Blue is finished at last! I am
absurdly excited about this sweater. This is my second version of Wendy Bernard’s
well-written pattern, Pink. The second
time is always better than the first! I am in love with this sweater.
One reason that I like this one so
much is that I had my color palette in mind when I was choosing my yarn.
Instead of looking for the “best color out of the yarn on sale,” or just
getting excited about something without regard to
myself, I made a commitment to finding yarn that was in keeping with my best “winter”
colors. It’s taken me a while to catch on to the fact that I’m the one wearing
the sweaters, so I should be holding the ball of yarn up to my wrist and face to make sure that the color suits me!
I really like the finishing of this
sweater better than the last version. The V-neck is narrower, which is a better
look for me—a wider V-neck makes wide shoulders look even bigger, whereas
a thin V minimizes them. I also like the simplicity of the neckline, which I
finished by picking up stitches, knitting 2 purl rows, 2 knit rows, 1 purl, and
then casting off purl-wise. This kind of edge gives Blue a more polished look than what I achieved in Pink. I just can’t knit the
ribbing evenly for it to look as good as this double-garter finish.
Pink
I also love the finishing at the bottom and cuffs on Blue. I did a doubled-over hem there, which to me has a much more finished look than ribbing.
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The technique I used to finish the cuffs was to purl a row, and then eliminate 1/4 of the stitches by knitting them together. Then I knitted the remaining stitches on a needle two sizes larger than I'd used for the sweater. The result was a hem that practically folded itself inwards, and lay really flat so that it was easy to sew to the back. I really like the look at the edges of the sleeves and hem:
Blue is definitely tighter than usual—so tight that you can see the waistband of my pants underneath, which is not really a great look. The reason the sweater is so tight is that the wet-blocked swatch of the Debby Bliss Baby Cashmerino yarn grew so much that I deliberately made the sweater in a size smaller in the fear that it will grow with several washings. In fact, I knitted all my measurements to the wet-blocked gage rather than the dry one. I have washed and blocked it once, and it hardly grew at all, so I’m at a loss to explain it, but still I’d rather err on the side of too small, since I’m sure it will naturally stretch over the course of 5-10 wearings and washings.
Until it does get looser, it is probably not appropriate to work. But look at the great hour-glass shaping here, achieved using double decreases & increases!
The part of the sweater I’m proudest of is the bust darts. I actually made Blue with 4 inches of negative ease in relation to overbust measurement, and then I added two inches back in right at the bust apex using short rows. It wasn’t easy to figure the darned formula out, but I think it worked out fine, and the wraps don’t look too obvious. I’ll break down what I did to create the bust darts in my next post.