Knittin' Crap: The Great Nihon Vogue Knit-A-Lone

There are these things called knit-a-longs, see, where a group of people all decide to make the same pattern or related patterns at the same time. Someone on the Ravelry Japanese Knitting and Crochet group suggested a Keito Dama/Nihon Vogue knit-a-long (KAL). Nihon Vogue is one of the main Japanese publishers of knitting and crochet books. Keito Dama is their popular quarterly magazine. I had wanted to do a pullover from one of my Nihon Vogue books and actually had stash yarn that would work, so I decided to do that. Now, as most of us know, I have serious WIP ADD¹, so committing to working on one sweater more or less straight through was kind of a big deal for me.² But, no, I said ok, I'll do it. And so I started.

And no one else did.

Thus, the great Nihon Vogue Knit-A-Long became the great Nihon Vogue Knit-A-Lone. But I worked about a ball of yarn a week for about 8 weeks, and tonight I finished the last seam of the sweater. It turned out really, really well. It's a little, uh, snug across the chest, but it's very pretty and I think it's flattering on me.

So, there you go. A long-sleeved pullover with multiple stitch patterns worked in DK weight yarn completed in less than two months, from a pattern written in a language I can't read a word of.³ Not too shabby.

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¹Work-In-Progress Attention Deficit Disorder.
²I did make my mother a cardigan for Xmas last year. She got it in February.
³Actually, I know the word for "stitch" now without looking it up. Of course, it helps that it's only a single character.