Knitting Tecumseh
Out to the theater to watch my daughter and on the forest floor while I knit other things. I’ve worn it to watch whales and watch my eldest fly off thousands of miles away. I knit this sweater to be worn in real life and it has been capturing memories with me since the first stitch.
This colorwork sweater may not look like a vivid technicolor dream coat, but I assure you trying to settle on 3 colors that were not all grey was a challenge for me. My version doesn’t look too far off the mark from the original, nothing groundbreaking there, but actually using a grey, a brown and bold gold together made me feel as if I were forging a path in the wilderness.
A little backstory…
People use the word remote when they really shouldn't.
If you can drive there, I don't think that word is the best descriptive choice. My island may require a ferry or airplane to get here. And when I hop on a plane to visit the lower 48, I take one to get to the Alaskan mainland, another just to get to Seattle, then another 2 or 3 to get wherever the destination is.
Kodiak may be remote, but our local yarn shop carries more yarn than 90% of other shops I've visited. To qualify that assessment taking a speedy walk down memory lane right now, I was able to remember over 60 in just the past few years when crisscrossing the US. I didn't count the same shop twice. And, yes, I've been to Loopy Ewe & Webs…
When I say I am stoked about how fortunate I am, you can believe I am a lucky girl. The Rookery has more yarn than I can count. Ceiling to floor. Rows and rows. It has miles of fabric too. But better than those, it has Chris. And my lovely hearted, wise yarny guru Chris is a color muse. And it is effortless for her.
She is gentle with me.
Deciding on yarn.
So I tapped Chris for insight.
"I need 3 yarns to knit this colorwork sweater, and here's what I found."
She looked at what I held in my hands and then up at me, "And you are serious…" she blinked.
The three shades of grey I had picked looked lovely to me and had taken quite a bit of mental gymnastics on my part.
It was at this moment I thought perhaps I was biting off more than I could chew. My dad, always full of practical wisdom, used to say, "Chew or choke."
I was doing this thing.
An hour later, she had given me an in real life, hands-on lesson on high and low, and no contrast combinations. Yarn was pulled out, put back, piled high, whisked away… Once Chris was confident she could set me out on my own to find more than just grey, she pointed me around a corner to a wall of Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal yarn. This single-ply was lighter than the suggested wool with a rustic vibe perfectly suited to life here in Southwest Alaska. This was it.
There were so many choices, so I started first with the main color, a warm grey-brown. That choice made the pick for my second color pretty straightforward. I went with a dark brown, the color I see so often reflect in wet bark of spruce trees. Theses two colors just went together so well. They were in harmony, not competing for attention, …which is what my third choice was supposed to do.
It was one color and would appear in small portions of the sweater. Why then was choosing it so darn tricky?! Ball after ball, I picked up and put down because once I decided on a third color, I suddenly needed to alter my second one. And then, I needed to tweak my first pick… Anyone else ever experience this? Am I alone?
I wound up purchasing the MC confidently, CC1 reasonably confident, and then 4 different possibilities for the CC2. I would decide after swatching. Or at least that's what I told myself. (I wound up doing an Instagram poll and listened to people who knew better than me!) I swatched, using the recommended needle, and created the loveliest fabric using just the MC. After I soaked and blocked it, I realized this yarn was my spirit animal. I wanted to knit ev reeee thing in it.
Here’s how it went
The start.
I gotta be transparent here: I love Caitlin Hunter. She seems to be genuine and down to earth. Sincere in her love of people as well as knitting.
And her patterns are solid.
The style of Tecumseh, as with the majority of her patterns, suits my wardbrobe. That is a fancy way of saying: I can toss on everything of her's I knit with jeans or a dress and head off to hike or kayak. I can meet friends for coffee or the husband for gingerbeers on a Friday night. That is what I need from my wardrobe. And what I require from my handknit pieces. They have to work for my clothing needs.
The details.
The patten was written well and the process of replicating the sweater was straightforward. If you can knit, you can knit this.
For my project I used the Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal Merino Wool & Cashmere yarn. A warm grey, deep brown black, and a popping gold.
At gauge it was looser than what one might normally consider for this particualr yarn. After experimenting with the swatch I loved the results and went for it.
When I was knitting with MC and CC1 to work the feather color work portion I used US 6.5. I found I was pulling my floats and stitches more tightly, so using the larger needle kept me from having a warped section of my sweater.
Apart from my yarn choice, I followed the pattern as written. The colorwork became intuitive and the short breaks of stockinette between colorwork was a nice break without monotony creeping in…
Initially this sweater was flying round by round! I jokingly said I would be finished in 15 minutes. I wasn’t monogamous, and though it felt like the sleeves took a hundred years, I started the whole thing April 15 and finished May 3rd.
And they lived happily ever after…
No kidding. This sweater is worn once a week. Some weeks I wear it several days. I consider knitting it again, but this one has plenty of life left in it, and Caitlin has lots of other sweaters I need to try. So for now I have just this one and love it very much.
This sweater has been on planes, boats, hikes…Out to the theater to watch my daughter and on the forest floor while I knit other things. I’ve worn it to watch whales and watch my eldest fly off thousands of miles away. I knit this sweater to be worn in real life and it has been capturing memories with me since the first stitch.
