First Venture into knitting sweaters
Sometimes you stumble into projects you never expected to do. I never imagined myself knitting a sweater. There were basically two reasons for my hesitation.
a) The scale of such a project seemed rather daunting.
b) When I thought of knitted sweaters, my mind always went to dreaded scratchy childhood garments. And the adult knowledge that wool can be a challenge to wash didn’t improve matters.
All that changed, when realisation dawned that you don’t need to use wool. Once I had realised I could use cotton yarn, the state of my wardrobe suddenly lit a spark that should grow quicker than I would have anticipated.
I own a number of sweatshirts that have been with me for at least twenty years. Lasting that long speaks of a quality that, frankly, is a lot harder to find these days. But at some point, I could no longer ignore the fact that some of those trusty friends are showing the wear of time.
Time to give sweater knitting a serious thought. I had loved the colour changes in last year’s advent calendar project.( Season’s Knitting) The material is a blend of cotton and polyacrylic and is listed as washable at 40°C. Ideal to serve all my needs. I chose the colour way Blue Sky at https://www.garnmanufaktur.com.
Alright, all set. Except, how do you knit a sweater?
I went searching for books on the subject and settled on Das Grosse Pulli Stickbuch by Babette Ulmer et.al. The subtitle promised 3 basic patterns, a thousand possibilities. Sounded like something that would help me adapt to my needs.
Sadly it turned out to be three basic patterns with a couple of variations and only limited information on how to make changes to fit your own ideas. In addition, patters are usually for knitting separate pieces and sewing them together. Sewing isn’t a strength for me, so I wasn’t too fond of that concept.
With a bit of to and fro, I was able to take the basic steps of one of the simple patterns and develop a plan on how to hopefully get a decent result with the yarn I had chosen.
I knitted a swatch to calculate the number of stitches needed and took one of my old sweatshirts as a reference. Using those measurements I at least had an idea what to do.
I decided to knit the bottom part in rounds instead of doing two separate pieces. I stuck to the basic pattern of the reference in the book. Getting through the first few rounds proved a bit of a challenge since I had to make sure not to twist the fledging fabric. After that, it was straight knitting, switching colours according to the plan I had made.
It took me several months to get to the point where I had to split the round into two parts to allow an opening for the sleeves. At this point, I bought a second cable for my knitting needles, so that I could easily switch between front and back part after each colour.
Once I reached the top I had to fiddle a bit to adjust the decreases for the neckline provided in the book to fit the number of stitches I had on my needle.
Once I had successfully taken that hurdle, I had to figure out the sleeves. I wasn’t happy with any of the instructions given in the book, so I tried to improvise as best I could. I did another swatch, carefully noting the number of stitches and rows for both width and height and did some calculations.
Again, I took my old sweatshirt as a reference and after calculating the needed number of stitches for the bottom and top ends and the number of rows needed, I figured out that I had to increase by one stitch every two rows.
Just to be on the safe side I also calculated how high each colour stripe should be after the calculated number of rows. When I measured, however, the stripes came in a little short, so I added a few additional rows without increases to each stripe.
Well, I probably should have skipped that step, as the sleeves turned out a bit too long in the end. Sticking to the original calculations would probably have given me a better result.
Once I was done with the sleeves all I had left was sewing the whole thing together. I chose to do it by hand, using the original yarn. It took a little longer than I had thought, but I was happy with the result. And after months of work, I had finally reached the magical point of putting the sweater on for the first time.
Despite the long sleeves, I am really happy with the result. The sweater has been through the wash several times now without a problem. And I am already thinking about what I need to change next time because I am certain that there will be a next time.
Snathanna 