Be still my heart.
So very very pleased with this one. Also so very smug because this? This is a bonus sweater. Nearly all the yarn I used were leftovers from socks, plus some fingering weight scraps leftover from a previous sweater, and some, ahem, sport weight scraps leftover from a wrappy cowl. I did not buy any of this yarn with the intent of making this sweater, and making this sweater does not diminish my small stash of sweater-sized batches of yarn in the slightest. It is as if I have managed to magic myself a sweater out of nothing.
This attempt was inspired by Tanis' stripy sample for her Gartrell Pullover, though I must admit that I was not super confident I could pull it off. Throughout I was worried I might be making myself the ugliest sweater ever, but I find the end result is quirkily charming in its patchwork-like nature - though I may be biased. I tried to be somewhat strategic in my striping, checking to make sure that I always liked the way two colours would look right next to each other, and since I didn't make any of my pieces match, I had to be sure that the colour placement looked alright across pieces too. It wasn't as big of a headache as that possibly sounds - I just had to be careful and a little thoughtful and deliberate.
I used the pattern as a template of sorts - I did some math to determine the ratio of my gauge vs. the pattern gauge, and used that ratio to pick my size. (I figured out how many stitches I'd need to work for various pieces at my gauge to get the size I wanted, then checked to see which pattern size had numbers that most closely matched my calculated numbers.) The pattern is written as a top-down knit-all-in-one-piece sort of project, so I took it apart to make my life easier with the striping - I separated out the fronts, back, and sleeves, added a couple of stitches to each piece for selvedges (but really I could have only added one stitch to each of the fronts, since they only get seamed on one side!), and my math told me I needed to use the stitch counts for the second largest size in the pattern to get a 36" bust garment, so that's what I did. I omitted the waist decreases and increases for a boxier shape, and I also departed from the pattern on the raglan shaping - I did shaping every other row, because that's what I was expecting and didn't check the pattern. For the size I was knitting, some of the shaping was done at a different rate, but by the time I noticed I'd already finished the back and was cruising along on the left front, so I just shrugged and rolled with it. It seems fine.
It's not super obvious from these pictures, but I also didn't really nail sleeve length. The sample in the pattern has bracelet length sleeves, and mine are, um, longer. A fair bit longer. Truthfully, they're a bit longer than I normally like my sleeves to be - the cuffs reach down to the base of my thumbs. This happened because for some reason that is now lost to history, I didn't consult the sleeve shaping rate in the pattern - I just made one up when I started the first sleeve. By the time I got to the raglan shaping and could tell it was longer than I really wanted, I didn't want to rip back to try to correct it, so here we are with longish sleeves. In a sense, this works out really well, because what I got is actually my sister's preferred sleeve length, so I know what to do when I eventually make her a scrappy stripy sweater (because she has been eyeing mine approvingly, so I know it's coming). I went back and looked at the pattern, and probably the shaping rate suggested in the pattern will work out well for getting me my preferred sleeve length on future iterations.
Yes, I said future iterations. I'm totally making myself more of these. How could I not? Bonus sweaters. I'm even imagining some versions where I work with two sock yarns held together to achieve the pattern gauge, which opens up more ways to play with colour. Some major partying is in my future!
Tech specs: worked in pieces, and each piece was worked bottom up, then pieces were seamed together after blocking using mattress stitch. All cast-on edges were worked using a Chinese waitress CO, bound-off edge of neck trim was done using a double-chain BO. No buttonholes, no buttons. Each stripe was 22 rows.
I've worn it three times in the past seven days (and one of those days saw me not even get out of pyjamas). I foresee getting a lot of use out of this one.
And making a whole bunch more.
Bonus sweaters. So much smug!
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