Okay, so this project has been on my brain for ages, but I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for, so I’m kinda winging it a bit (despite not having done an in-the-round, top-down yoke sweater — well, and having only done one sweater before, really). This is (hopefully) a sweater I’m making for my dad, based on his favourite painting (Hazel).

I couldn’t find any thicker yarns that fit the colours I wanted and ended up going with the Hobbii Highland wool. It says it’s light worsted/DK on the site, but it looks like it’s more of a sock weight — which made pattern-hunting harder as I was going to have to modify the ones I liked fairly drastically (I also wasn’t keen on trying to crochet with multiple strands together).

I did eventually (recently) find that the Indiecita 14ply baby brush and the Alpaca Yarns 10 ply Inca spun are almost exactly the same colour and much thicker, but I now have 20 skeins of Highland and not much of a desire to use them all on socks, so-

I’ve not used wool on anything that’d be washed until now, and fortunately I decided to wash (washing machine, warm with other clothes) & re-measure swatches before going ahead with calculations. It shrinks about 13-20% on the first wash, and 20-28% on the second. I have no idea how much use will re-stretch it out, so I’m going with ~22% shrinkage assumed.

His measurements are:

• Head circ: 64cm
• Back shoulder width: ~~60cm
• Upper arm circ: 34cm
• Arm depth: ~26cm
• Chest circ: 123cm

My gauge for the herringbone HDC with a 3.5mm hook is:

• Not washed/blocked: 20sts = 8.8cm, 10 rows = ~5.8cm (±0.2cm), which sits at 2.26sts/cm, and ~1.72rows/cm
• Washed (first wash): 20sts = 7.65cm, and 10 rows = ~8.0cm (±0.2cm) — roughly 13.6-16.4% shrinkage, sitting at around 2.61sts/cm, and ~2.06rows/cm
• Second wash (different swatch with same widths, couldn’t measure rows): 20sts = 6.9cm — roughly 22% shrinkage.
• Various other stitches shrunk up to 28% after the second wash (up to 18-20% on the first).

With all that in mind I settled on ~10% shrinkage, with a 2.5x multiplier for calculating stitches (2.5sts/cm). With that (and assuming some positive ease was desired), I thought I’d start off with 170sts for the neck, dividing it into 17.

• I need to modify and divide this into 16, however, so that I can portion out bobbles.

I’ve made the yoke (doing an invisible join to the previous row rather than just slst, herringbone half double = hhdc) as follows:

alternating increases between to the left of the stitch marker, and to the right — putting the stitch marker into the second stitch of the increase
1: foundation sc 170sts
2: sc x 170sts
3: (hhdc x 9, inc hhdc x 1) x 17 = 187sts
4: hhdc x 187sts
5: (hhdc x 10, inc hhdc x1) x 17 = 204sts
6: hhdc x 204sts
7: (hhdc x 11, inc hhdc x 1) x 17 = 221sts
8: (hhdc x 12, inc hhdc x 1) x 17 = 238
9: (hhdc x 13, inc hhdc x 1) x 17 = 225
10: (hhdc x 14, inc hhdc x 1) x 17 = 272
11: (hhdc x 16, inc hhdc x 1) x 16 = 288

I’m then going to portion it into 16 parts so that it has many more factors than multiples of 17 (hoping it doesn’t mess with the yoke too much).

15/01/21 The alternating between increases to the left or right still leaves pointed edges, so I’m going to start shifting increases around the yoke.

12: hhdc x 288
13: (hhdc 17, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 304
14: hhdc x 304
15: (hhdc 18, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 320
16: hhdc 62, bobble, hhdc 79, bobble, hddc 79, bobble, hhdc 79, bobble, hhdc 17, bobble = 320 (NTS: bobble is 3 extra sts in, including the bobble itself)
17: hhdc x 320
18: (hhdc 19, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 336 (putting increases 3sts before the running stitch markers)
19: hhdc x 336
20: (hhdc 20, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 352 (putting increases 3sts after the running stitch markers)
21: hhdc 25, bobble, hhdc 87, bobble, hhdc 87, bobble, hhdc 87, bobble, hhdc 62 = 352 (NTS: bobble is 4 extra sts in, including the bobble st itself)
22: hddc 352
23: (hhdc 21, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 368
24: hhdc 368
25: (hhdc 22, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 384
26: hhdc 384 (used: ~2 skeins so far)
27: hhdc 52, bobble, 95, bobble, 95, bobble, 95, bobble, 43 (NTS: bobble is 5 sts in from each marker, including the bobble sts itself) < completed
28: (hhdc 23, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 400
29: hhdc x 400
30: (hhdc 24, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 416
31: hhdc x 416
32: (hhdc 25, inc hhdc x1) x 16 = 432
33: (bobble round, to calc)

Note to self: we’re estimating around 48 rounds to reach the armhole depth, but need to re-measure and understand more about when & how to split the yoke AND when to add short rounds.