It has begun

"It" being my all over cable sweater using this free pattern. In reddish-purple.

I'm going to be making some changes:

1. I'm only doing about an inch of ribbing, it feeds directly into the cable pattern and I rather like the look of "weltless" sweaters.


2. I have hips and a butt so I'm adjusting the gauge to give me some more room (if I hadn't there would be -2" of ease at the hips, which means skin tight sweater where I definitely don't want it that tight). The pattern repeat is long enough that doing just one repeat with the larger needles will get the sweater to my waist I think, if not I'll do another half repeat to get there.


3. I'm going to fudge the length so I stop either at a full pattern repeat (probably 3) or on half repeat to start the under arm shaping. Just because I like things orderly.


4. I don't like the folded collar. I shall knit about an inch and then use a stretchy bind off rather than knitting for three and folding it to the inside to sew down. I don't have much neck so there's no point in bulking the sweater up and hiding more of it than necessary.

Also, I am insane and am knitting the front and back at the same time, but not in the round, just two flat pieces on the same needles at the same time. I did consider knitting it in the round, but frankly, sweaters in my size are heavy beasts and I think the side seams might provide needed structure.

And I really can't keep avoiding seaming things. Besides, setting in sleeves is a bitch when you have to do them in the round.

I'm a slow knitter that gets bored easily too, so doing both parts at once makes it more likely I will finish. I generally knit two rows (a cable row and a resting row) and set the piece aside, no matter how long the rows are. Doing both at once means I'm effectively doing four rows and I will finish quicker than if I were doing the pieces separately. That's just the sort of knitter I am.

So it follows, both sleeves at once too. But not while I'm doing the front and back, I'm not that crazy. I'll need to revisit figuring out the increases anyway, once I have a better idea about how much I'll have to adjust the sleeve length. The shoulders are dropped so I'm pretty sure I need to shorten them. Or alternately, narrow the shoulders on the sweater and redraft the sleeve cap. I have some time to ponder that still, at least 100 rows of time.

The swatch is of sufficient size that I feel the urge to find something to do with it. It would make a good gauntlet, it goes from wrist to elbow. I'd say that I'll pick up from the cast on and knit a glove but I'd really like to take the cable down onto the back of the hand and I'm not sure I could do that well with the cast on there, it cuts across the middle of a medallion. It is giving me ideas for gloves though, if I can still stand the cable pattern after knitting the sweater.