Leila’s Grace by Denise Bayron Sweater

My first time doing cables! And no specialized cable-needle needed! I chose Wool and the Gang’s super bulky Crazy Sexy Wool for this sweater in a lovely pale lavender.



Pattern: Grace (in Laine no. 8) 
Yarn: Crazy Sexy Wool by Wool and the Gang in Lilac Powder (7 skeins) 
Size made: L (oversized)
Needles: 13, 11, and 10
Modifications: Did a simple backloop increase for the shoulder increases. Sized down in needles for ribbing. Cropped the length of the sleeves as a modification to the pattern.

About a year ago, I learned to knit and have been tearing through different skills and techniques. There’s a love/hate relationship with learning something new in knitting. It is so exciting to stretch the old brainbox but it is also so frustrating to inevitably have to tear out your work once or thirty times. Luckily, because of the simplicity and clarity of this pattern, I only had one restart. Doing these cables is a joy and made me adventurous to try more.



When you’re learning a new pattern and creating it physically at the same time, there is a very firm and vulnerable faith that you place in the instructions, because you can’t visualize what’s going to emerge next between your hands. The Grace sweater is thankfully so readable that even though I made a mistake RIGHT at the beginning, it was a quick fix in frogging the whole thing and starting again with the answer to my error very obviously before me. Crazy Sexy Wool helped enormously by being a relatively non-felty and non-splitty yarn, especially for a single ply, and worked up beautifully after being knitted and pulled and knitted again. On size 13 needles, this super bulky knits up into a firm and flexible fabric, which is a perfect fit for the structure of the Grace pattern.



Because I am a loose knitter, and particularly because I already know this about myself (!), I ought to have done a gauge swatch before beginning the actual pullover. You may know where this is going. I decided to make the Large size of the sweater based on my measurements, but now that it is finished, I could have sized down and made the Medium and still have had a comfy, boxy sweater. I kind of love it oversized, though? I chose to size down massively in my needle size when doing the cuff ribbings, to a 10 needle, to have some additional shaping to the sweater’s silhouette.



This comfy slouchy sexy sweater will be worn with dark skinny trousers and boots on those days that want the cold to get under your skin, but the Grace will be my warm cloud of protection against it.