So, you start this project by watching for tweets. I’m not tuned in to tweets, unless they are emitted from our lake-side bird feeders, so in my case it’s catch-as-catch-can on The Loopy Ewe website. The Loopy Ewe is the only U.S. source for  Wollmeise. I click here and 99.9% of the time I read “Sorry, we don’t have any of these items in stock right now.” But every once in awhile, I get there before it’s all sold out.

Wollmeise is the brainchild and handchild of Claudia Höll-Wellmann. Here’s the address to her brick and mortar store:

Rohrspatz & Wollmeise GmbH
Andreas Wellmann
Poststr. 1
85276 Pfaffenhofen/Ilm

So, if I read the map correctly, Pfaffenhofen is not too far from Munich. Bottom line? My yarn traveled far before it got to my needles.

Claudia is known for her deeply saturated colors. I haven’t worked with it often, but check out my Color Affection, my kayak shrug, and Isaac’s Vauven Sukka and baby boots. When you nearly have to take out a mortgage to buy yarn you use up ever single yard of it. In fact, I have a one inch diameter ball of bright yellow left in my stash that I will use for something some day.

So, the brown is the barenstark colorway, merino DK superwash. It’s 468 yards to the skein and skeined up so tightly you could use the skein for self-defense in a pinch. I was concerned about the tight wind of the skein when I met my first skein. But it doesn’t damage the yarn.

I wanted to make a vintage cardigan for Isaac. His mom was totally on board with the idea. It took awhile to find the perfect pattern for this special yarn and special project, but Sirdar booklet 3976 “Cabled Cardigans” fit the bill. The photos in the pattern booklet are not snazzy. But I thought I saw that it had definite potential. Ravelry only has two projects knit from this pattern. And Ravelry soon will have 5 million members, so this pattern is basically the definition of obscure. It took a leap of faith to trust that old stand-by Sirdar would deliver an error-free pattern and a cool hooded cardigan.

Deliver they did!

One of the comments my little sweater gathered in the Loopy Groupies group on Ravelry was that knitting for a child using Wollmeise must be one definition of love. It’s great yarn, for sure. Not really worth the price for merino, if we were being honest about it. But a 468 yard skein with no imperfections and only one knot. Great stitch definition. Deep color that stays put on the yarn, not on your hands. And all this in a superwash. It’s worth it (once in awhile.)

Here’s a view of the back.

The back wasn’t pictured in the pattern. At first I was surprised that instead of cabling the pattern continued the simple textured stitch on the back. But I ended up thinking that was the right design choice.

You might like to see Isaac wearing his new sweater. Well, he was moving fast, but here he is, on his mom’s lap. The Prince of Flannel wasn’t happy about shedding his shirt for a sweater. And the sleeves need to be cuffed back for now.

In a few years, I hope to find that this sweater is showing signs of hard use and multiple washings. There is no better compliment for a knitter than to find that the knits she’s made are worn to almost tatters!