On the first and third sweater adventures, I did the simplest thing possible to use the colorways I had: I worked each one as far as possible before switching to the next. But on the second sweater, the CotLin Circular Yoke, I used the lightest colorway in one tall section at the neck and the darkest in one tall section at the waist, then I split the middle three colorways into two groups of shorter bands and reversed their order below the waist. I think the overall visual effect worked out fairly well, and splitting the three middle colorways certainly allowed me to use nearly every bit of their yarn while making the bands all the same height.

But before I get to figuring out how many rows/rounds I can work in each colorway on this adventure, I wanted to do one last double-check to make sure of the colorway order.

Opening the Hanks

Sometimes there are surprises when we untwist a hank of variegated yarn, so I thought I should open up my yarns to see a bit better what they actually looked like.

I think my previous analysis still holds, so I’m going to leave them in the original order, but I have to say I was surprised by the amount of light gray in Willamette and of turquoise in Abernathy.

And frankly, this is probably my last hurrah with variegated yarn, at least for anything other than socks. For socks, since I hold three strands together, I never have issues with pooling, because the three strands, simply by chance, never wind up with their colors aligned. Instead, the color sections all get offset and much more blended, avoiding most pooling or flashing even when the colors are vivid. (For a great analysis of variegated yarn in use, see Cathy Weeks’ outline of her planned series of blog posts.)

Now for some people, that evenness destroys the value of variegated yarn, and that’s totally fine. Blotchy patches of color just don’t appeal to me. 🙂

We’ll have to see how much the colors tone themselves down in this adventure, since I’m holding only two strands together.

Creating the Garment’s Chart

In all three sweater adventures, I used charts of the garments to do the stitch counting for me. My method is to make multi-column, multi-row tables in my word processor. Each shaping area goes into its own table column, so the two sides of a V-neck, for example, need two columns, one for the left side of the neck and one for the right. A third column between them is used to hold the center stitch (or center pair of stitches) at the bottom of the V where the two sides come together.

Why do I go to this extra trouble rather than put the entire V-neck in a single table column and use spaces to separate the stitches to show the V? Because if I put each side of the V-neck in its own table column, I can set each table column’s text to be either Right- or Left-Justified, which automagically moves the stitch symbols to the proper side of the column. In this way I can clearly see the edges of the fabric given by all the different shaping in the entire garment.

While seeing the shaping is important, the great thing about using the text-justification settings rather than spaces to move the stitch symbols side to side is that when I select any portion of the table, or even the entire table, my word processor counts the number of characters in the selection. Since every character is a stitch symbol, then my word processor is giving me a stitch count for the finished object. (Actually, I don’t select the entire table, because that would include the characters in the row numbers, so I simply select all the columns that contain stitch symbols.)

If I use spaces to move stitch symbols left and right, then yes, the edges will show the shaping of each part of the FO, but those spaces will also be included in the character count when I select various areas of the table. My word processor has a Word Count entry under the Tools menu, which will count spaces and non-spaces separately, but that’s an extra step. As with most things in knitting, and even in life, different methods of doing something have different sets of advantages and disadvantages, and we each have to decide which set of disadvantages is the least annoying, then use that method. I prefer to use multiple columns to split up each shaping area. You might prefer to use spaces.

Estimating When the Colors Will Change

While I like how the two groups of narrow bands worked out in the CotLin Circular Yoke, on this adventure I’m going to simply work each colorway as far as possible in a single block.

Sleeved garments use yarn at a fairly alarming rate, since there are the body and two sleeve circumferences that have to be accounted for. I needed to see how many rows/rounds I could work in each colorway, given a conservative estimate of 85 sts/g of doubled yarn that I saw in the Hawthorne Vest.

Since I have 7 colorways with a total of about 770 g of yarn, I know that the entire sweater can have about 65,450 sts. That means that the sleeves can only be about three-quarter length rather than wrist length. I’m actually OK with that, which is convenient! I like 18-inch sleeves, so three-quarter sleeves would be 13.5 in long from underarm to cuff edge. At 9.5 rounds per inch, that’s about 128 rounds from the underarm to the cuff edge. So my chart is set up with shaped sleeves that end on round 220 or so, counting row/round 1 as the top of the back neck. The underarms are on round 99, since my yoke depth is 11 inches.

When I select table rows across the full circumferences of the body and both sleeves, I find (based on the character count, which is identical to my st count) that I can work only about 25 rounds with each colorway.

Where to Change Yarns

The usual places to change colors or stitch patterns in garments worked in the round is at either the left or the right body side “seam” and at the sleeves’ underarm “seams,” as these locations hide the disruptions that occur due to the fact that ITR objects are actually being worked in spirals. The end of each round winds up being one round higher than its beginning, exactly the way a Slinky’s coils are joined, which causes a hiccup in the color changes or the stitch pattern unless one of several tricks is employed.

For a raglan worked in the round, the angle “turned” across the raglan lines helps hide the color or pattern change, so we usually change colors or stitch-pattern rounds at one of the back/sleeve raglan lines, since we don’t want those disruptions on the front of the sweater.

I haven’t yet decided if I’ll make the color changes at these traditional points. Since these colorways are much more similar to one another than the ones in the Hawthorne Vest, I may just let the colorways end where I happen to run out of yarn. This would also be a better approach if a colorway is over or under the expected weight, since I don’t really want to have any scraps left over.

Once I get working with needles and yarn, I’ll be in a better position to make that decision at each color change. On the second sweater, the CotLin Circular Yoke, I just let the color changes happen at the center back because that was where the BOR fell for the short rows I centered on the back neck to raise it higher than the front neck. The colorways were similar enough that even I have a hard time telling that that’s where they change.

I think the same will hold for this set of colorways, so I’ll probably work the sleeves to an equal number of rounds of each new colorway, changing them near but not at the exact the underarm “seam” (so that I can drop down the actual “seam” stitch and hook it back up to make phony seams), then work the body until I run out of that color. There may be a slight discrepancy between the number of rounds on the sleeves compared to the number of rounds on the body, but the CotLin Circular Yoke shows that the sleeves’ colorways don’t always look aligned to the body’s even when they start on the same round and are the same number of rounds tall. I’ll be weighing the yarn as I go, to help me make the decision on when to stop each color on the body.

Started Colorway 2

I worked 61 rows with colorway 1 and had a mere 0.40 g of yarn left, about a yard of doubled yarn! As with the Hawthorne Vest, I wanted to keep the neck edge undisturbed by the looseness that changing colors at the end of the row would cause, so I worked the first 11 stitches of row 62, those of the neck edging, before switching to colorway 2.

I made my full garment chart as accurate as possible, even including cast-ons as well as the stitches I purled and knitted up for the sleeves, so as best as I can tell, I worked 9,786 sts with 109.15 g of yarn, giving me about 89 sts/g of yarn. I’ll continue to monitor yarn usage as I go, just to help me gauge (ugh, a pun!) how many rows/rounds I’ll be able to work, and exactly where I’ll change to colorway 3. At this point, it looks like I’ll have stop a couple of rounds (not rows, since by that point I’ll be working the yoke in the round) short of the body/sleeve split at the underarm.

Note that the chart still shows all stockinette at the bottom of the body and on the sleeve cuffs. I still haven’t decided between Mistake-Stitch Rib and 2×2 ribbing, so I’m not going to change the chart until I know how I’ll finish off the bottom edges. And I may not change the chart even then!