I found myself with a lot of time to knit as I was in quarantine at the end of July. Delta was hitting Paris really hard and found it's way into our household. Even though being careful, three out of four of us in my family caught the highly contagious variant. I had just received the first sample skeins of my new recycled yarn, Corrie Confetti. You can read about how this yarn came to be in my previous blog post.
I was feeling frustrated and fatigued because of the pandemic but decided not to let it get me down. I knew immediately which pattern I wanted to knit. It was the Felix pullover by Amy Christoffers. This pattern had been in my queue for a long time Corrie Confetti is the perfect yarn for this beautifully written pattern. The raglan increases are so much fun to knit and seeing all the beautiful La Bien Aimée tweed pop up as you knit the rows of stockinette were so exciting!
I knit the size 52.5 knowing that my gauge swatch same out a bit smaller than indicated in the pattern. I swatched with 5mm needles and came out with 16 stitches x 20 rows in stockinette. Since this was a top down raglan design, I knew that I'd need to do an extra set of raglan increases. What's great about top down sweaters is that you can try it on as you go to see if you need to add more raglan increases. I ended up using 4 skeins for my sweater! Per my usual modifications, I knit the sweater shorter than indicated in the pattern for a more cropped fit.
Before we closed for our annual summer break, we were able to get yarn to our local sample knitter, Gyorgyi and she knit us a GORGEOUS Dustland Shawl sample in Corrie Confetti. Stephen West released this pattern in July 2021 and when it came out I knew immediately it would be perfect pattern to showcase Corrie Confetti.
For our Dustland sample we knit on a 4.5mm needle with a slightly looser gauge than indicated in the pattern so we ended up using 4.5 skeins. If you are going to be purchasing Corrie Confetti Ochre for this project and you knit loosely, it's important to understand that the change of gauge will cause you to need more yarn than indicated in the pattern.
Because of our looser gauge the shawl turned out slightly larger than indicated in the pattern. For reference, I am 5'7 so the shawl looks larger on me which is exactly how I love these shawls. I can't wait for winter to come and to wrap myself up in this shawl. This pattern is accessible for intermediate beginners. This could be a great first shawl, actually. You need to know how to knit, purl, increase and make a i-cord bind off. Stephen West has a bunch of great knitting tutorials available.
Corrie Confetti will be available starting on September 1st at 6pm Paris time. The first spin will be in Ochre.