that pear shaped body) at the bottom.

I was worried about the cast off.  I figured I could use a larger needle to increase the stretch of the cast off, but traditional cast off isn’t very decorative.  So I opted for a sewn cast off that is done to look like the long tail cast on.  It was a mission, I have to say.  The bottom of the sweater took a good 3 hours to cast off, with the always present fear that I would run out of yarn, seeing I am perpetually underestimating everything.  But it came out nice, and even has more stretch then my normal cast off edge.  Definitely worth the effort I reckon.

I am so not a photographer, so apologies for the pics, but these two are closer up pics of the pocket and the sleeve.

Will definitely be doing this pattern again for next winter.  Top-down raglan knits are just plain WICKED!