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.

The real yarn hogging rows will be those rounds where I have to use the same color on both the body and the sleeves. Since the sleeves will be short and unshaped, there will be 7 inches where I have to split colorways between body and two sleeves. At 9 rpi, that’s 63 rows, well, rounds, since I’ll be working seamlessly. The body will be a total of 224 sts, the sleeves will each be 72, so each round where the same colorway is being used will be 368 total sts.

My 3600-st swatch used 27.3 g of yarn, which means I can work about 130 sts per gram. Assuming each skein is actually only 98 g (another cushion for margin to avoid yarn chicken), then I can work 98 times 130 equals 12,740 sts per colorway.

For the colorways that must be worked on both the body and sleeves, they will therefore work 12,740 divided by 368 equals 34.6 rounds. Since there will be about 63 total rounds on the sleeve below the underarm, it will take nearly two full colorways’ worth of yarn to work the 7 inches of sleeve and body immediately below the underarm.

Since the body will be about 12.5 in long below the UA and the sleeves are 7 in, the body will continue for another 5.5 in, or about 50 rounds. Once I’m done with the sleeves, then each colorway will work 12,740 divided by the 224 body sts equals 56 rounds, which means a single colorway will be needed for the rest of the body.

Since across the sleeves and body I can get only 34 rounds from a single colorway while I can get all 50 rounds in the entire bottom half of the body from a single skein, that means my bands won’t be equal height. I don’t think I’d like that. I’m OK with the idea that the colorway at the neckline will be taller than the others, but I think I want the other four to be even height-wise. That means I’m going to have to look at stitch counts in much more detail.

Where to Do the First Color Change

Since there are already so many things going on with this sweater, I’m not going to blend the yarn changes by alternating rows of the two colorways as I switch from one to the other. Depending on how many rows would be in the transition zone, I might have to start colorway 2 before I complete the front neck incs and switch to working ITR, a complication I just don’t want to deal with. So I’m going to keep it simple and just switch to the next colorway, doing simple stripes. Perhaps on the second CotLin sweater, I’ll do a true fade.

The U-neck is going to be fairly deep, and just to make the logistics easier, I would really like to get to and even beyond the bottom of the front neck and start working ITR before I switch to the second colorway.

But I also want to do the neck ribbing in the first colorway, so I need to estimate how much yarn that will take so that I can switch to the second colorway when there’s enough of the first colorway left for the neck trim. How many stitches will the neck ribbing be? Let’s see.

The back neck is 36 sts, and the tops of the sleeves are both 5 sts. The vertical parts of the front neck are 42 rows tall, which at 9 rpi is roughly 4.7 in. Since my st gauge is 6.25 spi, I need to knit up 4.7 times 6.25 equals 29 sts on each side of the neck. The diagonal part of the front neck is 22 rows, and the usual rate along a diagonal is 3 sts per 4 rows, so there will be about 16 sts along those two sections. Then there are 12 sts along the very bottom, where I CO to join to work ITR. That’s a total of 148 sts around the neck.

I’ll knit up, work 7 rounds, and BO, so call it 10 rounds of 148 sts, a total of 1480 sts. Since I get about 130 sts per g, I need about 11.5 g of yarn to do the neck trim. That’s a bit over what I’ll probably actually need, since I’ll use a smaller needle to work all the ribbing. (Note to self: remember to change needle size before doing the sleeve and bottom ribbings.)

I weighed the first colorway before I CO, which was 97.42 g. So I can use only 86 g of the first colorway to do the entire upper part of the yoke. How many stitches is that? 86 times 130 is 11,180 sts. How many rows can I work before I hit that number of stitches?

Charting the Entire Sweater

Normally I don’t chart anything but lace, cables, and other texture patterns. I don’t chart plain old ordinary stockinette, but I really needed to know exact stitch counts, row by row, on this sweater. So I charted the entire sweater, front, back, and both sleeves.

Using the techniques I describe in my charting book’s chapter on reversing shaping (choose your version of chapter 24 from part 3, based on how you knit and prefer to chart), I put each bit of shaping in its own table column, then set the column to be right- or left-justified so the knit symbols would self-align to the proper side of the column. In this way, my table will contain only knit symbols, rather than a combination of knit symbols and spaces to separate them to show the shaping. Since my table columns contain only knit symbols, I can select the entire column, and my word processor will show me how many characters are selected. I can see how many stitches are in the sleeves, how many in the entire front, and how many in the entire back, depending on which columns I select.

Likewise, if I select the top umpteen table rows, my word processor will again tell me how many symbols—knit stitches—are selected. So I can add one table row at a time to my selection until I exceed the number of characters, er, stitches that I can make with the available amount of yarn in the first colorway.

Highlighting the top part of the chart until I get to 11,180 characters—stitches—means I can work the first colorway through row 74 (11,132 sts), 10 rounds past where I complete the front neck shaping and start working ITR.

Here’s a PDF of the chart.

Attempt #1

Starting with row, well, round 75 and assuming each 98-g colorway will provide about 12,900 sts, then the other colorways will work up as follows:

• Colorway 2: rounds 75–112 (12,844 sts, 37 rounds)
• Colorway 3: rounds 113–147 (12,670 sts, 35 rounds)
• Colorway 4: rounds 148–200 (12,286 sts, 53 rounds)

Round 200 will be the last round of the sweater, and I don’t use the fifth colorway at all. That’s no good.

Attempt #2

OK, let’s try working up stripes of equal height for the last four colorways. I’ll make an arbitrary decision to stop the first colorway a couple of rounds past where I finish the neck shaping and start working in the round. Let’s say round 67 will be the last round in the first colorway, which is 9,390 sts. Then I can change colorways every 33 rounds as follows:

• Colorway 2: rounds 68–100 (10,242 sts)
• Colorway 3: rounds 101–133 (11,946 sts)
• Colorway 4: rounds 134–166 (9,738 sts)
• Colorway 5: rounds 167–200 (7,616 sts)

Now, I like the idea that each of the stripes will be the same height and that I get all the neck shaping finished before I switch colorways. The bonus is that if I decide to do some increases down the sides of the body to give me a very subtle A-line shaping, I will have plenty of yarn in those colorways.

YAY!!!

I Can Add Body Shaping

Since I can see the number of stitches I’ll have to work in each colorway, I can now add some shaping as I work my way down the body.

To accommodate the 5-in difference between chest and hips, I’ll do a 4-st inc round every inch, starting 3 in past the UA. If I do 8 inc rounds over those 7 in, I’ll inc 32 sts = 5.12 in, and the incs will end about 1.5 in before the bottom edge. Oh. That will be about when I change to the ribbing. Or maybe a little before. Maybe I’ll start the body incs 2 in past the UA.