This project will be the first of two in a second new-to-me yarn, Knit Picks’ Hawthorne, a blend of superwash wool and nylon, suitable for socks. (You can read about the first two sweater adventures, both in Knit Picks’ CotLin, starting here and here or ending here and here.)

As an anniversary present, and with the concurrence of the Big Guy, I bought two Hawthorne value packs, Bramble

and Fog Bank.

Since there’s less yarn in the Bramble VP, I’m starting with it. The limited amount of yarn only adds chills and thrills to the sweater adventure. Yes, I could buy more of any of the colors, or even get a coordinating color or six, but I’m determined to not take that easier way out. Sometimes you just can’t get more yarn, so it’s good to practice using only what you have on hand.

Swatching

The first thing thing to do, since I’ve never used this yarn before, is to swatch. I have no idea how much it will change when it gets wet the first time, and since it’s machine washable and dryable, that’s how I’ll launder the finished garments, so all the swatches will also have to go through both machines.

I’ve used Knit Picks’ Stroll sock yarn for about a decade, so I’m very familiar with it, but this yarn is different in both the particular wool fiber that’s used and the weight-to-length ratio (Stroll is 462 yds/100 g while Hawthorne is only 367 yds/100 g). Since I have only five hanks of yarn available in my first set of yarn, I really need to know how much fabric I’ll be able to make before I can even think about the exact garment I might work up.

I had participated in a Hawthorne co-op, so I had 10-g samples of every Hawthorne colorway, in all the various dyeing families. I sorted through them and found ones I’d never use for an actual garment, not even socks, to be my guinea pigs for swatching.

My first swatch was worked with a single strand of yarn on 2.50 mm needles, working both flat and in the round. I have since misplaced (argh!) my notes on what the prewashed gauges were, but my postwashed gauges were

• flat: 28 sts and 43 rows/4 inches
• ITR: 29.5 sts and 42 rounds/4 in

I determined immediately from these postwashed rpi values that I was not going to make either of the Hawthorne sweaters with a single strand of yarn. Nope, not gonna do it. I’m a “brute-force thrower,” meaning I let go of the working needle to wrap the yarn for each stitch, so I’m not exactly fast. And having just finished two sweaters with postwashed gauges of 9 rpi, I was not going to embark on two projects that would need even more rows/rounds per inch.

Swatching with Three Strands

As mentioned above, I’ve made lots of socks with Stroll, and it didn’t take me long to realize that neither my hands, nor my eyes, nor my patience was happy working with a single strand of sock yarn, especially once I realized that to get a properly dense sock fabric, I had to use 2.00 mm needles. Yeah, meaning no. So I very quickly hit on holding (just holding, not winding together into a ball) three strands of Stroll together. My gauges went from 9 spi and 11 rpi with a single strand on 2.00 mm needles to 5.67 spi and 7.5 rpi on 3.25 mm needles. If you do the arithmetic, that means my socks went from 99 to about 42 sts per square inch. My eyes, hands, and patience were suitably rewarded, and I can make socks much more quickly. (For those wondering, I can get a pair of size-9 crew socks for myself out of 150 g of yarn, and the Big Guy needs about 180 g for his size-12 mid-calf socks.)

Having that experience immediately to hand (ugh, a pun!), I pulled out my IC needles and tried a size 5/3.75 mm needle with three strands of Hawthorne worked flat. I held together individual colorways I would never buy even for socks, let alone any other project.

The prewashed swatch felt fairly dense as I squished it, even using a larger needle than I use for socks, at 14.5 sts per 3 in and 26 rows per 4 in working flat. After running the swatch through the washer and dryer, the st gauge loosened up a bit to 13.5 sts per 3 in while the row gauge tightened ever so slightly to 27 rows per 4 inch.

When I took the weight of the swatch and its area in square inches into consideration, I found I would need 746 g of yarn for even a short-sleeved sweater. Since I have only 500 g in the five hanks of the Bramble VP, I decided to see what would happen with two strands of yarn.

Swatching with Two Strands

Again using two 10-g samples in colorways I found unappealing, my first double-stranded swatch was worked on size 4/3.50 mm needles, with prewashed gauges of 23.5 sts and 31.5 rows/4 in. The fabric felt a bit loose, so I was curious to see how much it would change after a laundering cycle. Would I need to work another double-stranded swatch?

After laundering, the swatch had 22 sts and 30 rows per 4 in. Given its area and weight, I estimated I’d need 575 g for a short-sleeved sweater. That was a better result than with the triple-strand swatch, but I was still over by three-fourths of a sixth hank I didn’t have. However, I did determine I’d have enough yarn to make a double-stranded long-sleeved sweater from the Fog Bank VP, which has seven colorways in it.

But for the Bramble set, I was starting to think about some kind of vest rather than any sort of sweater or cardigan (or whatever you might call a sleeved garment in your part of the world).

I decided that the 3.50-mm swatch, considered as a fabric, was a trifle looser than I liked, so I would have to make at least one more or, more likely, two more swatches, both on smaller needles.

Refining the Needle Size

The next swatch wound up being 30 sts by 44 rows on 3.25 mm needles. I only worked flat since a vest would be worked flat. I have steeked before, and even enjoy the process, but my concerns over yarn chicken had already led me to decide that I didn’t want to waste even the relatively small amount of yarn that steeks require (I’d need a full-length front and two armhole steeks).

The gauges before and after washing were

• prewashed: 23 sts and 28 rows/4 in
• postwashed: 23.5 sts and 30 rows/4 in

I liked this fabric’s feel better than the first two-stranded swatch, but I wasn’t sure it was quite dense enough, so I worked a third double-strand swatch on 3.00 mm needles. In the flat, its gauges were

• prewashed: 24 sts and 31 rows/4 in
• postwashed: 24.5 sts and 32 rows/4 in

This fabric was both dense enough yet still supple enough to hang nicely, so my needle size had been found.

Next Step

Now that I knew which size needle I’d use, I needed to start thinking about silhouette. Since I was dispensing with sleeves, I should be able to make a somewhat longer vest, and if I worked top-down, I could literally knit until I ran out of yarn.

Since the center front would be open, along with the armhole and bottom edges, I needed to figure out what non-rolling stitch pattern I would use to control stockinette’s curl. Since the dyeing styles of the yarns in the VP are somewhere on the continuum between slightly and fairly busy, there’s not much point in trying to do some kind of knit-purl texture pattern or cables. Lace was a possibility, but I have already made several lace shawls. Taking all those factors into consideration, I decided the main fabric of the vest will be plain old stockinette, to show off the yarn as much as possible.

So all the edges need attention to stop them from doing what stockinette always does: roll to the knit side at the top and bottom and to the purl side at the left and right. There’s always 1×1 or 2×2 ribbing, but why not go for something different?