Kilronan, the second

Beautiful, non?

The first time I knit Kilronan for Jim it was from Lavold Silky Wool. Jim loved it. It was soft and the pattern let him feel like a knight wearing chain mail armour. It looked good on him too except... the Silky Wool soon gave up all memory. The cables went flat and the sweater flared out at the back, exposing Jim's lower back.  He wore it faithfully for as long as possible, and then requested another.

My first hurdle was finding the right yarn. Jim knew he wanted red, and that it had to be soft.  I found both these qualities easily in Cascade 220 super wash sport. I bought the yarn from Paula at All Strung Out in Guelph. The store has an impressive wall of Cascade in rainbow colors. I bought what I thought would be plenty of yarn, but forgot to reckon in that Jim wanted extra length. What luck then that Paula could get me two more skeins in the exact same dyelot, several months later. I used over 15 skeins on this project. It is a long garment:

But the Cascade makes for nice rounded cables.  I worked almost all of them without a cable needle.  The five stitch cable was a bit too much though.

The trickiest bit of this sweater was removing that center ribbed band that nips in the waist. It's very feminine, but not suitable for a knight's surcoat.  Removing the ribbing means that you can't follow Alice Starmore's detailed instructions anymore and instead, you must hash out where to end the cables all on your lonesome. 

And let us not forget the wicked sleeve caps. I ended up removing the last four rows of plain work at the top of the sleeves and then removed the extra stitches during the cast off round. I was hoping for a blunter cap to the sleeve. It almost worked, but they still want to puff. The sweater needs a good tug at the back and then Jim's shoulders fill out the caps.

I recently realized that I knit Jim sweaters and me socks. It's time to switch that up and give the man more socks and me more sweaters.  But I'm glad I took the time to resurrect this old favourite. Jim deserves it, if only for being such a good sport.