The new sweater is done, and just in time for May. So, in honor of the heavy inspiration I took both from the February Lady sweater and the February Baby sweater, I’ll call it my Lady May sweater.
Let’s start with some show-off photos. The ones of me modeling it were taken by my fabulous friend and neighbor Laura.
Here’s the full front shot. I’ll admit to having Laura take it a second time so I could suck my gut to hide the muffin top, but otherwise I have to say this sweater feels incredibly flattering to me. The open front of the bottom creates a sort of upside-down V that draws the eye in and up, sort of simulating a (nonexistent for me) hourglass waistline. Plus, the bottom of the sweater is wide enough that it could button around my hips, but I think it drapes a lot better allowed to flow freely as it is.
Here’s a shoulder view that shows off both the lace and the bead details. You can see the semi-random spacing of the beads on the yoke. I decided on that pretty much intuitively as I was knitting along. In retrospect, I thought up a loftier explanation that the random scatter looks more organic to go with the leaf motif of the lace. Yeah. Really.
From the back – I did several sets of short-rows in the garter-stitch yoke to create a slightly raised neckline in the back. I tried the thing on about a million times as I was knitting up the yoke, and I decided on a wider neckline than I normally use. Somehow with this fine, drapey fabric, it just felt right.
I tried a bunch of closure ideas out both in my head and on my gauge swatch, especially several attempts at creating a beaded button built into the applied i-cord edging. None of them suited to my satisfaction, so I ended up falling back to the pewter clasps similar to the ones I used on my purple diamond sweater.
Oh! and you can also get a good look at the applied i-cord I used here. Even after slipping the first stitch every row for the selvedges, the edges looked a bit unfinished to me. Plus, I wanted to add a bit of reinforcement to the neckline. So, when the sweater was knit up, I left the neckline stitches live, started at the bottom-right front and worked applied i-cord along the button band, picking up one stitch at a time and knitting it into the cord (just like on the Blankie). Then, when I got to the neckline, I turned the corner and worked an i-cord bind-off around the neck, and continued down the other side to the bottom again.
I went to a local shop called Ingebretsen’s to pick these out – we have some similar ones at the Yarnery, but I knew that Ingebretsens’s selection would be at least as good if not even a bit better for this particular kind of clasp, plus they’re a bit closer than a trip to St. Paul. The lady in the shop told me this set was meant for doll-sized sweaters and was maybe a bit doubtful of their appropriateness for an adult sweater. I wanted the smallest, lightest ones I could find so as not to weigh the edges down any more than absolutely necessary. I can’t wait to see what the State Fair judges have to say about this particular selection, if anything!
Here’s a photo of the sweater blocking. I wanted to show this while it was wet so you can see the stripiness in the yarn better. It’s fairly subtle in the wearing, but I was nervous about it at several points during the knitting, especially that very-pink bit under the armpits.
This is not a great photo, but here I am trying the sweater on early in the yoke. You can see that the lace pattern in the body was quite crumply-bumply before blocking, and also that the hemline was a lot higher. Another strong argument for not only knitting a good-sized gauge swatch, but also for paying attention to the before-and-after measurements.
And here’s where the sweater sits now…
It looks tiny folded up on top of the stash boxes in my office closet. I’ve made up my mind to send this knit to the Fair in August, which means keeping it in pristine condition until then. I spun this yarn from merino wool, and it is a lofty yarn that will likely start pilling with not very much wear at all. I’m okay with that – it’s the very end of sweater season here now, and it will be fun to have a sparkly new sweater to wear next fall.
A couple of people have asked me whether I plan to write this pattern up. The answer, unfortunately, is probably not – to no. I knit this up with homespun yarn that would be hard to duplicate exactly, although a sock yarn like Koigu would come fairly close. I didn’t keep exact notes about every step along the way, and I’m not in the mood to do the math for various sizes. That said, I will happily give you a brief run-down on how you could knit a similar sweater for yourself.
First, you have to pick out your yarn. My yarn was sort of a light fingering weight or heavy lace weight – it’s a little slubby, and on average it’s maybe about the thickness of Koigu, although maybe Schaeffer Anne would be a better comparison, because it’s loftier than Koigu at the same thickness. I didn’t take the best of notes back when I spun this up, but judging from the scant notes that I did take and what’s left over now, I think I used about 1500 yards or so of the yarn. All those lace holes really help to make the yarn go further! Still, it’s a great idea to buy or spin more than you think you’ll use because your design ideas could change as you go, or your estimate could be way off. You can check with your LYS about their return policies, which often allow for exchanges of unused skeins. In my case, I have a couple-few hundred yards left that will make a nice scarf or something.
Next, pick out the lace pattern you want to use. There are so many stitch pattern books out there, it’s silly. Barbara Walker’s collections are some of my favorites, but in this case I used one of the japanese stitch dictionaries that I bought at the Yarnery, also available elsewhere online. Knit up a fairly large gauge swatch. I like to try out a couple of different edgings while I’m at it – maybe border the bottom and one edge with garter stitch, and the top and the other edge with seed stitch. Don’t be stingy on the gauge swatch! If you have to, you can always rip it out at the end if you run out of yarn, but otherwise hang onto it for consutling as you knit the project.
Measure your swatch before washing it. Write the measurements down. I like to measure over an entire repeat or two of the stitch pattern, then divide the gauge out of that. Wash your swatch and block it. This tells you so much! First, it tells you whether or not your yarn will wash well, how the gauge changes, how the pattern looks in real life in your yarn, whether you’re happy with the fabric you’ve created, which edging you prefer, and on and on.
Now, go measure a sweater or garment you have that fits the way you like. It needs to be the same general shape as the sweater you plan to make.
And oh, gah! is anyone still reading at this point? My children are starting to get restless, and it’s time for me to go figure out what to make for dinner. I could spend hours explaining this process. I tell you what. If anyone is really, truly interested in making a sweater like this, we can have a knit-along and I’ll walk you through it step-by-step. In the mean time, go check out Sweaters From Camp by Meg Swansen. She has a great section in the front that is just about the best ever simple sweater-designing tutorial I’ve ever seen. That one is geared more toward colorwork, but all the ideas cross over directly. There is also tons of other technique info in there, and it is one of my most commonly-referred to knitting references, and I’m not even mentioning the amazing sweater eye-candy that makes up the rest of the book.
