I popped into town the other day, and while I was waiting for a bus I decided to nip into Jacksons. I’m glad I did, because they just happened to have a great big basket of Sirdar Hug for just £1.20 a ball! This means that for just £14.40, I now have enough wool to knit a whole jumper, and I’m thinking of O W L S.
So, I went and looked at the pattern on Ravelry, and looked at all the different O W L S that other people have knitted and, having coveted the pattern ever since I first saw it, I came to a difficult conclusion.
I do want owls, but I don’t want O W L S.
I’d like my jumper to be longer, but I don’t know how far the yarn will go, so I’d like to knit something from the top down rather than from the bottom up. I don’t really like knitting in the round – the constant knitting without the variation of the purl rows makes my wrists ache. I think that big jumpers need seams to give them a certain amount of structural integrity, especially at the shoulders, to stop them from stretching and twisting all over the place. (I don’t know whether that’s actually true, or whether I just think that way because I’m a dressmaker, where everything has seams.) Also, I might need to do a bit of swatching. The yarn band recommends using 8mm needles, but it looks much better for 6½s to me.
If a swatch on 6½mm needles comes out with a nice fabric that isn’t too stiff, I might take the easy option and replicate my favourite pirate jumper, (here’s a non-Ravelry link) only with owls instead of skulls.
I’ll knit the front and back from the armscye to the neck from the bottom up, incorporating a purl ridge for the row of owls to sit on. Then, once I’ve knitted the sleeves, I can divide the remaining yarn into two, pick up the stitches, and knit downwards until the jumper is as long as the yarn will allow. The purl ridge will neatly disguise the join. I might even add a bit of a chunky leaf lace motif to the sleeves and hem, inspired by Teva Durham’s Lace Leaf Pullover. Although I sold the book with that pattern in it because I didn’t get on with wrangling such heavily process-driven knitting. Still, I’m sure I can make something up.
Hang on… didn’t I just say somewhere that this would be the “easy” option?
Hmm.