Ravelymics project!

I’ll lengthen the sleeves. I want to make it look like something I stole from the boyfriend I don’t have (so, kinda big and with the buttons on the wrong side…because I’m neurotic and it’s V-Dayish). The yellow/grey combo doesn’t look particularly masculine, but I think it’ll make for a sweater I’ll love forever. :)

Also going to make a deeper v-neck. I pretty much want something that looks a lot like lilalu’s Boyfriend Cardigan. I read concerns about incorrect math at the neckline/yoke, so I’ll have to keep that in mind too.

After reading through the pattern, it looks like my sweater will be quite different. I’m going to have to wing most of it, having never done a raglan sweater before. I’m so ready to start this sucker!

I ended up getting a yarn that is either charcoal or a really dark greyish brown. I really can’t tell. My main thoughts with the color choices were a) I love yellow and want to use it, b) I want it to be a kind of masculine sweater (I loved the look of the light grey and yellow, but not as a fake boyfriend sweater), c) I didn’t want to look like a bee or an over-zealous Hawkeye fan. I think I have succeeded in my quest BUT, now that I’m striping, all I can think of is how much the colors remind me of Charlie Brown. I just recently told a friend that I always feel like Charlie Brown with the cute little red-haired girl because no one cute ever notices me, haha. Oh, my life….

Anyway, about the sweater itself: I wish I had done a stabilizing stitch across the bottom, the ribbing looks a bit flimsy. I had to cast on an extra stitch to get the ribbing to begin and end with a knit st. I forgot to decrease that extra stitch before the striping, so the messed-up numbers are going to be even more messed up. Also, I have decided to begin the v-neck at the same time as the underarms and I am waiting to do the sleeves until I get to the point where I need to attach them (by which point I hope to have finished another sweater’s final sleeve on my size 7 or 8 dpns). My edge stitches look a little crazy (I’m not doing the 6 border rib stitches because they seem goofy) , so I’ll have to do some strategic picking-up for the button band. My gauge is 5 st/in, so it might not be quite 34/6in around, but it won’t be too small. I’ll try to keep future updates shorter and less crazy. :)

In keeping with my recent sweater-naming theme, I’m naming this sweater after a Magnetic Fields song. “Love is like a bottle of gin, but a bottle of gin is not like love.”

Geez, the yoke math (as others warned) really doesn’t make any sense. For the S/M size, I figure you should separate your stitches for the yoke preparation row as 29(6)-66-(6)29 with the (6) representing those sts on holders. The 29 includes the 6 ribbed stitches, if you are so inclined to keep them. I went through and corrected all the numbers thereafter. At one point it wants you to have 142 total, then, in the very next instruction, it assumes you have 112, so you can’t even hope that it was just one error consistently carried through. I had to write in my mods (skip raglan shaping, do neck shaping 6 times instead of 4) and the purlside mirrored decreases too, because I can never keep them straight. As of now, I’m 4 inches from the yoke prep row (I’m increasing the length to underarm to 16in instead of 14in). I’m going to start a sleeve at the office tomorrow, provided I can get my butt out of bed and on the move.

I finished the sweater up to the armpits yesterday. Today I got halfway through the first sleeve. Everytime I look at the project, I think, “Wow…that’s really stripey….” I’m on the fence about whether I like it. I’m sure once it’s a real sweater I’ll adore it, but in pieces, it makes my eyes cross, haha. I will say that this sleeve is the best fitting sleeve I’ve ever encountered. I’m using m1 to increase, not k1fb. It’s practically invisible and doesn’t mess up the stripes nearly as badly.

Two sleeves in three days. I rock.

Raglan shaping is going swimmingly. Now that I’m nearing the end of the project, I see I probably could have gotten away with one skein of yellow. I’ll probably need another brown (I looked in the sunlight today, it’s definitely brown).

So, right now I’m not impressed with the finished project. I did the collar and it looks weird. I finished the button band (I’m actually going to do a snap ribbon) and it makes the whole sweater pucker in weird places. I’m going to block it, and if I still hate it, I’ll rip it out and start where I ought to have started the v-neck the first time around.

Crap. I started to block it and realized there’s a big mess at the yoke that just won’t block out. I’m going to plan B: rip back to about 12-14 in into the body, redo the v-neck, and try the yoke again. I’m going to see if I can find a different raglan pattern to help me out. :P

I’ve written a freakin’ novel about this project! Here’s what I ended up doing:

• ripped back to ~13in in and began neck decreases as follows: 1 st at neck edge every other row 8 times, then every 4th row 8 times (dec. 16 sts each side)
• moved sleeves to have 35 sts on each front instead of 29, decreased as written (working neck decreases as established)
• when I got down to 1 st at each neck edge, left stitches on needle and picked up button band.

I also worked my decreases with two stockinette stitches between them because I got some nasty laddering last time doing them side by side. I adore it now! I’ll finish the band tonight or tomorrow and sew the snap ribbon on during Knit and Wine Thursday.

As it turns out, knitting too is like a bottle of gin.