Silk Stripes Pullover

I have to admit I finished my silk stripes sweater many months ago and have worn it a number of times. (I was really enjoying it but when the cold weather came, I was forced to put it away as I reached for more bulky and less open-necked, short sleeved sweaters.)

But it has been on my mind. This past weekend I decided the cold wasn't going to boss me around and wore it and managed to take some pictures!

I think last time I talked about this sweater I was finishing up the sleeves. One thing I wanted to make sure to do was treat the stripes so they wouldn't "jog" at the seam. If you're not sure what I mean, check out this great tutorial from the TECHknitting blog on how to avoid the jog.

I think I did pretty well. Here is one of the sleeves:

I had a little problem with the last two blue stripes. Here, I'll circle the worst spot:

The green line follows the "seam" or join where one
round ends and the next begins.

I think I just plain forgot to slip the stitch I was supposed to slip there in the red circle. I have no idea what's going on in the strip to the left, but the other ones all look pretty good. Since this is the sleeve seam and not under scrutiny too often, I'm not going to let those little things bother me. But it's always good to practise good technique where you can.

After finishing the sleeves, I moved on to the bottom edge. I was excited to get to one of the final stages. The pattern calls for a garter band (same as the sleeve hems and neckband), but I decided to keep the profile flat and smooth and went with a folded hem instead:

I am happy with how it turned out. I did a three-needle bind off to hem it up instead of my usual Kitchener stitch so the seam is a little more obvious. But I don't think you notice it when I'm wearing it. Or if you do, it just looks like a hem...which is what it is so no harm there.

Then it was time to seam it together. I know. I should have seamed it and then done the bottom hem. But I was so excited to get there, I did it in the wrong order. So I seamed the hem too. No biggie.

Here is the seam that I got rid of by knitting the front and back as one piece (although not in the round):

If you look carefully, you should see that the blocks of colour are not exactly off-set. One row of blue goes all the way across from one side of the pattern to the other. And one row of wheat colour, the same thing. This is a result of the clever way the designer handled the colour changes.

So my decision was: Do I seam up the other side the same way, or do I make the blocks quote-unquote perfect and off-set them? I decided to make them match the other seam. I liked that the colours "bled" across the vertical line. Let me tell you, though: it was hard. I had to undo several sections I had sewn because my fingers kept wanting to match the stripes!

Although I think the seam came out pretty well, I'm glad I was able to get rid of the second one. Naturally, I made sure this was on the back.

Then I had to seam the partial seam on the front. Because I started the pattern as written--working the back and front separately--and didn't work them as one until the underarms, I had a seam to sew on the front from the underarm up to the neck.

Can you spot it?

How about if I point it out?

It definitely would have been smoother and prettier if I knit it together instead of stitching it, but it's not too bad. (I was more worried because I forgot to decrease the two seam stitches when I started knitting across and thought it might pucker or pleat where I started the seam. But it came out alright.)

Once all the seams were done, I could do the narrow garter stitch neckband.

It's a very wide neck opening but not so wide it falls off my shoulders. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I made sure to use the elastic strand that was with the teal yarn when I did the hems and neckband to make sure they had extra support.

The front and back are identical in the pattern.

The only change I made was to move the waist and hip shaping. On the back I left it at the princess seams (where the colours change) so the garment could make room for my butt. On the front I don't like the shaping to be there so I moved some of them to the side seams. (I think I alternated each set of increases between the princess seam and the side seam.)

Over all I'm very pleased with how it came out. I love the way the two yarns work together. They both were lovely but needed help. The teal was too overwhelming on its own and the wheat was too washed out.

Project Stats
Started: 14 Sep '13
Finished: 24 Nov '13
Pattern: Albers Pullover by Julia Farwell-Clay
Materials: 175 grams silk (~DK weight) from an Ann Taylor cardigan ($2.50) and 194 grams silk/rayon (~DK weight) from a Liz Claiborne monstrousity ($2.50)

Fold Over Hem

Here, I'll show you the end of the story first, so you won't be waiting in suspense:

I finished the knitting and seamed up my silk stripes sweater. It is now blocking and I am waiting for it to dry.

I haven't written too much about this sweater, as I see the last time I mentioned it, it was just getting restarted on a road trip...in September. I have been working on it regularly despite interruptions like Socktoberfest and some Christmas knitting.

Last week I finished the second sleeve and had to make a final decision about the hem. I had left the stitches live on the bottom of the sweater while I worked on the sleeves so I could sew the one seam (I got rid of the other seam by knitting the front and back in one) and knit the hem in the round. I also wasn't ready to make the decision of whether to knit the hem as a garter band (as designed) or to change it to a foldover hem. The garter makes more of a statement: "This is the end," but it's bulkier--not something I like at my hips. It also would match the garter bands I was doing on the bottom of the sleeves and around the neck. On the other hand, the fold over hem would be smoother, but provides no "oomph" at the end of the piece. I don't think I'm explaining this well. But some pieces need to end with a ! and others don't. But if they need it, but don't get it, it's like ending your sentence without a period   Not right.

Anyway, all that is to say, I debated it while knitting the sleeves and decided on a fold over hem. This is a nice silk shirt and I wanted a nice smooth finish.

