Central Park Hoodie

At long last, I had the time to sew up CPH this bank holiday weekend! I took my time with the sewing, using mattress stitch on all seams, so it took quite a while. I like the idea of sewing in the sleeve heads before seaming the side and sleeve seams all in one go, I think the sleeves are the neatest I've done so far.

The Rowanspun Aran (shade Hardy) was lovely to knit with and blocked very nicely, softening somewhat in the process. The only slight down side is that it tends to break when you are sewing up with it. I'd heard this beforehand and even though I took care to try not to leave very much stitching to tighten up at a time, I still had a number of breaks. I'm struggling to remember how much yarn I used in total, I think around 6.5 skeins (time for a stock take in the Rowan department!).

I'm so pleased with how this garment turned out, it's a great fit with some ease so you can easily wear things underneath. I made the 40" size as I'd heard this could run a little small, but after blocking it's just right. The sleeves are quite long but I like them that way, nothing worse than sleeves at "half mast" particularly when it's cold!

I didn't make many mods, I used a three needle bind-off on the hood rather than casting off and seaming (could have grafted it too), and I knit the front bands all in one go rather than each side individually. I made 6 buttonholes and used olive wood buttons.