So what do I knit after declaring so loudly that I don’t like variegated yarn?

Hmmmm…..

Something in Rowan Colourscape maybe? A chunky variegated yarn?

It wasn’t my fault! Ben made me do it!

After the success of Ben’s Man scarf, I was keen to keep the momentum going and swathe Ben in more knitted loveliness. Ben was duly dragged  to the Oxford Street John Lewis at sale time (acheived only with the promise of lunch at Wagamamas if he played nice) and flung headlong into heaps of lovely sale yarns to see if he liked anything to make a pattern he had seen and actually liked.

After I waved several promising yarns at him, he quite firmly attached himself to this yarn, Rowan Colourscape in shade 439 – Storm. A really good combo of steely greys and teals….actually not that different to the colours Ben chose for his man scarf!

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To be fair – colourscape knits up in large colour blocks rather than the messy little splodges of colour that make a garment look busy and put me off variegated yarns.

So what was this pattern that the lovely Ben liked?

It was this…

From Ben Hoodie

The Hooded Sweatshirt from Knits Men Want by Bruce Weinstein ===>Click here to see this great book on Amazon

This is a super book – only £7.66 too 😀   All the patterns are graded so you can knit in a number of different sizes AND DIFFERENT GAUGE YARNS! I’ve never seen that before 🙂 The only problem I had was that the charts in the book don’t have a key to say what those numbers down the right hand side mean… (It’s actually stitches per inch – most yarns show gauge in stitches to 4 inches or 10 cm so easy to do the arithmetic) Just circle your chosen size and gauge and off you go…

From Ben Hoodie

The book is quite a funny read too – each chapter has an explanation about why men might or might not like a certain element of your knitting that you are trying to foist on him – my fave was Not All Men are Worthy of Cashmere”  in which a boyfriend, on receiving a fine gauge cashmere hat, promptly used it to clear up some cat sick then innocently said, “but it’ll wash won’t it??”….

So, how was it to knit? Did Ben like it? Has Ben worn it?

The pattern was very straight forward and easy to follow once I had got used to being faced with a huge array of numbers for each instruction (I knit the 44” chest on 3.5 stitches gauge so there really is only one number to look at in each array) . The hard part for me was trying to make the huge blocks of colour in the Colourscape kinda match up. I really didn’t want the shading to jar when I changed ball or for one sleeve to be teal and the other grey.  There was a fair bit of rewinding of skeins on my ball winder to get to just the right point in a blob of colour.

So what do you think? Did I match it up OK?

From Ben Hoodie

Here’s a close up of the neck….

From Ben Hoodie

and the nice 2 x 1 rib, repeated around the neck and hood and all knitted as you go – no nasty picking up stitches 🙂

From Ben Hoodie

And a back view, showing the hood…

From Ben Hoodie

Hmmm, Yes. About that hood. I think it’s a bit pointy but Ben says he likes it…What do you think?

From Ben Hoodie

I think he likes it because he can muck about and pretend to be an “evil druid”!…

From Ben Hoodie

I suppose the acid test is, “Does Ben wear it?”…this action shot shows that the odds are looking quite favorable 🙂

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