Harris Jumper

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When I was living in England, we took a family holiday to the Outer Hebrides off the north-western coast of Scotland, the largest islands being Lewis and Harris (famous for its tweed).  My husband bought me a large bag of handspun wool spun on the island from local sheep… Skip to seven years later and I have finally done something with it.  The jumper didn’t really take that long to knit due to the thickness of the wool and the large size of the needles.  I bought the pattern from a website called Patternfish, and the pattern was called ‘weekend neckdown pullover’ which I thought was rather ambitious but I guess you could knock it over in a weekend if you didn’t eat or sleep, or if you’re a really fast knitter. My husband helped me make the double pointed needles.  I needed size 12mm which I didn’t have, so we bought some 12mm dowel from the hardware store, placed the orbital sander upside down in a vice and turned the ends over the sander once it was turned on.  A little hand sanding at the end to make them nice and smooth and voila!  They worked like a treat.  I made the hat too, a few years ago.  The main part of the hat was done with some wool from one of Rose’s sheep, called Patch.  The yellow trim was wool that I dyed with Coreopsis flowers.  This was my first foray into natural dyeing.  I found the pattern for the ‘stockingette cap’ in one of the spin off magazines.  I did search for it but couldn’t find it again, so I can’t tell you which one.  Oh, well.  I had a lot of fun doing both of these projects and that’s what really matters.