Materials: About 19 skeins Knit Picks Telemark (100% Peruvian Highland Wool), 15 skeins in Black, 3 skeins in Drift, 1 skein in Poppy.  Size 2 and size 3 needles. Pattern: Graphic Hoodie from Knitting Classic Style.

Time: 6 weeks, mostly during the Olympics.

Cost: $38 (provided that I’m remembering the skein count correctly).

I’ve had my eye on this project for awhile, and I figured that the Winter Olympics would present the perfect time to tackle it — the sweater is thematically appropriate, and the Olympics also provide a good amount of couch time. (Otherwise, I figured I’d get discouraged and bored by the slow pace.)  Also, since I’m a big fan of what I regard as fairly hardcore Dale of Norway-style sweaters, I like how this design keeps the spirit of more traditional designs, but modernizes it slightly. (The sleeves on the Dale sweaters make me look like a particularly squat blocky block, which isn’t always ideal.)

Favorite detail: the contrasting picot-trim cuffs.

I have a predictably loose gauge, but swatches on size 3, 4, and 5 needles with the Telemark all yielded a uniform 21 sts/in. Because that would make something like a 44″ bust if I knit the smallest size, I crunched the numbers and did the math to take the pattern down to a roomy-but-not-baggy 37″. Scandinavian-style sweaters aren’t traditionally fitted or tight, so I wanted this one to fit more like your average sweatshirt-type hoodie. It ended up being about 34″ without any stretching during the blocking process, so I wasn’t too far off.  (I might stretch the shoulders and the neck out a bit next time I wash it, though.)

I fudged the math on the armscythe a bit, primarily because the height of the armscythe was more than it should’ve been because I forgot to allow for the extra vertical space it’d allow me to complete the yoke chart (in other words, I should’ve started the yoke chart earlier). This was also the first time that I’ve done stranding / colorwork flat instead of in the round, and it does show in some places. Most notably, the seams around the armholes are quite tight; I think I seamed them together aggressively to make the colorwork at the seams look tidier.

Other small edits:

• I ripped out and re-did the body hem in a standard rib; the checkerboard rib kept flipping around while I worked on the body of the sweater, so I had no reason to expect that it would magically begin to behave when I actually started to wear the thing.
• I figured out what the “center the chart” advice in the pattern meant a little too late: given the zig-zag-like pattern of the yoke, it makes sense to have one of the peaks or valleys of those zigs match up with where the neckline splits. I was able to fudge this, but it would’ve been really annoying if I hadn’t been able to match things up, and equally annoying if I’d had to rip back the yoke yet again.
• Short-rowed the shoulders for a 3-needle bind-off.
• Extended the sides of the hood farther around the neck when picking up stitches around the neck.
• There are a few small errors in the pattern: for example, you’re told to “knit the rest of” a purl WS row. That kind of thing.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 9:32 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.