Completed Project: Charlee’s Elowen Raglan

I fell in love with the Elowen pattern from the very first time I saw Ready Set Raglan. The cover star of this amazing raglan book, I was immediately captured by the grunge rib aesthetic which reminded me of all those episodes of Buffy I’d marathoned over lockdown. I flicked through the book on one of my first shifts back before Christmas and I knew even more that I had to make this jumper! After spending lockdown making countless bags, gloves and crop tops for my friends, I was ready to treat myself.

It took me a while to choose my yarn. All the patterns in Ready Set Raglan are made with a worsted weight yarn, but I’m an absolute sucker for a hand dyed base – which we didn’t have any in the correct weight at the time. I’d been eyeing up The Uncommon Thread’s Everyday Sport since I started working at YAK, and Kate suggested I hold it with a lace weight like Onion Silk & Kid Mohair to make up the correct gauge. My problem was solved!

Ever the Bowie fan, I chose the colour Space Oddity but we only had 3 skeins left at the time – I would be just short of the recommended yardage and at this point I hadn’t decided how long I wanted to make this jumper. I decided to buy a skein of Cobble to add some striping detail and make sure I definitely wouldn’t run out of yarn! These were held with Sort, the black colour way of Onion to blend the two colours together.

I’d only ever knitted jumpers flat before so this was definitely a learning curve for me, but I found the pattern very easy to work with. I would highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to make the transition of knitted accessories to clothing as the pattern is very detailed and gives you exact instructions for ways to alter the pattern to suit you – for example, Elowen has three different neck options: short / high / rolled over, two types of yoke shaping and two types of hems. You may notice a slightly bump in fabric below the neckline – we didn’t notice this at the time and think it was due to the lighting when taking the photos. This bump doesn’t appear when I’m wearing the raglan, and if you want to see how it fits without this check out our Instagram Reels!

The pattern knitted up relatively fast – if we ignore the 5 weeks I procrastinated after finishing the yoke! I’d say all in all, it maybe took me about 3 weeks of knitting in the evenings. The fabric is extremely luxurious, with the silk / mohair blend complimenting the hand dyed merino perfectly. This jumper is definitely going to be one of my favourite pieces for years to come.

In the end I chose to keep the jumper cropped, with a rolled over neckband to keep with the 90’s nostalgia. In a size 2, I ended up using about 2 2/3 skeins of Everyday Sport, and about 3 1/2 balls of Silk / Mohair – less than the recommended yardage. There’s a fair amount of yarn left over, but I fell in love with this yarn combination so I have no doubt they will get used up at some point!

I’m ready to experiment with some more difficult techniques now, I think my next cast on may be something lace based.

Until Next Time… Happy Knitting!