Notes: | It was the 30th (pearl) anniversary of the national Knitting & Crochet Guild in 2008. So the Guild competition was "something related to this". I am a librarian, and the stereotype librarian which we are all trying to get away from is a middle aged woman with glasses, her hair in a bun, wearing a twinset with pearls.
I fit all the rest of the stereotype, but don't have a twinset – so I decided to knit one.
I used a 1940s pattern, and made the short sleeved jumper in perle cotton, ("Fil d'Ecosse") which probably dates from a similar time to the pattern, as I thought that wool would be too itchy. The pearls were threaded on to the cotton yarn and knitted in as I went along
The cardigan I did in my natural-dyed 3-ply samples, graduating the colours to use up the small sample balls, with stripes in the perle cotton to tie it to the jumper. I didn't think the wool would be strong enough to support the pearls, so I threaded them on a beading cotton and knitted this in with the wool for a few stitches either side of the+ pearl.
As usual I was running out of yarn, so I knitted the band on to the jumper sideways to make sure I could get all the way round. |