I knit a stocking stitch stripe in the teal at the bottom of the piece approximately as wide as the pattern said to do the garter band. Then I knit a reverse stocking stitch row (the "purl ridge" you seen in the picture),

then I knit the same number of rows with the teal and the elastic strand it came with on a smaller needle. I figured the elastic and smaller needle would pull in the lining part of the hem and make it lie better. (Elizabeth Zimmermann's rule of thumb is to decrease the stitches by 10 percent for the lining, and I figured this would about do the same thing.)

Once that was knit, you turn the work so you're facing the wrong side:

 With the left needle, pick up the purl bump from the first row of the hem:

 Slide that picked up stitch toward the live stitches on the needle:

Then knit it together with the first live stitch:

and pass the stitch on the right needle over the new stitch to bind off. You work your way across the entire hem this way--picking up the previously knit stitches, knitting them with the live stitches and binding off. It took a while. But not as long as my usual method which is to kitchener the live stitches to the previously knit stitches.

With this method, in the end you get this:

Wrong side. You can see the chain of sideways Vs
of the bound off stitches.

and this on the right side:

With blocking, the tight line where the stitches were picked up is a little less. Because of how the stripes work in this pattern, some of the hem was picked up between teal rows (as shown above) and the other half was picked up right where the colour change happened. I expected the hem to be more obvious where it touched the gold, but in fact it was less obvious. I guess because your eye is focused on the colour change, it doesn't notice the hem line. In any case, it came out well and I am pleased. It's a little bulkier than the kitchener method but still a good method to use.

Now I am eagerly waiting for it to dry so I can wear it. I had it upstairs on a spare bed (my usual blocking "station") but the room was too cold and it was just as wet 12 hours later! I have moved it to the living room and it is getting there... (But not soon enough!)

P.S. I was so wrapped up in what kind of hem to do I forgot to sew that seam, which meant I knit the hem flat and seamed it later. Oh well, it works...

Silk Stripe Sweater (Beginning and Re-beginning)

After blocking the swatch I did for this sweater, I realized I swatched with the wrong needles. I swatched with the smaller ones the pattern called for instead of the larger. But since I was doing a size that would be slightly small on me, I figured it would be ok. (The next size up was a little too big.)

So in mid-September, I cast on and got started:

The sweater is knit from the neck down. Instead of dividing the front and back at the side seam, they are divided at one of the "seams" formed by the color change. This means you can knit an entire sleeve at the same time. It's very, very clever.

So I knit the yoke and then joined under the sleeve and knit some more. But I became more and more convinced that the size was too small. So I took a deep breath and frogged it all. I reasoned with myself that although it looked like a lot of knitting, I had only been working on it for a couple days, so I could soon recover.

While I was restarting, I decided to remove the elastic strand that was included with the teal yarn. It was a good thing to include because silk does have a tendency to droop and sag (when you want it, you call it "drape"), but it made the teal just a little too tight. And without it, the two yarns would behave more similarly.

On the first ball, I just removed the strand as I knit. It meant I could cast on again right away, but I also have to stop every row or so and untangle and tear off the elastic. When I was getting ready for a road trip last weekend, I decided to prepare a whole ball at once.

It took an hour of winding, but I got the silk onto the ball winder, and the elastic off the ball winder.

Knitting without it is so much more pleasant!

Before I left, I got the first piece started and knit down to the armhole. On the road trip, I cast on the second half (front or back, they're identical)

and had quite a bit of time for knitting. Troy doesn't like to drive as much any more, so not quite as much time as I used to get. But hands need their rest so I guess it's good for me.

Although the sweater is written to have the front and back knit in two separate pieces that are seamed at the end, I decided I could get rid of at least one of those seams. When both pieces were knit to the armhole, I joined them into one long piece. Now I'm doing both parts at once, working with four balls of yarn in intarsia:

Especially since the seam would run right up the front of the shirt, I wanted to get rid of it if I could. I should have done this from the beginning so I wouldn't have a half seam from about the underarm to the neck, but I didn't think that far ahead. (I thought I would be able to knit it in the round, but it was a little more complicated than I was thinking. And then my cable needle turned out to be too long to do it comfortably, so I just resigned myself to one seam. Now, at least, I'll know which side is the back!)

I'm about half way through the waist shaping and making good progress. Although I can't really try it on like you normally can with top-down sweaters, it's looking much better since I went a size up.

I don't think I've said yet that I'm making this out of two raveled sweaters. The teal blue is 100% silk (Ann Taylor, so you know it's good) and the wheat colour is a silk/rayon blend. I'm a sucker for silk and both colours are really gorgeous. But I did think the teal was too strong and wondered what I was going to do with it. (There's only so much yarn you can justify just because it's pretty!) The wheat colour is very pretty, but I thought it would probably wash me out. When I saw the pattern in a magazine I bought for another pattern, I thought these two colours would be perfect. Since they're both silk and a similar weight, it is working well. It is interesting, however, that the teal is a perfectly smooth silk yarn, and the wheat is much more "slubby." But the contrast is good.

This is the only thing I have going right now, if you can believe it. I think about other things to start, but then I have to go to bed, or to work, or have to can or pickle some fruit. Plus Socktober is right around the corner and that will bring on a new project as well. I guess I can wait. (And work on this bit of loveliness in the meantime. It's rough.)