As far as I can remember my thought process was, " That stitch pattern is cool and I can finally knit up that gray Cascade 220 that's been in the stash since 2009." Both good points especially since I'd already purchased the pattern in 2012. On the other hand, I'd been knitting long enough to know that a drop shoulder sweater with no shaping wasn't a great idea. At least for me.
What I remember of the knitting process is that the stitch pattern sucked up yarn and it seemed like I was constantly buying more skeins. Also the first sleeve came out huge and I had to rip it entirely out reknit. It was about this time that I soured on the project, stuffed it in a bag and stuffed the box into a cabinet. What sweater? I don't know anything about a sweater? There are only socks.
This year I finally got tired of the sweater taunting on my Ravelry project page went looking for it. Once it was freed from its cabinet I found there was literally only a sleeve left to knit. Really Past Heather? You couldn't buckle down and finish one sleeve. Oh well, maybe some shiny new project distracted her. It's not like that still happens all the time. Anyway I spent the end of January knitting the second sleeve and now I have a warm sweater that makes me look dumpy. At least I'm blaming the sweater and not winter induced cake eating.
Now for some actual pattern details.
The body has no shaping as written but I decided to add some in. Most of the sweater is the 39" bust sizing, but I cast on the stitch count for the 41 3/4" bust. Around the side seam area I didn't purl 5 to increase one of the "bubbles". After that the border stitches were gradually decreased out until the sweater was at the 39" stitch count. Here's a shot of that on one side of the sweater. It's not the best but I wasn't in the mood for recalculating all the numbers to drop in a fake side seam. After knitting this I'd say that adding more hip room really wasn't needed because the stitch pattern turned out to be very stretchy.
As mentioned before the sleeves turned out to be very wide. The stitch count at the cuff in my size is 60 stitches which seems a bit overkill in worsted weight. On my sweater I made decreases in the underseam about every 6 rounds. That made the cuff stitch count closer to the 40 range. (I didn't do a final count though, so that's a guess.) The twisted rib portion of the cuffs is also an inch longer than suggested because my sleeves were looking a little short.
No changes were made to the collar area which happens to be my favorite part of the sweater. I sure do like looking at twisted rib even if knitting it kills my wrists. Overall the pattern gets points in my book for it's minimal finishing. The body is knit all in one piece then seamed the shoulders. The sleeves are picked up afterwards and knit down. The collar is also knit on leaving you only the bottom edge to seam at the end. I'm not sure if I would have completed this project if most of the finishing hadn't already been done.
So you can tell I'm not super enthused about this make, but that's mostly because it doesn't fit my tastes. The stitch pattern wooed me and made me forget about my problems with drop shoulders and oversized sweaters. However if you love those things than I would recommend this pattern. My only real issue is the sleeve width, but that's an easy issue to fix on the fly. Or maybe giant sleeves are also your jam and you like to smuggle pots of jam in them. I won't judge, I've got balls of yarn up mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment