The epic Star Wars sweater aka “When at first you don’t succeed, try again”

When looking at the stats for this project, you might get an idea that this was an easy project for me, that I knitted in just about a month and a half. This does in no way reflects the truth! I have indirectly worked on this sweater since the middle of june, where Alex and I first conceived the idea of merging the traditional Marius sweater with some motifs from the double knit star wars scarf. I cast on for size XL in drops Karisma and knitted away. What happened can best be described by this email exert, send to Alex (who is not a knitter) while he was away at a conference in the US (“skat” means “treasure” in Danish and is a common nickname for romantic partner):

“Dear skat.
I have realised why your sweater is so big; I did my gauge swatch flat, but knitted the whole sweater round. I didn’t know at the time that I should have swatched in-the-round, but oh, do I know that now!

I have decided that I will not finish your sweater as it is.

Instead I will buy some new yarn (I will use my birthday money), and reknit. I have done calculations of what size I should knit, to get a size XL. It turns out, that with my gauge, should knit a size S to end up with a size XL. Crazy.

Do you understand how this works? Because my tension is loose when I knit, my stitches are bigger than they should be, and therefore take up more room per cm. So when I knit a size XL, it turns out more like a size XXXL. Therefore I must knit a size Small to get a size XL.

What I have done of your sweater so far; I will rip the sleeves and keep the body. I am considering making a giant pillow out of the body. It’s pretty much seaming the top and bottom together and putting something inside, and it would be an awesome starwarspillow. I don’t want to rip and use the same brand of yarn again as I have read many bad reviews of the quality since I bought it.

So, I will aim to have the sweater version 2 done by christmas.

I’m not too bummed out- making mistakes is how I learn.

I understand if you are bummed out though, having to wait several months extra for your star wars sweater.“

So, that is what happened. I did cut out the front of the body and made a star wars pillow with it, although not giant. The rest I made into a (pretty amazing if I may say so) cardigan for myself. I ripped the sleeves and reknitted.

Then I made Alex this new sweater, using the knowledge I had gotten from the first proces. Below are the “diary” from that knit.

Also, some tips
If you consider to knit a traditional marius, this is what I learned:

-Trust the pattern, even if the sleeves look very wide. They are supposed to be that way.
-And yes, they seem short too. That’s because of the drop shoulder, but they will be long enough when sewn in!
-Steeking for the armholes is not scary, but not well-described in the book. If you speak scandinavian, here is an instructional. It is also informative even if you don’t understand the speaker, I imagine.
-Do not skip running an extra zig-zag across the stitches before you cut.
- Since the shoulder drops, there is no need for that seem to be elastic. So just sew it in on the sewing machine.
-Weave in all yarns ends before you start steeking, or they will get caught by the machine!
-Since the sides are cut open, you probably won’t have to worry about making your stripes jog-less, as it will be hidden by the sleeves!
-Peer Gynt is a great yarn, I highly recommend it for a non super wash DK weight yarn.

About incorporating the double-knit pattern into standed knitting:
Intarsia would probably be better. I said fuck it, and standed, with the resulting long floats on the back. I knit them in to the back every 3-4 stitches in the very long one-color repeats, and they don’t show through.

-There is no instructions for a neckline in this pattern. Therefore, the sweater goes all the way up in the front. I didn’t know better at the time, but you really shouldn’t skip making a proper crew neck.
you can do this in two ways, by knitting or by steeking:

Knitting
You divide the yarn in front and back, and even though you have to knit fair-isle back and forth for a little bit, it’s worth it. For example, follow these instructions for the neckline, free from garnstudio.

Steeking
mark the rounding of the neckline with some loosely sown on stitches. Reinforce on sewing machine, cut away waste, pick up stitches for the neckband and knit to desired length.

(I am going to do this, eventually)
edit: I steeked the neck opening in february 2016, when I just couldn’t stand looking at the original “no-shaping” neckhole. It was super easy, I just made a reinforcement on the machine like I did for the sleeves, then cut away excess fabric, picked up stitches and knitted a new collarband. The sweater looks much better now. Will upload a pic of the new neckline some time.