One of the regulars at Crazy for Ewe was working on a Crystal Cove Pullover while I was in the shop, and I immediately latched onto the design. A modular construction with unusual geometry--I know, it’s such a stretch for me…

As it happens, this was two days after I saw and fell in love with this new purple and brown colorway of Kureyon and thought, wow, I am totally in love with this, but I don’t have anything in my queue that would use this. The two ideas collided, and I decided to make Crystal Cove with the Kureyon in front and some sort of solid in the back. Ellen helped me peruse the shop and pulled out the brown Retro, and that was that.

Of course, once I ordered the pattern, I found that wool is specifically not recommended, but I forged ahead anyway.

I’ve worked with Noro yarns enough to know that the Kureyon color shifts would be interrupted by splices, and I decided to be really fussy about searching my different skeins to keep the color flow the same throughout, which is why I used one more skein of Kureyon than Retro.

I had the problem that some others have reported with the wonky shoulder/sleeve shaping, which was no doubt exacerbated by my using the less drapey wool. The odd bump at the drop shoulder was so bad that I tried wet blocking the sweater with the sleeves hanging across the pole from my guest bedroom closet, as shown in the photo here, and it still didn’t fix the problem. In the end, I smoothed the top of the sleeve by resewing the seam on either side of the drop shoulder to gather the excess inside the sweater, and it’s a little wobbly but good enough to wear.

If I had this to knit over again, I would fix the bump as follows. At the center of the sleeve, you are decreasing two stitches every four rows, but at the outer edge of the shoulder, you are knitting straight across with no decreases. This makes the angle at the top shoulder seam not match the angle at the center of the sleeve. So, in knitting the third and fourth triangles on the front and back, when I got to where my shoulder actually falls I would start decreasing one stitch every four rows, which should make the body slope the same way as the sleeve where they meet.

I didn’t like the way the sleeve decreases interrupted the garter ridges, so I put the decreases before the ridges instead of after and changed the three central purls back to knits. I was very pleased with Vosburg’s method of sssk; it has become my new go-to double decrease.

It turns out that Retro stretches more than Kureyon, so when I first completed and blocked the sweater, the brown sleeve was longer than the variegated one. I ripped back three garter ridges, and it looks fine now.

In retrospect, I should probably have made the sweater a couple inches smaller, but I still really like it, and the extra ease keeps it from getting too stuffy. I’m very happy with the colors, and I’ve gotten lots of compliments.