Abayomi

Remember this?

That's Abayomi, designed by Donna Yacino for Berroco. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it, and I reeeeeally wanted to knit it.

I ordered the yarn for it quite a while ago, like in the spring last year, but I never got around to starting it because other things kept popping up, things I wanted to get done first. It was going to be gorgeous in Swans Island Washable Wool sport weight in the color Edgecomb Grey.

Then I found NaKniSweMo (National Knitting A Sweater In A Month), a group on Ravelry. It is like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but for knitting sweaters instead of writing novels. I thought hmmmmmm, this might be the ticket. At least I will finally start Abayomi, and either I will knit it all in a month, or I'll get a good start on it! So I signed up.

I think the same day that I signed up, I also made plans with Lynne to go to Cape Cod. I hurriedly checked the pattern to see if the sleeves would be easy -- they were, all stockinette. Phew. And I had a few days before I left to get started on the back.

I won't lie, this sweater was hard to knit, but it mostly was that the lace panel which was the dominant feature was knitted lace, not lace knitting. Lace knitting is what you normally find in a pattern, a row of lace yarn overs combined with decreases, and a row that is purled back, or knitted back if it is garter stitch lace. Abayomi is knitted lace, featuring a lace panel that has no "easy" row of purling back; every row is patterned, so you have to be able to think backwards. Every knit two together becomes purl two together; every slip, slip knit two together becomes slip, slip purl two through the back loops.

Thinking backwards is hard to do with only half a brain.

However, after I got used to it, it went along easily. When I say it was hard to knit, please don't say, "Oh, well, then I won't knit it!" You can do it. If I can learn how to knit this, you can. Besides it is well worth the effort! It really is a lovely design, and while there was a certain amount of a learning curve, it got easier to knit as you went along. The pattern was very easy to read, the numbers for size small were correct, and the chart was easy to read.

I started on November 1, 2018 ...

Abayomi has begun! (November 1)

Sixteen inches of the back! (November 3)

I shortened the overall length of the back and the fronts by 5.5" inches (24.5" instead of 30") because I was using superwash yarn, and I estimated that it would grow about an inch per foot from blocking, which in the end was about right.

Back Completed! (November 13)

We drove to Cape Cod and back and I knit on the sleeves in the car, and in the hotel I knit on the left front. Except when we were having a cocktail*.

Cocktails are more for stockinette sleeves than a heavily-patterned-requiring-thinking-ability of the left front.

When I got home I got the sleeves finished. (November 15)

Finished the left front! (November 25)

Then I lost my knitting mojo. I got a lot of Abayomi done in November, and that was a good thing. Then there was the madness of Christmas, but I kept plugging on throughout. The pattern got really easy by this point, as I had managed to memorize quite a bit of it. I only had the right front to knit and to sew it together and it would be done! Sewing it together would be really easy; there was little shaping, the pieces fit together beautifully, and even the "tricky bit" of joining the left and right front together with a three needle bind off was really easy to do.

Finished January 12. I think it came out well! I hope Lindsey loves it.

 

*Cocktail: 1.5 ounces limoncello; 1 ounce vodka; a splash of seltzer water; a slice of lemon, and ice