| Pattern | Miara Jumper by Renée Callaghan |
| Dates | 9th January – 15th April 2021 |
| Materials | Walcot Yarns Opus Grey – 158g Goldenrod – 77g Cove – 62g Plum – 54 3.25mm needles (3.00 for the ribbing) |
| Size | 3 (with modifications) |
| Rating | Pattern: 4/5 Finished item: 3/5 |
This pattern has been in the queue and the yarn waiting for needles for a long time. I’ve knit the same stitch pattern in hat version before, in the same yarn but some slightly different colourways. That hat has got frogged as it didn’t fit properly and I always pass it over for my other, thicker ones.
In terms of swatching, I used the hat and also knit a new gauge swatch and was pretty confident but… swatches lie I guess. Fresh off the success of my Kirigami, I reworked the numbers for the different sizes and my gauge, and landed on size 3 as the best fit, but redistributing the split of stitches between body and sleeves.
The original sample is styled slightly cropped and with some positive ease. I didn’t necessarily want the same positive ease and also as usual, I planned for a longer length. However, while the finished garment fits, it is definitely a bit more fitted than I intended and it’s also come up too short – even though I did check this as I went!
The pattern is very memorable but somehow it was also quite a slog, I think that was mostly managing knitting in the round with four colours attached though. The sleeves particularly took me a while, as I found my hands were starting to protest if I knit for too long. Slightly annoyingly, the length I needed on the sleeves did not match up to the colour sequence, which meant I had to choose between maintaining the colour sequence and therefore having different coloured cuffs to hem and neckband, or else breaking the colour sequence.
Hopefully that doesn’t bug me later but it’s not impossible to undo and redo in Cove. Likewise, I’ll definitely go back at some point and undo the hem cast off and knit at least the same amount of hem again to fix the length. Luckily, Opus is the yarn that never ends – even leaving aside the frogged hat, I still have tons of this yarn leftover in all colours.
