The Chocolate Tart Pullover

If you're a regular reader of this blog, do you remember this brown wool hoodie project? For those who don't remember/don't want to be bothered clicking on the link, I'll just explain that back in the fall/early winter of 2017, I made myself a Celtic motif hoodie out of dark brown Merino Extrafine 120. Or, more accurately, mostly out of Merino Extrafine 120. I had 100 grams of brown DK in my stash that looked identical and I decided to save myself some money by using it to make one of the front side pieces out of it, and return the Merino Extrafine I saved thereby to the store. Great environmentally friendly and frugal idea, right? Or it would have been, had I checked the damn washing instructions on the other yarn, which I believe was Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. It turned out that the Cashmerino wasn't machine washable like the Extrafine was, and it also pilled much more. By the time the hoodie had been washed a few times, the one side was somewhat felted and shrunken, which ruined the sweater for me. After kicking myself multiple times, I decided I would take the sweater apart and make another sweater with the Merino Extrafine yarn. The Celtic Icon pattern I'd used was a real yarn soaker, so there would be plenty of yarn to make a pullover.

After some requisite (and exquisite) Ravelry browsing to find a suitable pattern for the replacement sweater, I chose the Raspberry Tart design you see depicted above, which by my calculations could easily be made with the reclaimed yarn from the brown hoodie, and was also suitable for an around home/running errands type sweater, which the brown hoodie was supposed to have been (and was, before it tragically partially felted).

I took apart the hoodie (which took many exasperating hours), wound the Merino Extrafine into balls, and threw the felted Cashmerino front pieces into one of my yarn stash boxes. Perhaps I may want them for material sometime.

Here's my finished version of the Raspberry Tart, which could probably be more accurately described as a Chocolate Tart. I had some issues with the pattern. The armholes seemed to be incredibly high cut, and the waist shaping when I initially did it according to the directions was above my bustline. I had to reknit the body to place the shaping correctly, and I also had to lengthen the pattern by quite a lot to make it the length it was supposed to be. I have a feeling those problems must be my mistake, but I checked and rechecked the pattern as I was working on this pattern and I can't see what I did wrong. Oh well, the sweater's completed and it fits well enough.

Out of the 650 grams of the Merino Extrafine that I reclaimed from the hoodie, this sweater took 490 grams. I have 160 grams of it left still, but I have plans for that too, as you will see.