Another Owls jumper

I like to have a craft project to do over the Christmas holidays. It’s one of the few times in a year you can sit down for hours at a time and forget about chores/all the other things you should be doing. So when I opened a box of Rowan British Sheep Breeds Chunky wool from Scott on Christmas Day, I was an extremely happy woman.

Do you remember the grey/brown owls jumper I made last year? I’ve worn it alot and it’s really warm but I wanted a light version to put with dark clothes. So I used my box of wool to make a cream owls jumper.

❤ Wool love

If you don’t want to hear me waffle on how great this wool is you might want to skip down a bit 🙂

I absolutely love British Sheep Breeds Chunky and if I could choose one wool to knit with forever more this would be it. It’s shorn, spun and sold in Britain which reduces ‘wool miles’ and helps to keep our British sheep flocks alive. This wool is undyed so it doesn’t contain any synthetic dyes or chemicals. It still contains all it’s natural lanolin which you can feel rubbing off onto your hands as you knit. I also like the fact it smells quite sheepy.

Knitting my jumper

When I made my grey owls jumper last year I was so busy concentrating I didn’t take any photos of the process. But this time I was a bit more relaxed so here a few photos of how I made my jumper.

I used the magic loop method to make the whole jumper and it was particularly handy for the sleeves.

I found it really helpful to divide the owls up into 10 stitches with stitch markers. I’m terrible at keeping count of stitches so rather than keeping track of 170 I was only worrying about keeping 10 at a time. If I made a mistake I only had to go back at maximum of 9 stitches rather than retrace my steps (maths is not one of my leet skills)!

Making these cable owls is really easy. You only need knit and purl stitches, three C4B and three C4F stitches. See a demo of the C4B and C4F stitches here.

Trouble with wrapped stitches

Step 10 of the pattern tells you to work a set number of short rows (for neck shaping) and then work ‘wraps together with wrapped stitches’. Last time I had no problem with doing it but this Christmas I just couldn’t get it right. It was driving me bonkers and resulted in me undoing my rows several times. So I consulted the knitting bible that is YouTube and found two great tutorials: how to knit wrap and turn stitches and picking up wraps.

My finished Owls jumper

The slight natural variation in fibre thickness gives this jumper a lovely look.

The pattern gives you a few rounds of back decreases.

I was tempted to skip them this time but I’m glad I didn’t because it gives the jumper beautiful shaping in the lower back.

The ribbed cuffs were knitted using smaller needles which gives a snug fit. Perfect for skinny wristed people like myself.

I used some cream hemline buttons for the owl eyes. I think the crimping around the edges because it makes it feel more like an eye.

And that’s my jumper! I’ve been desperate to wear it but had to wait 5 days for the buttons to arrive before I could sew on the owl eyes – and I told myself I wouldn’t wear it before I’d done that.

Thanks to Scott for being my outdoor cameraman in the freezing cold with no sun.

Notes

• Pattern: Owls by Kate Davies
• Wool: Rowan British Sheep Breeds Chunky Undyed
• Wool colour: Bluefaced Leicester (950) – cream
• Balls: 6 for size 2
• Knitting needles: 1x 6mm circular needle (100cm), 1x 6.5mm circular needle (100cm) and a cable needle
• Button eyes: 2 packs of Hemline crimped buttons in Cream. 11.25mm, 17 buttons in a pack. H040\111803