Knitting a vintage sweater

It's been such beautiful weather here in Edinburgh this June. There have been a fair amount of gloomy, grey days as normal but we've been treated to the equivalent of at least two weeks of glorious sunshine. It has felt like a real summer, the likes of which don't always appear in Scotland*.
It's been the perfect time to work on...a thick, woolly, hand knit sweater? Wait, that's not right...
Yup, the ongoing saga of the vintage hand knit continues. If you've been a long time newsletter subscriber or follow me on YouTube, you'll no doubt remember this project. It started life as a Snoqualmie cardigan that was just too fussy for me. Then it was frogged and turned into a Carbeth sweater that made me look pregnant. Now its entering its third iteration, using a vintage sweater pattern designed for kids, Hayfield 00541. I talk about it in the April podcast episode if you want to see the work in progress, at the time it was still in pieces and I swore I would finish it within the month.

Well, it's now 'finished' and almost ready to wear! I write 'finished' in apostrophes because I sewed up the seams, excitedly tried it on and was very annoyed to see that the left shoulder seam was sitting up high in the style of a Tudor lady. Not exactly the look I was going for if I'm honest. I played around with pinching out various extra fabric and came to the conclusion (with the help of some suggestions on Instagram stories) that the sleeve head is too big. I ripped out the seam and resewed it with a larger seam allowance, to absorb some of the additional sleeve head. but it still looks a bit off I think. The sleeves are both too long, which is causing the fabric to bunch up along the length of the arms, meaning my next plan of action is to cut the sleeves shorter (because annoyingly you knit from the cuff upwards, meaning frogging it back to the right length isn't an option without unravelling the entire sleeve) and reknit the cuffs.

'm looking forward to wearing this sweater in the autumn, I love the colour and the cables and I already know it's going to slot straight into my wardrobe. On the other hand though, I'm sick to the back teeth of this project and just want it to be finished already!!
Wish me luck, hopefully by the next newsletter it'll be done...

*I would like to take a moment to acknowledge how lucky I am to live in a part of the world that has, so far, escaped the extremes of weather that are a consequence of climate change and have irreparably affected so many people's lives. My heart goes out to anyone reading this in North America who has been affected by the recent deadly heatwave.