4 March 2018: Washing/blocking a finished sweater is magical. I was pretty happy with how this was coming off the needles, and it seemed decent after I cast off and wove ends in, but then I threw it in the washer and dryer and now I love love love love it. The Rios is sooooo soft now and has just the right drape. It grew in the wash, but the dryer took it right back to where it should be. So soft. Fits just the way I’d hoped. Perfect! Now to get photos…

7 Feb 2018: Have discovered helix knitting and am using it for the skein alternations on the sleeves! Now I wish that I had discovered it before I made the torso… it would’ve eliminated the side pucker/divot. I used three different resources, WonkyDonkey, TECHknitting, and Grumperina, but ultimately the magic happened (as it often does) using TECHknitter’s tip to stop a few stitches before the change so that it is constantly shifting and thus keeping the changes from piling in a column and causing tension problems (in my case, puckering).

Some caveats… I’m working on two circulars, and I haven’t yet worked to a point where the backwards shift hits the break point between needles, and I don’t know how much of a challenge that will present (I kind of oscillate between “it will be fine” and “it will be a nightmare”). The other caveat is that I’m not quite sure what happens when I get to the end, because, well, I didn’t do the cast on as specified, I just joined my other yarn after a couple of rounds. I will get something figured out when I get there!

6 Feb 2018: Take three on the sleeves. I first tried picking up purlwise, and I didn’t like how it looked because my edge was not as neat as it needed to be to show. This is due to two factors. First, I didn’t anticipate that this edge would show because I didn’t know I wanted to do the sleeves in purl AND because I didn’t know that when you pick up stitches purlwise, that edge serves as the first purl “row” and shows rather prominently. Second, because I was alternating skeins, the carried yarn is there, too, destroying the illusion that it’s really a purled row. Back to the drawing board.

Take two… I then ripped out and tried doing the sleeve knitwise, but I didn’t like how yarn colors/pooling looked different from the way the purled torso looked, so I ripped back again.

Take three… this time, I’m going to try the sleeves in purl with alternating the skeins every round (kill me now). However, instead of picking up purlwise, I’ve picked up the stitches knitwise and half a stitch in from where you “should” pick up. I did this to make the picked up edge look more natural/even on the ribbed shoulder.

My main concern now is that, because of the skein alternation, I’m going to get that divot/pucker on the sleeve underside that I got on the BOR side of the torso. I don’t know how people get the stitches loose enough to not have that happen.

I think the sleeves are going to be very slow going between the purling and the alternating skeins. Uff da.

4 Feb 2018: Finished up the back neck and bound the shoulders. I decided to bind off from neck to sleeve cap on one side and sleeve cap to neck on the other to try to make it look symmetrical (i.e., you’re seeing the same side of the bind off on both sides of the neck).

I get anxious about the fit with bottom up, but I am VERY happy with the fit now that I’m able to try it on!

Definitely has the divot on the skein-alternating side, but it just sort of looks like a side seam, so I’m okay with it. I’ll still see whether I can get it to relax a bit with blocking, but I’m not upset with how it looks now.

I think I will probably do the sleeves in purl rather than knit because the knit and purl sides look pretty different in this high-contrast variegated yarn. I might try to see if I can get away with not alternating skeins on the sleeves because changing every round sounds nauseating.

2 Jan 2018: Okay, ripped back to hems and started over in the round. Thanks to help from geraknits, who made this amazing Weekender, I think I know better what to do now.

This time, I am alternating every round, and I think I have finally figured out how to “twist” the color change. It’s amazing to me how few tutorials actually show this step… they just tell you to do it, but “twist” to me means more twisting than I think I am supposed to be doing. I am just making sure the yarn I just finished using lies over the yarn I am picking up, which I hope is correct. We’ll see, I guess! Anyway, I decided to do this one stitch before the BOR marker because I wanted to get that join stabilized, and I think that it will still look positioned like a regular side seam (though hopefully it will be as inconspicuous as possible!).

Also, to help with the joins, I used two different tricks. At he BOR join, I made a right lifted increase to the right of the first stitch of the front hem and then knitted that together with the last stitch of the back hem. On the other join, when I came around the second time and found the ugly long join bar, I picked this up like a YO and then immediately knit it together with the next stitch. I picked this up from an Åsa Tricosa tutorial.

1 Jan 2018: Major screw up, part 1: I forgot I was knitting this inside-out, so I was alternating the skeins on the “back” (purl) side, which is actually the right side. D’oh! Had to rip back, which was tedious and stressful.

Major screw up, part 2: It just isn’t looking right. I’m alternating every two rows (but now, after reading about alternating skeins in the round—I’ve done it on flat stuff but rarely in the round—I’m finding a lot of people suggest alternating every row). I’m finding the twisting of the yarns to be confusing because it’s happening on the knit side before the working yarn is moved back to position for knit stitches. Maybe I’m overthinking this? It’s looking like I should rib back to the bands again. Sigh.

31 Dec 2017: Finished up the bottom back hem and cast on the bottom front hem. Want to get to joining this in the round today so that I can hopefully make quick progress over the next two weeks.

30 Dec 2017: Impatient to know how this higher-contrast dye lot of Nimbus Gray Rios is going to knit up, so I’m casting on despite still having quite a lot of knitting left to do on my Tender Bud/Fatal Atmosphere cardigan.

Cast on using 8s and Purl Soho’s tutorial for tubular cast on; I knit tight enough that I don’t want to go down a needle size for the actual cast on. Ribbing also done on 8s. Using 9s for body even though most of my other Rios projects have been done on 8s; the twins’ sweaters should’ve been 18st/4in, but in reality, they’re more like 19st/4in.

My current plan is to knit the ribbing with just one skein and then begin alternating skeins once I join in the round for the body.

New Things
On this project, I learned…

1. How to do helix knitting.
2. How to carry yarn up the stockinette side when knitting inside out.
3. To think carefully about how changes in knitting direction (in the round vs side to side) will change the pooling.

A note on using a variegated/hand dyed/variable yarn on this project:
I haven’t used variegated yarn a ton, and I honestly didn’t expect this yarn to have so much contrast. A different skein from a different dye lot of the Nimbus Gray was much more muted, and this batch was a gift from my lovely sister, so you work with what you have.

Anyway, I discovered that the appearance changes markedly when you get to the underarms because you switch from knitting in the round to knitting back and forth. This changed the pooling (for the worse, IMO… I like the bottom portion better as it’s less stripey/pooley). It doesn’t mean that I don’t like the sweater or won’t wear it, but it has taught me a valuable lesson on working with variegated yarns.

Notes to self on washing/drying Rios:
Washed in front loader on “delicates” cycle (don’t have “wool” or “hand wash” cycles) with a tiny shot of regular detergent plus an extra rinse. Next time, I might just do Soak or Eucalan with the “rinse + spin” option.

Made a first pass at drying using the “sensor dry: normal” setting, but it was still pretty wet. I decided to do a timed dry on medium heat instead, which did the trick. The Rios definitely grows in the wash, but the dryer will get it back to gauge without felting it.