I love the way this sweater turned out! It suits DH so well with his silver hair. The plotulopi knits up surprisingly quickly. It has grown quite a bit as he has worn it - if I did it again I would go down a size.
A few years after making this, I did full it a bit, very carefully, in the front loading washing machine. This tightened it up and seems to be keeping it from bagging out with wear.
Notes:
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My gauge on 5.5mm needles before blocking was 15 sts/4”. After a quick steam blocking it relaxed to 14.5” and with wearing it relaxed even more, to 14 sts, the pattern’s stated gauge.
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I knit the XXL size for DH, who is 6’4” with a 42” chest, with the following modifications:
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The XXL sleeve started off really unusually wide, so I omitted increasing 4 sts on the last row of ribbing and just continued from there as normal, doing the first increase on the 11th row of stockinette.
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To make up the missing 4 stitches I just kept going in pattern until I had 60 stitches. With DH's long arms there was enough room to add these in.
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UPDATE: After he wore the sweater a few times it became evident that the cuffs themselves were just too big. I ended up cutting them off, picking up the stitches, decreasing down to 36 stitches on the first round, and knitting the cuffs downward on the 36 stitches on 4 mm needles. MUCH better. Next time would start the sleeves on 36 stitches.
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I also added some extra length on the body.
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The 1x1 ribbing stretches out quite a bit with wearing, probably due to the unspun nature of the plotulopi. Next time I would try twisted rib or going down to an even-smaller needle size (I used 4.5mm, as per pattern).
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Used this bind off for the neck - worked great.
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Twisted the two strands of wool together a little to strengthen them up before grafting under the arms.