stripes!!

Two days ago, I finally used up the first skein of Cascade Eco Wool, only inches shy of finishing the yoke on Stripes!, and had to ball up a new skein. The yardage is insane!

By yesterday, I was furiously finishing Stripes!, ripping and reknitting the collar three times until I was happy with the look and fit.

It was all worth it, because after a good soak last night, and an overnight blocking, I have a beautiful, beautiful new sweater!

I could not be happier with how it turned out. Before I share more pictures and details, here are the vital stats:

Ravelry Project Page
Pattern: My own, based loosely on EZ’s percentage system.
Yarn: Cascade Eco Wool, just over 1 skein. Noro Kureyon #165, 2.5 skeins.
Needles: Size 8 Denise Circulars and Knitpicks Harmony dpns.
Time to Knit: Feb. 8th – March 14 2009.

So now, some details on how I did the yoke: I stopped knitting the body and sleeves when there were two (of four) rows of Eco Wool in the stripe. When I joined everything together, I knit one row, and then did two sets of shortrows, at 6 and 3 stitches past the point where the front of the sleeve was joined, respectively. This gave me a larger grey stripe in the back than in the front of the sweater, but also raised the back of the sweater a bit, which is important!

I decided, for the yoke, to change the Noro stripes into garter stripes, knitting one round in Noro and then purling the next. I also shortened the height of the grey stripes from 4 stitches to 3. Every other grey stripe, I did a decrease round: the first two rounds were *k3, k2tog*, and the second two were *k2, k2tog*. Before the final decrease round (which was just before the collar), I did another two sets of shortrows, in the same manner as before (since I’d left stitch markers in the spots where the arms were joined, it was easy to find where to place them).

For the collar, I went back to the 1×1 corrugated rib that I’d used in the hem and cuffs. I really struggled with figuring out how to bind off; I wanted the collar to be fairly snug around my neck, but I obviously also wanted to be able to pull it over my head easily! After several tries, I wound up using the kitchener bind-off from Nancie Wiseman’s “The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques”, which worked beautifully! So incredibly stretchy!

You might notice a row purl bumps just below the bind-off. I was attempting, as best I could, to mimic the look of the Twisted German Cast-On I’d used at the hem and cuff. It didn’t quite work, but I loved the look of it. The book says the kitchener bind-off can only be used with 1×1 ribbing, but it worked just fine, and with added decorative detail, on a row of purl stitches. It’s a slow bind-off, but totally worth it!

I am so absurdly happy with this sweater. I love the bright rainbow stripes, I love the way the Eco Wool and the Noro both feel after they got a good soak, I love the texture I added to the yoke, and I love the collar, even though it took forever to get right.

My Spring Break is over now, and I’m not sure what I’ll be casting on for next on the sweater front. My plan for now is to start swatching for the quilt-swap sweater and continue working on my mom’s scarf, and just see which yoked sweater next captures my imagination.