This is my second test for Rachel Illsley of North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. She’s a master of colorwork designs.

The yarn that I used for the CC was actually too heavy, especially when combined with the mohair lace. I made it work, but there are a LOT of increases a few rounds before the colorwork starts. This in combination with the heavier yarn resulted in some rippling in the upper yoke. If I had matched the MC and CC in weight, this rippling could probably have been avoided. However, even if you match the MC and CC, do not spread out your stitches in the first part of the colorwork. If knitting this again, I would try and knit that upper yoke part much tighter than I normally would for stranded knitting.

I had to buy 2 balls of the CC yarn (Chroma Fingering) in order to get the sleeve colors to match up with the body. This meant sifting through the additional ball to get sections with specific color changes. Also, I had to eliminate parts of the first ball where the dark teal color was too close to the color of the MC. But if I had just used a solid color for my CC, a single 100-gram ball would have been more than enough for this design and size.

What I did differently:

I did not make the tapered sleeves as in the pattern. Instead, I made straight sleeves all the way down until the cuff ribbing began as follows:

I chose to knit the sleeves with the optional extension which adds 12 more stitches (88 +12 = 100 sts total for each sleeve). This meant that I did not do any decreasing in the sleeve chart either.

After completing the colorwork in the sleeves, I knit 95 more straight rounds using only the MC. Then I “k2tog” all around = 50 sts for the sleeve cuff ribbing.

I did 23 rounds of ribbing (k, ptbl around).using size 1.5 US needles before binding off with JSSBO.

Dominance in colorwork video tutorial
Normally I hold the MC (non dominant yarn) in my right hand and the CC (dominant yarn) in my left hand when doing colorwork. When you are holding and using these two yarns, the dominant color should be closest to your body and the MC further away, encasing the CC yarn as your work proceeds.

I use Tatyana’s (Heavenlyclassy on Ravelry) technique for knitting with two colors as shown in this video. Note that this method only works when knitting in the round. With this method, you will see no floats on the wrong side. This method also uses more yarn than the traditional stranded method because you are catching the “resting” yarn every other stitch.

Modifying Short Row Shaping for Broader Shoulders

How to deal with color changing yarn when resuming work on the sleeves.
I did have to buy a second ball of yarn for the sleeves because my “no float” method of doing colorwork requires more yarn. Also, I did the “sleeve extension” option in the pattern which widens the sleeves by 12 stitches. Matching the color changes across body and sleeves almost always requires buying additional yarn.