First sweater and first color work project after basically not knitting anything for about 9 years, and really not much of anything before that. I am truly a baby knitter. This bad boy has already been a process and I’m only halfway through the horse section of the color work. I started this originally in Sept. and pretty quickly realized that while I did a gauge swatch, I didn’t do any actual math to realize that I was going to be very far off from where I needed to be, even with 12 in ease. My original swatch was also done incorrectly, so I remeasured the work I had done, then did a lot of math, and frogged completely. I had started a size 2 sweater and actually needed to work a size 4. I don’t know what my length gauge is, but the only part that actually matters rows wise so far is the color work, then you knit x number of inches before the next steps. Once I get there I will remeasure and make sure I don’t need to make any more adjustments to the sweater.
Second issue I hit on the first go round was my floats were too tight. I watched more tutorials and I thought I fixed it on the 2nd start. I had to put the project down for a month to wrap up Christmas gifts, and upon restarting I realized the lumpiness I thought was from being a little jammed up on my needles was not stretching out. I stopped my ladder back jacquard and restarted it, without closing off the ones before. I pulled them apart on half the circumference last night and realized my floats aren’t causing all of the ripples like I thought they may be, but it’s my tight knitting causing the changes in color to pucker some. So it’s better, but not perfect. I’m going to go ahead and remove the rest of the old ladderbacks and remake them without using 2 strings in a float and skip the sections that don’t really need it. It’s probably very unnecessary to have ripped all this back, but I want this to be good since it’s a gift.
So far it seems like the rest of the color work is going well and I hope that anything else I am seeing will come out with blocking. I might block once I finish the horses to give myself a bit of relief and to help decide on the sleeves.
Big change I made to the color work chart is to switch from 2 color to 3 color, and to change the “fleas” and make the horse spotted. I also changed a little bit of the shaping on the top hooves and a little bit of the back to feel more natural. I used my iPad and procreate, imported the chart, recolored it all, then added a new grid. I also currently have plans to re-do the sleeve color work to be hooves, but I’m not sure if I will follow through yet. I guess it depends on how the horses block out.

Update 1/25. Just finished my first block. The fixes to the ladder back and some light tugging while blocking fixed the horse ripples. I did make cuts to my floats in one really effed section. Knotted the cuts and tucked them under the other floats that weren’t as tight. Re-caught my original floats with a crochet hook and worked them up to the 2nd set, then sewed them together with a long piece of yarn. On those I did about every other section from what was originally done and in some areas I merged 2 floats where carrying all the way up in that spot would make it too tight. There are a couple spots where it’s a bit looser by color changes. In the future I think I will do a twist when I swap colors to create a more secure change.
Update 3/3: Just realized in the last couple of days that my yarn weight is fully different than I thought it was. I straight up thought I bought at least close to DK at the jump and it’s actually Sport, and a light sport at that because I’m getting 14 WPI. No wonder I’ve had so much grief with gauge. Also please be gentle with me on this because it’s the first time I’ve made a garment.
Anyways, I finished the body sometime around 2/8. My collar was “bacon”-Ing and the lovely lady at my LYS said it’s from the bind off. I pulled it back and did a standard cast off and it looks great. Should still have enough stretch to get on.
Finished the first sleeve last night (3/2) I had to adjust the cast on for my sleeve because the recommended number of stitches was way too small. I didn’t think that my sweater was going to have a drop sleeve, knit a longer sleeve, then had my hubby try it on and the shoulder dropped and I had to frog like 6 in. (Sobbing in knitting). Thankfully I was still in the clear of the colorwork I did. I didn’t like the crosses so I made my own horseshoe chart and I’m just doing 1 on each sleeve.
Second sleeve worked up really quickly. Overall very pleased with this sweater.