Knitting blue swans

I started knitting the Wetwang jumper a couple of weeks ago, from Ann Kingstone's book, Born & Bred.   Wetwang is a Yorkshire village with black swans on the pond and a pub called the Black Swan. (And is well-known to archaeologists as the site of an Iron Age chariot burial.)  Ann's design is based on the black swans;  it has a yoke in stranded knitting with pairs of swans around it, and her sample jumper has the swans in black.   But I am knitting mine in navy blue (actually a darker blue than in the photo).    

 It's very clever design, but easy to follow.  It's knitted top down, and is completely seamless (hurray!).  So far I have knitted the yoke and the sleeve caps, and I am knitting the main part of the body, which is plain stocking stitch.  You can see that the ends of yarn around the yoke still need tidying up.  The bits of turquoise yarn under the sleeves are from the provisional cast on of the underarm stitches. 

I love the swans around the yoke; they are so elegant. The yoke is bordered, top and bottom, by applied i-cord.  I have not done that before but I'm really impressed by it.  It gives a very neat edge.  Then there's a section of short rows, so that the back of the yoke sits higher than the front, and at the same time you increase for the sleeve caps.     

I've been watching a lot of Broadchurch over the last couple of days - I have recorded every episode but never got around to watching any, until I realised that the last episode is tomorrow.  I am trying to catch up by then so that I can watch it live.   So now that I am on the plain stocking stitch part of Wetwang, I can knit it and watch Broadchurch at the same time, without missing anything.  And then try it on - one advantage of knitting top-down in one piece is that you can keep trying on as you go.  It fits very well - it's going to be really good.  Of course, now that Spring has finally arrived, I shan't be able to wear it until the end of the year, but never mind.