Knitting Along

In deference to the New Year’s resolution I made about my knitting (you can read about that here if you missed it), I’m giving myself permission to knit things for fun this year, and sometimes that means knitting a pattern someone else wrote.

I decided to join a little knitalong with some friends from the Strungalong retreat I attended in November, and we’re knitting the Field Sweater (Ravelry link) by Camilla Vlad. I don’t often knit other people’s designs these days, and I try really hard to avoid doing anything that involves an external deadline, but I’m doing this because I enjoy the camaraderie of keeping in touch with my friends from the retreat. Also, I like the sweater.

I had yarn sitting around that I am pretty convinced I bought with this specific sweater in mind, Malabrigo Caprino in Archangel, and it’s lovely to work with. It’s an 80/20 merino/cashmere blend, and it feels exactly as nice as you are imagining it would.

So far all I’ve managed to do is wind the yarn, separate my balls into the slightly lighter and slightly darker variations (more about this later), cast on and knit about 2 1/2 rounds. The official start date was yesterday, but I spent most of the day skiing so I’m calling that a valid excuse.

The neckline is ribbed, and I followed Stephanie Pearl McPhee’s suggestion of a k/p cable cast-on to start. I like casting on for ribbing in pattern, and the cable cast-on gives the top of the neck a nice bit of firmness to avoid over-stretching. I’m also planning to work the narrower neckline option, as that suits me better.

I mentioned separating the balls into lighter and darker groupings. Malabrigo yarns usually have a lot of variation in them, so I’ll be alternating skeins just like you should for any hand-dyed yarn, to avoid big noticeable changes in color when you change skeins. My preferred way of doing that is to knit helically from two different skeins at once, and to start and end them at offset points from each other. In practice that means I’ll work the neck ribbing in the skein that looks to me to be the most “medium” in color (though it’s actually sort of medium-dark) then after the ribbing I’ll start knitting helically, adding in a “light” skein. The rounds will alternate lighter/darker from that point onward, which should meld visually so that any differences aren’t noticeable. Since I started one skein a while before the other, it will run out sooner, and I’ll replace that with the next “dark” skein, then replace the “light” skein with another “light” skein when it runs out. Doing it that way, my color changes will all happen in separate places, and I should be able to avoid any noticeable lines in the finished sweater.

I’ll make just few modifications to the pattern as I’m knitting, so I’m marking up my pattern pretty well to note those. As the pattern is written, the body circumference after dividing for the arm holes remains the same all the way down the remainder of the body of the sweater, and I want it to actually change. I’m working the size that will fit my “high bust” measurement, taken just at the armpit. That’s smaller for me than my full bust measurement, and making that size results in a sweater that fits me much better through the shoulders and neck line.

From there, because I have a 4” difference between my high bust and full bust, I will be adding stitches on the front of the sweater to accommodate the bust line, then decreasing them away again. That way I get the form-fitting sweater silhouette I prefer, without undue stretching of the fabric or riding up at the bottom. I’ll also work a larger sleeve top to accommodate my upper arms, which are at a different proportion than my chest and need a different size.

All of this is planning is pretty normal for me at the beginning of a sweater project, but it has me thinking about putting a new class together on choosing sizes and altering patterns to fit you better. It’s second nature to me now, but there’s a lot of learning that got me to this point. I’d love to hear from you if you’d be interested in a class like that.