02-13-2022

I decided to do a seamless top-down raglan for my first attempt at a sweater. Like everybody else in the world, I chose the Flax pattern by tincanknits.

I chose to do the pattern’s “Option 2”: casting on and knitting the yoke, and then coming back and picking up stitches to knit the neck band ribbing later. This will hopefully give a bit more structure around the neck so it won’t stretch out too much over time.

I also chose to do the optional short-row shaping to add more length to the back of the sweater:

https://blog.tincanknits.com/2020/09/24/adding-short-rows...

I did size L. I didn’t swatch (confident there was enough positive ease in the size I chose); my guage was a bit tighter than I expected through the yoke so I did an extra ragalan increase.

I bought some acrylic yarn on sale at the premiereyarns.com site. The “Everyday Bobbin” yarn is quite soft and comes on spools with three colors. It is actually two yarns very slightly twisted together (the solid colors are two of the same color yarn, and the marled color is one of each color), but that means it splits and unravels rather easily! I bought 3 spools, and have most of 1 left.

Deviations from the pattern

• Did the sleeve cuffs as brioche and added thumb holes. Because all sweater should have integrated comfy mittcuffs.
• Twisted all knit stitches in the 1x1 rib for the collar
• 1 extra raglan increase
• Italian bind off for all the ribbing
• Colors!
• Made the body slightly shorter than the pattern called for

What worked

• It fits!
• It is soft and warm!

What went wrong

• I definitely did not pick up my purl-side German short row double stitches correctly; not sure what went wrong, but there are purl bumps on the rightside of the sweater where those stitches were.
• I forgot to increase once at the right sleeve so my sweater front was 1 stitch less than it should have been -- oh well!
• Some messy stitches, especially where I picked up the left underarm, and also pretty much everywhere I joined new yarn
• Did the Italian bind off of the collar a little bit tight (I can feel it not stretching as I pull it over my head)
• The brioche mittcuffs are comfortable, but also somewhat ugly and bulky. My first attempt was even worse, so I frogged it and went down a needle size (to 3.75mm) and that helped quite a bit.

Brioche Mittcuff design

Decrease sleeve on rounds 62 and 68, switch to smaller (3.75mm - US 5) needles 40

Brioche cuff setup: with blue, sl1yo p1 sl1yo p2tog all the way around (this leaves holes and I would probably do it differently in the future -- maybe do the decreases before switching to a smaller needle) 32

Increase for thumb on rows 6,10,14 38
Row 17: bind off 8 stitches for thumb 30
Row 17.5: cast on 2 stitches to bridge gap 32
Continue brioche on 32 sitches until row 20 is complete. Italian (Kitchener) bindoff.