Swatches

The pattern says 40 stitches = 4” over Diamonds and Braids pattern. This is supposed to happen with Lamb’s Pride Worsted on US7. Fat chance: with DK yarn, US7 produces a swatch that’s 6 inches wide, and on my 2004 sweater, those 40 stitches measure 5.75-inches. No wonder it was huge.

I like the drape of the fabric on US9, but the cables look crisper on the US#8. Rice stitch worked on US8 gets me 5.25 spi.

Based on the measurements of my swatches, the charts as arranged make up the 19 inches I need across the back: 116 sts, not the 146 in the pattern. I can eliminate those 30 extra stitches by eliminating the Rice stitch side panels and the purl stitches between charts.

Saddles

The planned fit of the pattern is good: two 6” saddles with a 7” neck opening is exactly my 19” cross-shoulder target.

2021-06-01: Design feature

14 rows into the upper back, I discovered I was doing the WS of Chart C incorrectly (WS RT instead of WS LT). I was starting to correct it—dropping those three cable stitches down 14 rows and re-working them—but it looked terrible. My mistake actually looked pretty nice (if done consistently) so I dropped the corrections, and reworked them with as originally, mistakenly, knitted: all LTs.

2021-06-26: Back finished, onto the fronts

Back took awhile: I had other projects to work on, and I had to drop the whole middle cable down about 20 rows to fix a bad crossing.

11 inches upper back is a little too long for me, so I stopped just shy of that (close to 10.7) on having finished row 1 of charts D & E.

Back was 116 stitches, with 50 across neck. So I’ll pick up 33 on each saddle, add 5 neck stitches to each side, then cast on 40 across the front of the neck?

Too square: rip back and add two neck stitches each time a row ends there, for 10 each side, then pick up 30 across front of the neck?

2021-10-30: Out of hibernation; checking fit

Sometime in the summer, I set this aside to work on other projects with some deadlines. Got myself back on track to finish the upper front.

Before proceeding on, I want to see if I’m happy with the collar. (I probably have enough yarn, but to be safe, working collar in a contrasting color. (I can replace later if it looks bad.) I picked up 175 stitches around the opening. 100 is a better target, so reduced to that in the first round. k1-k2tog across back of neck, then k2tog 25 times, k1-k2tog across center front, finishing the round with k2tog 25 times. Verdict: collar closes up the top well, but I really do need to find a way to knit sweaters collar-first.

My back and front panels should be 19 inches wide, but the cables (of course) pull that in a bit. I think adding 4 inches for full chest circumference will work nicely, so I’ll start the sleeves with 2 inches of flat knitting.

2021-10-31: Sleeves

My front/back panels are 60 rows long. I picked up 46 stitches along side of front, knit 32 stitches of saddle, then 46 along back(124 sts) . Two inches is 7 rice stitch nubs.

I have 20-21 inches to decrease the sleeve stitches to the wrist circumference—about 10 inches for me, or about 60 stitches as measured on the sweater, 64 stitches over 32 decrease rounds. We’re getting about 7 rows per inch = 140/147 sleeve rows ÷ 32 = ~4.5. So maybe decrease every 5th round 16 times, then every 4th round to wrist.

2021-11-13: Sleeve Re-Think

With some length on the left sleeve, it’s clearly way too baggy. Need to rip it back and shoot for more fitted sleeve upper.

36% of my 45-inch chest should be about 16. I think I only want to pick up about 33 stitches from the sides of each of the front and back. Knit flat two inches (8 nubs).

Alternate decreasing every fifth and sixth round to the wrist. Instead of decreasing at the bottom of the sleeve, I’m decreasing at the edges of the cable panel: p2tog-tbl before panel, p2tog after. Wrist is 55 sts around.