Osborn Fiber Studio

Time for me to once again share with you about a sweater I made, after wearing it for a month! Photo shoots are weirdly hard to coordinate, or hard to get motivated for, especially when it’s too cold to do them outside. So yesterday, while my dogs looked on at the beautiful sunshine outside…

I set up my tripod, pointed it at the least-offensive corner of my living room, and got busy with my timer.

This is “Fitton’s Dynamo.” It’s the first pattern to come out of Kate Davies’ last club, from summer 2024, called Margery Allingham’s Mysterious Knits. It’s also my first attempt to knit a “slipover” – a short-sleeved, wide-fitting garment, meant to be worn over other things.

This one came out yuge! I knit the second size, but I probably could have knit the first size, which is also designed to be much more cropped. But, I do have a long torso, and I don’t wear dresses or super-high-waisted skirts, so the longer version is much more practical, even if it feels a bit like I’m wearing a bag.

I knit it using “Kilcarra Soft” singles from Donegal Tweed, held double. I bought it oiled on cone when we visited the mill in Ireland, wound it into four enormous skeins, washed the oil off them, and knit from both ends of huge balls. This sweater used about half the yarn – a whole pound. It was more than I expected, but as I said, it’s large! The yarn is very nice, a soft tweed made from New Zealand Merino wool. It is softer and more matte than the Milarrochy Tweed, which they also produce, and it doesn’t have the halo that comes from the addition of Mohair. So it won’t wear as well as MT, but without sleeves, I don’t think it’ll need to.

The colour I chose just because I love rose pink. I don’t look great in it, but over a collared shirt with a darker colour framing my face, it’s fine.

The pattern is interesting. The cable pattern has a longer row gauge than the garter stitch, so I had to block it long. If you don’t want to do that, you can knit it without the cables, of course. The shoulders have some gentle short row shaping that really helps with the slope of the short sleeves. It’s all finished up with i-cord, which is very fetching.

I thought initially about leaving the cable off the back side, but because of the row gauge difference, that would have been a mistake. Besides, it looks really cool.

It is pretty convenient to wear. My arms don’t get cold, and I never have to worry about it getting wet while doing the dishes. If I want to dress it up, I’ll add a chonky necklace on top and feel very moderne. As is, it’s a very cozy augmentation to my plain+jeans+sweater uniform.

This sweater was named for a fictional young woman in one of Allingham’s first novels who turned a waterwheel into a charging station for her antique electric car. There’s no moving water where I live, but I’m feeling my own empowerment by walking on water. The dogs and I have been exploring out on the sea ice, going on walks to little islands you can only reach by boat in the summer.

A crown of pressure ice near the shore.

I hope you’re keeping warm and cozy this February. We’ve had some sunny, calm, warm (meaning -20 C) days that I call “unicorn days” that have allowed for some long, gorgeous walks this week. Every week that passes is one closer to spring.