10-12-2016 Gauge swatching

With US 10s in fairisle pattern:

• 18 st/4”
• 20 rounds/4”

I tried to match the gauge exactly, but I won’t sweat it because there is so much ease build in anyway.
I’m off on the row-gauge, so keep that in mind, self!

(Originally, I tried this with Cascade 220, but I couldn’t get big enough stitches. Switched over to aran-weight Plymouth Homestead with much better results!)

10-14-2016

• Knit 9 rounds of 2x2 rib to get 2” total.
• Mistake in pattern for Medium size: In the joining round for the body, it should be knit 106 after casting on the 7 steek stitches, not 105, stitches, PM, knit 106 stitches. 7 + 106 + 1 + 106 = 220.

10-16-2016

Catching every 5th stitch because I don’t do well with long floats.

10-25-2016 - Armholes

Again, for the medium size, I had to adjust the math as follows:

Next rnd: Work 7 steek sts and next 43 sts in patt as est, place next 9 sts on holder for armhole, using backward loop method, CO 7 sts for armhole steek, work next 109 sts for back, place next 9 sts on holder for armhole, CO 7 sts for armhole steek, work to end which is another 43 sts. 216, not 214 sts.

Also, this is probably evident to anyone who has done steeking before, but when you reserve 9 sts for the armhole, you need to skip 9 sts in the pattern chart.

I ended up doing 36 rounds after casting on the armhole steeks.

11-05-2016 - Shoulder Shaping (Front)

I chose short rows instead of doing stair-step bind-offs at the beginning of each row. I used Tech Knitting’s tutorial as well as this video.

I found it very difficult to remember to 1) wrap & turn, 2) purl on the wrong side while maintaining colorwork pattern, 3) catch 5+ floats, and 4) follow the chart, which sometimes had to be read forwards and sometimes backwards. Instead, I re-charted the 12 shaping rows for the front right panel and then wrote a script to do horizontal reflection for the left front panel. (See image. The bottom row highlighted in gray corresponds to line 37 in the chart.)

Errata: The off-by-one error meant that when I began shaping, it looked like this for the medium size:

Next rnd: Work 7 steek sts, then next 43 sts, BO armhole steek sts, work across 109 back sts to next armhole steek, join 2 new balls of yarn and BO armhole steek sts, then work to end of rnd. 93 sts rem for front 43 sts for ea front plus 7 steek sts, and 109 sts rem for the back.

(Basically, everywhere it says “42” for shaping the front, I had 43.)

When I did the final bind-off for the front (WS), I purled the first two and the last two stitches together. This is important so that you will have two pairs of six on both the front and the back to seam together in the end, I think.

11-06-2016 - Shoulder Shaping (Back)

I powered through and finished the shaping on the back; I never want to do purl colorwork again.

Once again, I re-charted the pattern for the back 109 stitches and did short rows for shaping, rather than a stair-step bind-off.

11-06-2016

Armhole steeks are crochet-reinforced and cut open. And the 43 stitches for each shoulder are seamed together. SO GLAD I did short rows instead of stair-step bind-off! I will never go back!

11-09-2016 - Reinforcing all of the steeks

So I panicked about the durability of the crocheted steek reinforcement. The one highlight of this otherwise horrible day is that my dear friend Siena let me come over after work and use her sewing machine to reinforce the steeks.

I did two (drunk-looking) rows for each side of the already-cut armhole steeks/armsyces.

Then I did a crochet-chain reinforcement for the front, cut it open, and reinforced the sides the same way. I could see no reason not to get all the machine-sewn reinforcements done in one fell swoop.

11-15-2016 - First sleeve is done.

The sleeve was cumbersome because the bulk of the sweater mass is attached to one end.

After doing the 16 decreases, chart C, and 2” of ribbing, I ended up with longer sleeves: just past wrist, rather than 3/4”. I had intended to make longer sleeves, so my large row gauge was fine.

11-29-2016 - Second sleeve is done; facings finished

Wow, so sick of sleeves. Because I cut the front steek at the same time as the armhole steeks, there is a lot of sweater bulk to whip around as you’re knitting on a very small circumference. It’s a pain.

(Major doubts about the length of the sleeves. I may have to rip back and make them shorter.)

For the facings, I was confused about how the stockingnette stitch should work, so there’s one row of purl bumps and then two rows of knit Vs, but I think it still looks okay. (See photo.) I ended up using a thinner yarn to do blanket stitch the facings to the body.

12-04-2016

I ripped back both sleeves and made them a little shorter. I had done three rows after the final decrease, so I removed those and started chart C immediately after the last decrease row.

12-8-2016

After the collar was finished, I powered through and knit the front facings, remembering this time to purl the first row after picking up (rather than knitting). Once again, I blanket-stitched the facings to the body.

12-12-2016 All done & blocked

So, after I finished and wove in all the ends, I realized that the sleeves were still too long. (They were long on me and this is a gift for my mom, who is shorter than I am.) I rippbed back to the 15th decrease, then immediately worked the 16th decrease round, worked one row in CC, and cut out Chart C. I don’t love the look of the row in CC followed by the first ribbing row, but I also do not care.

Blocking is taking a long time because it’s so thick. It is mostly dry and looks like I ended up getting closer to 19.5st/4” and 18.5 rounds/4”, hence why the sleeves were so long.

Looking forward to seeing how my mom likes it for Christmas!

12-13-2016 Done blocking

This grew a LOT vertically when I knit it. I did two gauge swatches, I promise, and kept in mind that I was 1st off on row gauge. Still, the finished product is closer to 30” in length, rather than the expected 27.25”.

It’s more like trench coat-length, and I’m very sad about it, knowing that the recipient is a few inches shorter than I am.

Oh well, maybe trench-length coat-igans will become a thing!