I just finished my last sweater over my holiday break and there were still a few days before the New Year. It was time to start another sweater since I was still on vacation and I knew we would be spending the next few days binging on Japanese New Year's Eve shows since we were home again this year. So, after going through my stash and comparing what I had with what patterns was available to me, I decided to take the plunge to use my Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal yarn and trying the REViVAL pattern as the way the shoulders were shaped in a way that was a new to me concept.
With my Chiaogoo 3.25mm (US3) needles, I casted on for a Size 3 sweater. While things were looking a little wonky for a bit, I trusted in the pattern and got to splitting the sleeves and body the day after New Years. Then I went back to work so, working on the body went slowly; since I didn't have enough of the same coloured yarn, I knew that I would have to have a stripped body and by the time I got to the tenth (10th) stripe, I realized that while the Size 3 fits my top portion, it was seeming really big for my torso. So, for the next eight (8) stripes, I decreased 2 sts on each side (before & after the P sts, for a total of 32 decrease sts, nearly the Size 1) so that it would fit me better. I have found working on the body very slow going because of the slubbiness of the yarn (and hence the fragileness - I've ripped it at least twice so far!) has made me make sure that I work on this project when I'm not too tired (& hence have a really tight tension!). ๐๐ฑ๐ญ๐คฆ๐คท
Additionally, because of my very limited yardage (I think I might have enough yarn for this project! ๐๐ถ๐ค๐ค๐), I wanted to work on the sleeves and the body at the same time. However, I only had 3 balls of yarn: 2 in midnight blue and 1 in bark. So, I had to figure out how I would go about this. Since I started with 1 of the midnight blues, I figured I would work on the body until I was done with that ball of yarn. Then using the second midnight blue, I would finish the neck first (instead of last). So, using my 1.25mm needles, I picked up 122 sts for my neckline and felt that it was too big. I decided that I wanted more of a Size 2 neckline which meant that I needed to decrease 20 sts. After spending 30 minutes trying to do the math, I decided to Goofle how to do this and miraculously, I found this website: https://www.worldknits.com/knitting-calculators It calculated it for me! Now I was ready to finish the neckline. I must admit, the instructions for the ribbing was confusing and a bit mind boggling to me at first but, trusting in the pattern, I took it head on (it said to do 1x1 ribbing in Row 1 then K in Row 2 which confused me as it seemed to me that it would break up the ribbing; and based on everyone else's pictures, it all looked like 1x1 ribbing). Then the short rows threw me off because you had to do was half of one side on the RS then do the other half on the WS. And working with a dark blue yarn at night to make sure you're doing the WS the right way was definitely a test of my reading comprehension skills AND my ability to convert my understanding to actual knitting!๐๐ฑ๐คฆ๐คท After a false start, I was able to figure it out (& more importantly, finish!!๐๐๐ฅณ) the neckline.
Now that the neck was done, I had to decide which to finish next the body first before going back to the sleeves since the yarn was so slubby and fragile (and it was really impossible to knit the body and sleeves at the same time as I initially envisioned unless I separated the balls into at least 2-3 balls). So, I finished the rest of the body (with 194 sts & 6 rows of ribbing using the smaller 1.25mm needles) in five (5) days then proceeded to the sleeves (where I started with 79 sts and finished with 46 sts & 6 rows of ribbing using the smaller 1.25mm needles) which I finished in another seven (7) days.
The sweater came out perfect! ๐ฅฐ And it looks great with my jeans!๐ฅฐ๐๐๐
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