Sweater Adventure #4: Completing the Yoke

I worked down to the bottom of the V-neck, and at the end of row 91, I pulled the beginning of the row around to start working in the round. I also switched from the 3.00 mm to the 3.25 mm needle as I started ITR on what was now round (not row) 92, because my ITR gauge is slightly tighter than my flat gauge.

I changed to colorway 3, Slate, near the end of round 96, hiding the change at the junction of the stockinette main fabric and the right front-neck edging. I finished color 2 with a doubled yard of yarn left (0.49 g), just as I did with color 1, so I used 113.75 g of yarn to make 10,015 stitches (using my hopefully-accurate chart to count sts). That means I got about 88 sts/g, slightly less than the 90 sts/g I got from color 1.

Here I am just starting round 99, where I will cast on for the underarms, splitting the body from the sleeves.

Splitting body and sleeves on round 99

In this pic, I’ve worked to the left UA, the front and back are on separate circs, and each sleeve is on a separate ribbon holder. I will do a provisional crochet CO at each underarm, exactly the same as I did on sweater adventure #1, using the leftover bits of colors 1 and 2. Then I’ll work the body through round 120, based on how many sts I expect I’ll be able to work with the 115.25 g of color 3 I’m starting with (and using my chart to count them). I’ll then work each sleeve through round 120 as well.

Neck Close-Up

Here’s a close-up of the situation at the front neck.

Neck close-up

What do all the stitch markers mean?

  • The gold pins through the fabric mark row 90. I have pins on each side of the front, each sleeve, and at the middle of the back. As I work through each colorway, these pins will help me make sure I work the same number of (now) rounds in each one. When I finish round 100, I’ll put 2 gold pins through a st in each section, which minimizes how much I have to keep recounting.
  • The yellow pins on the needles show the boundaries between the stockinette main fabric and the Mistake-Stitch Rib edging.
  • The orange pins through the fabric mark rounds where I make the V-neck increases and the double decrease in the center of the V-neck. (See the previous post for more info on what I’m doing there.)
  • The pink pin on the needle at the right-neck boundary is a reminder to work the V-neck inc when I finally get back to that point, since round 99 is a very busy one on this WIP.
  • The red pin on the needle indicates that I work the double dec on the three sts that precede it. After I work the double dec, I remove the marker and work one more st, and only then do I put the marker back on the needle. This is my usual way of using on-needle markers to indicate a consistent place to work a double dec, so that they are aligned vertically.

Shaping the Front Edging

Once I started working ITR, I got tripped up the first time I needed to work the V-neck incs—and the corresponding double dec—because I forgot that the right front neck is a row/round behind the left front neck. In essence, when I approached the front neck, I was still finishing round 94 and didn’t start round 95 until I had passed the center of the front. But I will freely admit to going in circles in my brain for a good half hour.

My gold pins are what finally made me realize what the situation was, since I could count what round I was working on both sides of the front neck. Phew!!!

So I worked the right front neck without doing the inc (since it was technically still round 94), worked the double dec on the center three sts, worked the left front-neck’s inc (since I was then on round 95), then worked the right front-neck inc at what was technically the end of round 95.

Based on the chart linked in the previous post, I’ll finish the bottom of the V-neck edging on round 135, which will be well into colorway 4.

And if you looked closely, yes, the two sides of the neck edging aren’t quite aligned pattern-wise. I think I should have started one side a row earlier (or later, since it’s just a two-row repeat), which might have made them be exactly mirror-image as their inner edges get eaten away in the double decs. But I don’t know, and frankly, at this point, I don’t care. Nor am I now going to try to diagnose what I could have done differently. My brain was in such a whirl by the time I CO that I just wanted to get knitting. I doubt anyone will notice the slight hiccup (except you, of course, since I’ve pointed it out!).

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