The eternal, infernal Jenny Sweater

After nine months, countless hours, and lord-knows-how-much money spent on yarn, I finally finished the Jenny Sweater on Labour Day morning.

I cast this thing on my needles all the way back in January, inspired by the multi-tonal yellowy-orange yarn my in-laws gave me for Christmas and how well it paired with the butter-yellow yarn I bought in Sweden the previous summer. I had also been missing Denmark something fierce, and so I wanted to knit something from the library of prolific Danish knitwear designer, Petite Knit.

The Jenny Sweater uses the smock stitch, a 12-row repeating pattern that gathers a series of 2×2 rib stitches into raised diamond shapes. I thought it would be a good introduction to textured sweaters, since up until this point my sweater patterns of choice have favoured colourwork over fancy stitches.

However, I conveniently forgot just how soul-sucking ribbing can be when you knit English style. And it was the. whole. sweater. The constant switch from purls to knits is tedious enough — but throw in the smock stitch, where you count six stitches ahead and knit between those to pinch them together, and you have a recipe for pain.

I have yet to meet a knitter who made something with this stitch pattern a second time. I think it’s a universally singular experience.

Perhaps one day I’ll learn how to knit continental (left-handed for the uninitiated), which is very popular among European knitters — it’s mesmerizing to watch them flick the yarn back and forth like a well-oiled machine.

I’ve also learned that I don’t particularly like bottom-up sweaters. The two I’ve made, this one and the sweater I made for my husband, are noticeably heavier on the needles, putting serious strain on my hands and forearms. Maybe the mental strain of working backward and trying to make sure I’ve left enough space to cover my tummy before I start attaching the sleeves is a contributing factor as well.

I unfortunately ran out of the Swedish yarn halfway through the project, and since I bought it in another country, more than a year ago, the dyer didn’t make this colourway anymore. I had to scour the earth to find a colour match.

My neighbourhood yarn store didn’t have the shade of yellow I needed, so I set out one weekend morning to go to every single yarn store in Edmonton until I found a suitable substitution. I fully expected to be out all day long, so I was truly shocked and relieved to have struck gold at my first stop at The Fibre Nook.

I bought two skeins of Sirdar that were on sale and supplemented with a skein of Scheepjes Metropolitan — both of which were nearly identical to my original yarn. Of course, I ran out of that yarn too, but luckily the Fibre Nook was well-stocked with replacements. The Suri that I was knitting in tandem with these yarns helped mask the difference as well.

I also had to replenish my stock of Suri three times, and even that wasn’t enough! As I was finishing the collar I ran out one last time, but instead used some of the white Suri I had been given on my birthday. My logic was it’d be inside my neck, so who’s going to notice?

The Jenny Sweater hungrily gobbled up five skeins of Suri, two skeins of Swedish yarn, and four balls of assorted Fibre Nook yarns. I don’t want to think about the cost of the whole thing.

Clocking in at nine months of work, this is the longest it’s ever taken me to knit a sweater. There were times I never thought it’d be done, left to rot in my knitting bag until I regained the will to keep at it.

I’m glad I didn’t give up. The finished product is both stunning and comfortable. I even got a compliment from a stranger and got to say “Thanks, I made it myself!”

But I will never, ever, knit the smock stitch again.