It’s always a little scary washing superwash yarn. It loses all of its energy and bounce, and grows to like twice the size. You absolutely have to put this yarn in the dryer, or else never wash it. So I knew that going in, and still it was scary taking it out of the washing machine. Then I popped over to the laundromat, and it came out just as good as before, maybe a little softer than before. I still would prefer that my sister hand-washed it before drying, but I know that won’t happen, so I had to make sure it could survive a trip in both the washer and dryer. And luckily, this super expensive superwash came out beautifully!

I knitted some little ears for the hood, to make it a little bit more “teddy bear” like. The good thing is that they took up most of the rest of the yarn, and I only have a tiny bit left. I love having almost zero leftovers at the end of a project! This Anzula Cricket yarn is so wonderful and scrumptious, but I wouldn’t have known what else to use it with.

While knitting with Anzula Cricket has been an squishy and delightful experience, I’m not sure I’ll use kettle-dyed yarns again. Just look at the sheer difference in colors between two skeins of the same colorway of hand-dyed yarn. The second was WAY more light, and while I successful blended between the two to be hardly noticeable, it just took too much work. It wasn’t fun having to account for this; I much prefer just … joining a second ball of yarn, not fiddling around with alternating skeins and calculating when to blend in each different skein. To be honest, if I ever wanted to use Cricket again, I might just get it in white/natural/undyed, haha.

Eric’s Jumpsuit by Ainur Berkimbayeva

LOOK how beautiful the increases are in that hood. This pattern is wonderful, this yarn is wonderful, knitting for a future niece or nephew is wonderful. It’s projects like this that make me love being a knitter! In a way, it’s good I took a break during the summer, so I could find out all over again just how much knitting does for my life. I went through a series of intense events this past month – some good, some scary, some very sad – but at least having a comforting knitting project makes it easy to center my emotions. I’ll always appreciate that about this craft.

I’m almost done the knitting, and will soon have to install the zipper. I’m looking forward to it, even though I still don’t have a lot of experience with sewing with knitting. The good thing is that I’ll probably use up most of the third ball of yarn! I thought I’d have too much, but it turns out I really do have just enough, and won’t have to worry about using up the leftovers. (I also am 99% confident that I have enough for the project, though I would certainly die from financial shock if I had to get another ball of that liquid gold Anzula Cricket yarn…)

I alternated the skeins for this version of Eric’s Jumpsuit. You can still sort of see where I joined the new yarn if you’re inspecting it closely, but I think I did a decent enough job of blending it in, slowly alternating out the original skein. I wanted to have some left to alternate for the sleeves and the hood as well, though I suppose it would be harder to notice a color shift in the hood. I still haven’t broken into the third skein, but it seems similar to the second with more variety of tones than the first skein.

I think I’ll have a LOT left, so I might make slippers for my sister. Or maybe a (barf) bear hat.

I chose not to alternate the skeins at the end of the row, because I want to keep those neat and clean for when I attach the zipper. But it’s SUPER annoying to alternate in the middle of a flat-knitted piece, as you’re going to run into holes for sure. You can see here a line where I twisted the yarns around each other but it’s not noticeable from the front. Since it’s garter, I invented (?) a make-shift method for alternating the skeins without holes.

1. (WS) Attach the new skein (B) on the back somewhere. I stuck mine on the side between two cables. I knitted one stitch with the two yarns, and then took the new yarn and knitted the rest of the row. Leave the old skein (A) dangling off the back.

2. (RS) Knit the next row in pattern. Work the stitch where you attached skein (B) as normal.

3. (WS) Knit to the stitch directly above where you attached the new skein (B), but don’t knit it. Bring the (B) yarn to the back of the needles and then drop it. Bring the old skein (A)’s yarn up and knit the stitch. Then, wrap (B) around this stitch and bring it back to the front of the needles, then drop it. Continue knitting the row with skein (A).

4. Keep alternating this every row, then every two rows, three rows, etc.

I kind of did a WT method without turning, which hides the hole you get from switching yarns in the middle of a row. Wrapping the yarn in front of a stitch makes it look like a purl, so it will only work with garter or another type of patterns with purls on the front. It does leave a pretty noticeable ridge, too. I’m sure I didn’t invent this, but maybe it’ll help someone!

Whoops. Looks like my inexperience with kettle-dyed yarns has come to bite me. See the clearly different section of yarn towards the butt? That’s where I changed yarns, haha. It really is true what they say: you HAVE to alternate skeins even when they’re from the same dye lot. In this case, the second skein has a lot of streaks of a light gold, where the first had barely at all, and it’s just more variegated in general.

I’m going to rip it back to before the short rows and try alternating from there. If it’s still too much of a color shift, I guess I’ll have to start from the beginning…but I hope I don’t have to.

In any case, I DID want to keep knitting and knitting this thing!

I’m loving every moment of knitting Eric’s Jumpsuit by Ainur Berkimbayeva. Not only is the pattern easy and well-written, it’s the perfect match with the Anzula Cricket yarn. That soft merino-cashmere-nylon blend makes the squishiest garter stitch, and I want to keep knitting and knitting so I can keep feeling each luxurious knit stitch. It’s going to be so cozy for my future niece/nephew.

I’m knitting the 6-12 month size, as the baby will be born in the spring and won’t need a wooly jumpsuit anytime soon. I’m exactly on gauge with size 3 needles, the same as the pattern, so I think I’ve finally found a pattern designer with the same loose gauge as myself!

I also appreciate how mindless it is to knit, yet has such a perfect detail with the side cable. It’s so easily memorized that I didn’t have to look at the pattern after the first ten minutes. Then again, I’m really good at memorizing cable patterns. (Not like lace, where I still had to look at the pattern for the Sari shawl six months into knitting it.) Plus, the cable is the same type of slip-stitch type that I found for the first time in the Charlestown pullover (meaning, it’s not even a cable as you’re not crossing stitches).

This was the perfect antidote to the Summer-of-No-Knitting. Scrumptious yarn, a beautiful pattern, and miles of mindless garter. I wish I was knitting something for an adult so this would last longer.