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Friday, January 26, 2024

Rainbow Jasper Jumper

Behold my enormous sweater of many colors!! A cousin to Dolly's coat of many colors, no doubt. 


This baby was a massive undertaking. A stash-busting masterpiece. Mistakes were made. I'd do things differently next time. But I love it anyway.

This is the the Knit Edit Jasper Jumper. The Jasper Jumper is a top down pattern knit fully in the round, designed for stash busting and using scrap yarn. It's knit with 6mm/US 10 needles and either two strands of DK yarn together, or equivalent chunky yarn. 

The pattern is designed to be a statement sweater with balloon sleeves, a cropped fit and a loose, oversized body. For my Jasper Jumper, I knit a size 6, which is listed as a UK 16/18. 

For yarn, I dug into my stash. I had a bunch of what I would call light worsted/heavy DK weight yarn in my stash left over from previous projects including my striped Granny Go Round Sweater, my green Granny Go Round, and my Love Number Sweater. I had a couple whole skeins and partial skeins of some colors. I used this yarn as the main yarn, sort of striping it together as I went. 

I held the yarn above with a bunch of tapestry wool remaining from a series of six wool cross-stitch kits I've been working on since 2020. Much of this wool was pre-cut into short strands of, like less than a yard, so I spliced them together using the wet splice method as I went to avoid sewing in all the ends. Similar to what I did for my green Barnie Beanie.

The Knit Edit color changing method and holding two strands of yarn together is so much fun. I love seeing how each row, each stitch actually, turns out different from the last and how the colors overlap and interchange with one another. The color changing keeps you interested and motivated to knit the next row.


As I said, mistakes were made with my Jasper Jumper, but I enjoyed the process so much I don't really care.

First mistake: the ribbed collar is supposed to be doubled over and I didn't do that for some reason that I can't remember that made sense at the time. In retrospect I regret it a bit because this sweater is very heavy and I think it is stretching the collar out a bit as I wear it. Live and learn. 

Second mistake: the increases. As you can see, I have little holes along my raglan increase lines. I somehow completely missed in in the instructions that you're support to twist the yarn over increases to close the holes when you knit the row after the increases. Oops. I did not do that. Oh well. 

Third mistake: Not sure if this is a mistake or just a fit issue to correct next time for me: the armholes are very low and the sleeves absolutely massive. I think next time I would stop sleeve increases earlier for a higher armhole and narrower sleeves. Getting this sweater on under a jacket will be nearly impossible. 


One area where I didn't make a mistake: I worked pretty hard to get the sleeves to almost match each other. After knitting the body, I weighed out my remaining yarn with my kitchen scale and divided it by color into two piles, one for each sleeve, so that I could get the sleeves to resemble one another. They're not exact, but close enough! 


But despite all my mistakes and complaining, I'm pretty enamored with my Jasper Jumper! It's so cheerful and fun and ridiculous. And deeply satisfying since it's made in stash yarn! I'll wear it so proudly, Dolly-style.