Birki - the struggle was real

After a solid 5 years of experience in knitting lopi sweaters I have to admit I was surprised I still can make real beginners' mistakes. But it's possible. Impressively showcased at the latest example, the Birki sweater pictured above.

It all started very innocently and easily and I followed my regular basic pattern based on the "Aftur" I first made in 2012. The yoke pattern is from an old Istex pattern and originally used in a childrens' model - I think this is where the mistake originates. I usually knit up to 38 cm of the bodice, put it aside, and knit the sleeves (42 cm length). Then I join them in the round and continue the yoke from there.

This time, however, I concentrated too much on the chart of the childrens' sweater and didn't realize it was actually spread over more rows than the "Aftur" pattern, but with the same number of stitch decreases. I knitted straight for another 5 cm or so and THEN started the pattern, and that threw the whole composition of the sweater out of balance. After I initially finished the sweater it had saggy armholes and was far too long. Well, exactly those 5 cms to long to be precise.

I didn't want to unravel the yoke because I remember after unraveling my "Luxembourg" cardigan that the Lopi doesn't react too kindly and loses a lot of fibre fluffiness. Instead I thought I'd fiddle a little bit with different techniques that I have used in the past but not in this combination: The plan was to take the yoke apart again from the bodice, unravel the excess 5 cm of stockinette at the bottom of the yoke, and then join the two parts together again.

It worked surprisingly well. Following a tutorial of the TechKnitter that I previously used to replace a stretched out hem, I was brave and cut the thread in the middle of my finished sweater. Not for the faint-hearted! The tricky bit was picking up the stitches evenly on both sides and not missing any. I had actually used a lifeline (the orange piece of thread you can see in the picture) to avoid dropping stitches but I was worried that I would pick them up the wrong way round after all, so I paid extra attention to avoid twisted stitches.



Then came the Kitchener stitch ordeal. I had previously only used this method (as shown in the Knitty tutorial) to join the stitches of the hole under the arm, which is only 10 or so stitches. Now I had over 250 stitches to join! My fingers were hurting and I needed to do it over a couple of days because it requires a lot of attention in order to keep the correct rhythm. But I did it!!

It's not perfect, as you can see in the pictures below, but it does the job. I saved myself the unraveling of the yoke and I feel I master two new techniques properly. So in spite of this project taking waaaay longer than planned, I can at least say I'm finishing it with a good feeling. And now I can finally appreciate the cool colour combination that drew me to this sweater in the first place.

I probably should also mention that shortly after I figured all of this out, I saw that there is an adapted chart for the yoke for adult sizes on Ravelry...

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Pattern: "Birki" by Johanna Hjaltadóttir
Yarn: Istex "Létt Lopi" (ordered via www.islandwolle.de, including the children's pattern)