The design will be loosely based on a sweater Rolf saw in a shop but it wasn’t available in his size. My version will use much thinner yarn, a yak/silk mix instead of wool and my now favorite European shoulder construction reinforced by icords. Also the sweater will feature a Harley-Davidson bar shield logo on special demand.

2024/11/06
OMG, this neckline I intended turned out too small to fit his head through! I used icords along the edges to keep everything tidy and nice, and it looked great, but I completely forgot to consider that it won‘t be stretchy at all this way. Had to make it higher and wider and thus frogged it twice… Still dedicated to go with that design in mind Finally it came out fine but the back panel will sit lower on the shoulder as I needed the length and the armholes get higher than intended, too. Hope this will not mess the design idea up completely. Now that this difficulty is overcome, I hope for some progress and plan to finish before Christmas.

2024/11/18
While progressing with the body (2/3 through), I start thinking about how to approach the sleeves. Top-down or bottom-up? Picked-up stitches or set-in? Flat or in the-round? Short-row shaping or conventional? Will need to sleep once or twice over this…

2024/12/29
Just put it down on the blocking mats. Couldn’t be happier how well all intended final measurements fit. Washing and blocking a swatch first absolutely payed out!

Technical notes
The sweater was worked seamlessly from top-down using an European shoulder construction.
Icords: I wanted to frame neckline and armholes with icords as I was afraid that this delicate yarn would stretch out and lose form over time. However, it turned out to be a challenge as the icord has only half as many rows than the main part. To compensate, I used 4mm DPNs for the 5 stitches of the icord and added a yarn over to after the second stitch which I did let go when transferring to the main needle going back.
Neckline: the increases (M1L, M1R) for the rounding of the front part were placed 2 stitches inside of the icord. The iCord got prolonged for the number of rows equal to the remaining front stitches and kitchenered together with the one of the other side. (The connection of the icords under the armpits was done similarly.)
Sleeves: I picked-up stitches all along the icord using the 3rd of the 5 stitches and started knitting across the top 6cm of the shoulder. Then I turned the work, made a double stitch and purled back, adding one more stitch from the picked-up stitches at the end, turned work, made a double stitch and continued in this manner with short rows until I reached the horizontal part under the arms. This way, the pattern melted perfectly with the one of the main body. To ease the process, I used two circular needles, one with the working stitches and one that held the picked-up stitches as a reservoire.
Faux seams: As the decorative pattern was not cooperative in having full repeats over front and back I decided to add faux seams that allow for an optical break in the pattern. I simply alternated (k1, s1wyib) and (s1wyib, k1) in each round along the sides of the body. Did the same along the lower side of the sleeves and placed the decreases (ssk, k2tog) one stitch inside.
Bind offs: Three different bind offs were used for best results. A classical one for the lower hem, a stretchy one for the sleeves (by knitting each new stitch together through the back loop with the one remaining from the previous action) and a sewn bind off for 2x2 ribbing for the neckline.
Colorwork: While knitting, the caught floats peeked through the main color knitting. After a wash however, the yarn bloomed and the floats are now nearly invisible (another reason why swatching the colorwork was important). I also switched from 3.5mm to 3.75mm needles for the colorwork to make up for the loss in stretch. A problem I didn’t think of before were the single-colored rounds in the sleeves between the main sections of the colorwork. The H-D logo continued, but how to get the white yarn there? I finally decided to interrupt the logo for these rounds, too, and to duplicate stitch later over the whole logo. This closed the gaps and added a little texture to show it off more prominently.