Saturday, November 29, 2008

The Seamless Yoke Sweater is Done!















I finished this today and I am thrilled with it. It's not perfect, but I still feel pretty clever for making it like no other sweater in the world. It's my first original design, I suppose.

Here are the details if you're interested:

Yarn: Knitpicks Swish Superwash Worsted, 7 balls of Wisteria, a little more than 1/2 ball of Ballerina (pink) and a little less than 1/2 ball of Bare (cream). The Bare yarn comes in a hank that is about twice as big as the other colors.

Needles: Size 7 16" and 24" Circular and dpns.

Patterns: I used Elizabeth Zimmermann's book, Knitting Around for the instructions and proportions, and I used color patterns from Traditional Scandinavian Knitting by Sheila McGregor. Specifically, the snowflake and zigzag patterns are from page 61, and the others are based on patterns on page 55.

To fit the 6 year old for the next 2 winters (hopefully), I knit a 32" sweater. I made 3" ribbing on the sleeves and made them about 2 inches longer than they should have been so she can fold them up. I decreased for the sleeves as EZ recommends for an adult sweater, but using the proportions the suggests for the child's sweater. (I cast-on 25% and increased every fifth row until I got to 40%.) I wish I would have knit another inch and a half of neck ribbing, because it's a little lower than I had planned, but I was dying to see what it looked like finished and I got impatient.

I had some trouble with matching the color patterns at the end of the round, but it's on her back behind her right shoulder and I refuse to worry about it.

I also had a little difficulty making the underarms seamless, because somehow I had some holes at the end of the Kitchener Stitch sections. But I did the phony seams as EZ suggests and I am tremendously happy with that detail.










I am so happy with this project. The yarn is very soft and squishy, the colors combination makes me (and my daughter) happy, and now I can in good conscience start another project...I used up 8 skeins of stash yarn for this sweater! I wonder if I can finish a couple more in time for Christmas.....

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