Mostly Knits

So in my last update I said I would talk about the sweater I’ve been designing. Well since then I have completely knitted the sweater and all I have left is to sew up the armholes. Well I don’t like it, the sweater that is. In the beginning I had an idea; so I made a plan (more or less), made some swatches, took some measurements, did a bit of math, and then just started knitting. I made the sweater in the round with raglan ¾ sleeves. I think if I had planned better and knew more of what I was doing then I probably would be happy with the sweater and not thinking about ripping the entire thing and using the yarn for something else.

I decided to design a sweater that I could wear to work. Since I live in Florida the sweater had to be cotton or cotton blend and lacy. So I started with choosing a stitch pattern. Since most of my stitch-pattern books are still packed away, I went to the internet for inspiration. I found a great website called KnittingFool.com, which has loads of stitch patterns. The patterns are listed not only alphabetically, but by type and count. This is where I should have thought it though more and maybe sketched it out. I found a pattern I really liked for the bottom of the sweater, Feather and Fan 2, which had 17 stitches to the pattern. There was also another pattern, Passion Flower, with the same number of stitches that would go perfect. However, this stitch count poised some problems with shaping when I got to the raglan part. So from the armpits up I just did basic stockinette stitch.

The real problem came at the neck line. I didn’t do any shaping and ended up with a boat neck which droops. I know I could go back and do some shaping, but I’m not sure how I want the neck. What I really wanted to do was work the Passion Flower stitch pattern all the way up to the neck, but the stitch count was off because of the sleeves. But the other reason was I would have to alter the stitch pattern to incorporate the decreases of the raglan. And let’s just face it (and I’m wining here) it got too hard. So below is what it looks like right now. I’ve put in a few life lines so I could fix this. I’m just not sure I want to.

Here is the bottom of the sweater. I really like the scalloped edge of the Feather n Fan stitch pattern.

This is the top part. I didn’t do anything decorative with the raglan decreases. I think it would have looked better with maybe a lace decrease. And the neck is really floppy. I only put a few rows of garter.