This sweater or rather, this yarn has a long history behind it. The yarn is 100% alpaca from Nieplitzhof, which I bought years ago, without having a specific project in mind. I have no idea how I came up with it, and I can’t find the exact yarn in the store anymore. Mine had a length of 200m at 100g. Anyway, at some point I thought about what to do with it and decided on the Celtica from Drops . The nice thing about the Drops knitting patterns is that they are free. And since I don’t trust my knitting skills that much yet, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on instructions. According to my Ravelry notes, I started the jacket in December 2017. But the pattern was probably too complicated for me, I only ever knitted at very long intervals. And that over 3 years. In between, I had already realized that my yarn would probably not be enough, but I still continued to knit. Sometimes you’re just not rational in what you do. In May 2020, however, I decided that there was no point, also because my tension differed due to the long periods. I didn’t like that at all then.
I then looked for another project for which my yarn would be enough. I had also come to the conclusion that cable stitches do not work so well in the rather soft yarn. Finally I found the “Big Y” from “Hinterm Stein”. The sweater is quite plain, but still not boring due to the stripe on the side, the Y. So I unraveled everything and started the Big Y on May 18, 2020. Knitting progressed moderately, and by the end of the year I was done. The result was…way too tight. I stretched as much as I could while blocking, but it wasn’t enough. The sweater was pretty skin tight, I wouldn’t wear it that way. In the meantime, though, the knitting fever had gotten to me, and the yarn was just way too nice, so I unraveled everything up again and then knitted the sweater a size larger. Started on January 4, and by February 26 I was done. That is extremely fast for me. Now the sweater is exactly as I imagined: wide enough that I can still wear something underneath, but not oversized.
The yarn feels super soft, but is still a bit scratchy, at least at the neck. Therefore, I have sewn a jersey strip on the neckline from the inside .
