I was thrilled to be given these Munrospun Fair Isle Yoke sweater/cardigan kits by a family friend this summer. The kit includes a ready knitted yoke saved on cotton thread and the yarn needed to knit the rest of the cardigan or sweater. The yarn is Munrospun Shetland 4 ply 100% pure virgin wool.
The accompanying pattern reflects that the yoke would work on a range of sizes from 34 to 40 inch bust.
To make up the garments you:
- Knit the front/s, back and sleeves and work your button plackets separately.
- Join the yoke by pulling out the cotton thread and slipping the yoke stitches, all 263 of them onto a needle.
- Then you work across your pieces knitting stitches you’ve previously kept on holders and picking up where you’ve cast off stitches.
- The underarm stitches, also kept aside are the grafted.
- You then pull the cotton out of the stitches of the top of the yoke and put them on a needle.
- Sew the front bands onto the front if you’re doing the cardigan
- Work a ribbed neck band
- Sew up the sides if you’re doing the cardigan.
I wonder about how easy it would be to match tension. It says you need 7 stitches an inch so I guess as long as you get that and then block effectively it would look Ok.
I admit these being vintage kits, I have a real reservation about doing anything but looking at them and loving them. I may gift one to a friend who has a similar passion for vintage but I imagine the other will remain in kit form.
A fellow Raveller has recommended the Munrospun yarn. She still has, and wears, a sweater she made from it in the 1950s. Another, who also came upon a kit struggled to make it up because although she could get the stitch tension she could not match the row tension, so instead she used the yarn for something else, but again recommended the yarn for it’s bloom and softening when washed.
These kits contain yarn spun in Galashiels, Scotland and I tried to do a bit of digging online but didn’t come up with a great deal regarding their operation in Galashiels. I have fished about before regarding their Restalrig, Edinburgh factory and that will be a different post, and what I found out about Galashiels took me to Bernat Klein who worked for Munrospun. That too will be for another post, after all I’m not sure there are many textile designers who have also worked for the British Intelligence Service.