Yes, it’s April. I guess I’ve been a bit slack with the blog posts, but this sweater is so awesome, I have to tell you about it! About a month before Christmas, I decided that I HAD to have a Christmas sweater. I had some red and green yarn in my stash from a project that never eventuated so I thought I’d put it to good use. A trip to Bendigo Woollen Mills sorted me out for the white yarn and I was ready to go.

An evening of browsing Ravelry and I had the pattern picked too. The pattern is the Brewster Pullover by Alexis Winslow. The pattern is a top down knit with set in sleeves. It’s pretty ingenious really! I had a lot of fun knitting it and really enjoyed working the colour work. I like to hold one colour in each hand. The repeats were easy enough to keep track of so the knitting was fairly mindless. It was a pretty quick knit too and only took about 3 weeks. This is one of those projects where the inside is as interesting as the outside!

Christmas in Australia can get pretty hot, so I went for a more fitted shape and kept the sleeves at 3/4 length. I added some waist shaping and hip shaping to follow my body. It was a little tricky to figure out as I wanted to keep the pattern  working all the way around, but I got there in the end. For the details, check out my Ravelry project. I added a little extra Christmas flair with a Lativan Braid around the neckline. It looks like a candy cane!

As I said earlier I used some Filatura Di Crosa Zara from my stash for the red and green sections. For the white, I used Bendigo Luxury 8ply in Frost. I had almost finished when I realised I was not going to have enough of the red to do the plain sections on the sleeves. I went to Morris & Sons and found that their Empire 8ply had an exact match! I was thrilled and bought the extra ball I needed.

I managed to wear this to four Christmas functions, so it had a good run. I haven’t yet worked up the courage to wear it post-Christmas, but I’m hoping I can. Any ideas on how to make it seem less ‘Christmassy’ when I wear it?