Modern Wrapper
When I visited Loop in Philadelphia last year, I found myself admiring a sample they had hanging in the store. I tried it on, twirled around in front of the mirror to exclamations of how it's a piece that looks great on everyone, and how much fun it is to find the perfect yarn combination.
"What pattern is this?" I asked innocently, naively... ignorantly.
"It's the MODERN WRAPPER!!!" the Loop staff hollered at me in unison. They were flabbergasted I had not heard of it.
So I crawled out from under my rock and took a look at the pattern. Beautiful, of course, like everything else Churchmouse does and represents. I hem'ed and haw'ed over my weekend there, and decided to buy the pattern and hold off on buying the yarn until I had time to actually knit it up.
By the time I got home, I had worked myself into such a lather about different yarn combinations. The pattern recommends a combination of a fingering weight and fuzzy lace weight yarns. The go-to fuzzy yarn is Rowan's Kidsilk Haze. It comes in a delicious array of colors and isn't very expensive considering the yardage. But, as much as I appreciate a little mohair here and there, I find more of the fiber ends up in my mouth than necessary. So I decided to go with my trusty KSH substitute - Filatura's Superior.
I won't bore you with my obsession with Superior, see previous post, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with this luscious cashmere again. More hem'ing and haw'ing ensued with what I would pair it with, and decided on Loft. For me, it's predictable. By using a yarn I'm so familiar with, I knew exactly what kind of fabric I'd get. And instead of matching the black Superior with Cast Iron, I thought something to give it a marled effect would be more interesting, so I went with Soot. (I almost went with Fossil, but thought maybe it would be TOO marled.)
This open cardigan was such a fast knit. Mainly stockinette with garter stitch along the opening, this was my go-to knit when I didn't really need to concentrate. I brought it along to knit nights and to my LYS and with the sporadic few hours, it was done in a couple months.
The shoulder shaping is done with short rows, and then bound off using the three-needle bind off. It made the finishing quick and painless.
It made me a little nervous to be knitting the garter stitch border along with the stockinette body. Generally the row gauges are very different, but because this is knit with such an open gauge it worked out beautifully.
And for the sleeves, they're picked up and knit down. Easy peasy.
Between the open gauge and the one row of reverse stockinette, the pieces don't roll up and misbehave.
As I'm sitting here with my Wrapper on, I can't help but run my hands over my arms to feel up this Superior/Loft combination. It's just glorious.