Saturday, March 08, 2014

Work in progress: Stella jumper

I have been knitting a jumper (translation: sweater) lately. I fell in love with this sparkly wool when I first saw it months ago, but I didn't have the funds to buy it. (It's Patons Australia Stella.) I think it was $7-$8 a ball. Then it got discontinued and disappeared from our local craft store! But then I found a few left at a fabric store in the city, for half the original price, so I snatched up 8 balls.

I started to knit another Agnes sweater (from Quince&Co.), and I got most of the way done with it before I remembered that I'd seen a chunky knit lace sweater pattern in Knitsy that might be fun to try out. But that pattern was knit in flat pieces and I prefer to knit top-down in the round.

See, a bit boring.

There are lots of reasons why I prefer to knit top-down in the round: you can try on as you go, and knitting on circular needles puts less strain on your wrists; but mainly, I'm lazy and impatient. Knitting flat pieces means you have to seam everything together at the end, and I just like to be done once the knitting has finished! Let's call it efficiency instead if laziness.

Anyway, I started to knit this lace pattern in the round. It involves repeats of 8 stitches, and I arbitrarily decided when to start the repeats. When I got to the bit where you separate the sleeves from the body, I realised that my lace pattern would be a big old mess because I hadn't placed it correctly to finish one repeat and then start another. It was more like, "get halfway through the lace repeat then start the next repeat three stitches in."

So I pulled out some graph paper and started sketching, working backwards from the separation stage to the collar stage.

I made a few mistakes along the way.
Sadly, I still didn't get it quite right, but it's much better! The interruption in the pattern happens under the arms, so it shouldn't be very noticeable. I might try to write the pattern up for Ravelry, in which case I'll fix the mistake.


1 comment:

  1. That blue is so pretty! I love the sweater. Your technical descriptions of what you did are like another language to me. I think that's bad-ass, when you can describe something you did and it's completely confusing to anyone who hasn't done it themselves. The other day I was discussing how to make my own bias tape with a lady at Stitches, and John was totally confused.

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