The Anson

The Anson and the Slingsby went on sale to subscribers at 11 this morning, with everyone else in 48 hours. It took 18 samples to get the Anson right and 12 for the Slingsby. The first orders came in the same day.

Collected the whole run from the factory today. Before anything goes on sale, every piece gets a once-over on my table.

I've also ordered custom wool combs that I'll include along with a personalised note with each order.  

The first order is in. The Anson in grey and the Slingsby in navy, six of each size. The factory says September, give or take a couple of weeks depending on when Shepley can deliver the yarn.

The washed samples are back, and it hasn't worked. The agitation took the knit from a nice clean texture to fluffy. It didn't just change how it looks, either. It changed the structure, and the knit now feels loose.

So nothing will be washed before it's sold. The yarn comes clean on cone, and that's how it stays.

To date, we haven't washed the sweaters. The yarn comes 'clean on cone' meaning that it's already been washed but I want to know how it'll react if someone does throw it in their washing machine. We'll give it a shot and see what the result is.

This sweater is now, finally, dialled in. Stuart reckons about six weeks from order to delivery.

The latest sample has a wider collar, and where the shoulder is linked to the collar it looks loose. It's a small thing, but small things are what come back as returns. Back it goes.

I'm going to reduce the collar from 3cm to 2cm and the neck, hem and cuffs are changing to a narrower 2x1 rib.

The collar is the big one. I want the sweater to be refined. Something you can wear over a shirt and under a smart jacket. A bulky collar makes it look more like a fisherman's sweater.

Changing colour every sample makes it hard to see what's changed and what hasn't. So we're going back to navy until the fit is dialled in, and it becomes the baseline for everything else. The red came out a centimetre shorter than the pattern, so the yarn may be knitting tighter.

The last sample was great. For the next one: three centimetres longer in the body, a centimetre longer in the sleeve, a narrower neck and a shorter cuff. It's being knitted in a claret red from Shepley Yarns in Yorkshire.