For two years now I have told myself I will publish my first sweater pattern, and it will be a Sizing With Spreadsheets pattern.
Three striped sweaters in varying colors
Since then…I have knit not one, not two, but THREE samples. All of them have made improvements upon the previous versions, but the design isn’t yet where I want it to be, especially if I intend to have test knitters try it out! It’s annoying enough that I will have to eventually bite the bullet and frog these sweaters if I want to reclaim the yarn; I would never do that to testers.
Despite the many frustrations, I still love the concept for this design and think I can make it work. The issues are twofold - first, raglans can be tricky to fit in general. Second, the stripe sequence makes neck shaping impossible, so I’ve deepened the neck to the point where I can’t just use average raglan lengths, I need the raglan length - X.
After 3 attempts, I have yet another calculation to try, if I can get over my apprehension about knitting another dud. I’ve already promised myself that this time I will STOP at the end of the raglan and try it on a bunch before even THINKING about splitting the sleeves. Now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably be good to block it on the needles, especially since the yarn I’m using (Felici) drapes nicely after blocking when knit at this gauge.
A less crucial issue, but still one I’ve been noodling on, is the number of yarns I should use for the helical stripes. The prototype of this sweater used 4, and the self-striping was broken up enough that the sleeves don’t look like big stripes of colors.
The first sample of my design was done with 6 yarns, which is technically possible but not really advisable. I feel faint when I consider frogging it, and I know at some point a knitter will need to frog to switch yarn or needles or fix an error. If I don’t want to deal with it myself, I can’t expect someone else to.
The second and third samples use only 3 colors, but unfortunately the stripes group up very obviously on the sleeves (which is why I used 2 solids in the worsted weight sample).
But! I had a shower thought the other day about how I can make 4 colors work while still getting the visual result I want with the yarn changes. I shall be incorporating it into my next…fourth sample.
Please send fortitude, as at some point I will need to frog the previous versions…!