My First Nordic Pullover

Yay! I made my first Nordic pullover and completed one of my New Year's resolutions!

I chose to follow the Rosewood pattern by DROPS Design with some modifications using DROPS Sky yarn in black and lavender. I love the combination of these 2 colors.

I really enjoyed working with DROPS Sky. It is an incredibly soft yarn, which is made from a combination of baby alpaca, merino wool, and polyamide in a complex chain/tube-like structure. However, due to its unique airy construction, the yarn is a bit elastic and I was concerned about the garment stretching out and losing its shape. For this reason, I knitted it in a tighter gauge than was recommended in the pattern and almost ran out of black yarn. I had just enough to make 2 full-length well-fitting sleeves, instead of the shorter but bell-shaped sleeves of the pattern. To make them less boring, I added eyelet mock cable ribbing at the end of the sleeves, as well as on the bottom of the sweater. In addition, I ended up skipping the second set of eyelet rows in the yoke, as the holes looked weird at chest level.

For the stranded knitting in the yoke I used a yarn guide (shown above) that fit over my left index finger and separated the black and lavender yarn. This allowed me to knit in my usual continental style and keep an even tension with both yarn. It is quite an ingenious tool. I ended up enjoying stranded knitting like this much more than knitting English style with one yarn and continental with the other.

I really love how this pullover turned out and I am now ready to make a more complex Nordic pattern.