Materials: 2.1 skeins of Cascade Eco+ (100% Peruvian Wool) from the Webs annual sale in Navy. Size 7 circular needles. Pattern: Green Gable Hoodie from Vogue Knitting, Fall 2008.

Time: Three weeks.

Cost: $24!

I am so happy with how this turned out! Given how poorly the pattern is written in the magazine, though, I’d say it’s best for a confident knitter–one who doesn’t need his or her hand held, and is confident following knitterly intuition and improvising (*cough* yoke decreases *cough*) on the design of a bottom-up, yoke-style sweater. I was willing to take these problems on, though, for the sake of the big, swoopy graphic cables, and the fact that I happened to have a sufficient amount of suitable yarn on hand.

I spent a lot of time reading through all of the user notes and forum posts on Ravelry and adding them to my re-typed copy of the pattern, which helped immensely.

It seems like one big (though maybe unspoken) problem that people have been having with this pattern is the fit: not having it be too big or too small, and dealing with the hood. The hood shaping, I’ve read, was problematic for many people, and so was the neckline. In the past, I definitely had problems with a few unnamed sweaters with a similar design: the weight of the hood pulled the entire front and neck of the sweater backwards, and the open-ness of the front neckline means that it and the hood flop open when left unbuttoned, and strain to hold the weight of the hood when buttoned.

My thought was to bring up the depth of the placket, add a chain of crochet to the back of the neck and shoulders to stabilize that area and stop it from stretching out, and — instead of working the called-for 4-stitch ribbing pattern around the placket edge — binding off 6 stitches in the middle, working the stitches on either side plain and with slanted decreases, then going around to pick up all of the hood and placket edge stitches and to make a ribbed edging.

Modifications:

• Gauge change — I’m fresh off of Owls! with the same yarn and needle size, so I was pretty confident about this. I made the 44″ size for about a 33″ finished bust.
• Also did some very light shaping on the body, on either side of the back cable. Basically, I did half of the Owls decreases (again, just made that sweater, so it was pretty fresh in my brain) — Owls has you decrease on both sides of two markers on the back, so I just did one decrease on the outside of each marker around the center back cable. It’s enough.
• Flipped the cable chart in Photoshop and printed it out for the left sleeve, because remembering to reverse it was way too annoying.
• Divided for the placket higher — basically, when I felt like it. Moved the front decreases before I split for the placket into the armpits, like you’d do for a normal raglan.
• Bound off 6 center stitches in the front at the placket to make an overlapped v-neck collar. I worked the 4 stitches on either side of the split in stockinette (not the ribbing called for in the pattern), doing slanted decreases on either side 2 stitches from the edge.
• Improvised the yoke decreases in pattern as best I could, just like everyone else who knits the sweater.
• Inserted a lifeline after the neck shaping, which I later used as a guideline for the crochet chain I added around the inside of the neck and shoulders to stop them from stretching out too much.
• The oft-discussed “duck bill” effect of the top of the hood was mitigated by the attached neckband I put on. I used 1 size smaller needles to pick up 3 out of every 4 stitches around the collar and hood, and worked them in the twisted stitch rib of the cuffs and hem. I sewed it down the overlap in the front to the 6 stitches I bound off at the bottom of the placket. This really brings up the neckline and pulls in the hood — maybe too much for some people’s taste, but I figure I’m going to be wearing this sweater in the winter when I’m cold, so the cozier the better!

I wore it out today, on a blustery, rainy fall day, and it was perfect.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under diy, projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.