Because I’m working a fade, there was really no point in waiting to do the sleeves until I finished the body, which might be the usual way to work when a top-down sweater is all one color.
Both sets of sleeve stitches were still on ribbons from working the body, so working with one sleeve at a time, I had to get the held stitches and the stitches from the PCO on two circs.
Round 87 is the biggest moment of the entire project, where I split the sleeve and body stitches and do the underarm cast-ons.
I had decided to duplicate my techniques from bottom-up seamless sweaters as much as possible in this top-down project, and when working bottom-up, I leave the underarm stitches of body and sleeves live for later grafting (weaving, Kitchener stitch), which completes the seamlessness of the FO. On this particular garment, worked with zero ease and in a non-resilient yarn, having seamless underarms should help me put it on and take it off in addition to being much more comfortable in the actual wearing.
What is the one piece of advice we all hear and even give—yet ourselves ignore—as we knit?
Check your gauge before you begin, and check it as you work, changing needle size as necessary.
Yeah. I only did the swatching part. I forgot to check as I went. My initial stitch gauge was good, but about an inch and a half in, it tightened up considerably. When I put all the stitches on ribbon to do a test fit, it seemed awfully narrow and short. Now, the narrowness will relax out a bit with the first laundering, and as for the shortness, well, I swatched and accounted for the number of rows/rounds I’d need to get from the back neck to the underarm. I decided I was just going to trust the numbers, almost in spite of the evidence that was before me in the mirror.
FINALLY!!!
Now that I know I have plenty of yarn, even to do some A-line shaping on the body, and that the places where I’ll change colorways are set, I am ready to cast on.
As soon as I learned the crochet CO, it became my go-to for all projects, even those that start with ribbing. Apparently I Goldilocks my crochet CO (not too loose, not too tight, but just right), because it is as nearly stretchy as the fabric that springs from it. Well, stretchy enough, even when the initial fabric is ribbing.
Now that I know I will have enough yarn to make the sweater, I need to figure out exactly where to change to the next colorway. Since I’m working top-down, all the shaping starts right after CO, so I expect the first color to be used for quite a few more rows than the other colors will be, simply because those initial rows are so short.
Since my CotLin value pack has two sets of colorways that constitute two fades, I need to figure out when to change to the next colorway. I have no stomach for yarn chicken, so I’ll go to extremes to figure out how many stitches I can get from each skein, and I’ll allow a cushion in case my numbers are off. As a first step, I need to figure out how much fabric, in terms of square inches, my sweater will be.