Compass

It was time for another sweater! Since making my Altheda sweater, I just had to try my hand at another fair isle sweater.  Back in 2018, I bought Strange Brew: A Colourwork Knitting Adventure by Tin Can Knits and fell in love with it. I knew I would have to make something from the book and now that I had some fair isle experience, I was ready to try my very own make my own fair isle (adventure) sweater.

Using my Chiaogoo US6 (4mm) needles and my Villawool yarn, I determined my size (a SM) and proceeded to follow the pattern for Compass.  I did the ribbing and yoke as instructed and didn't run into any (really) major problems (well, ok, I ran out of my contrasting yarn by just a little bit but, you'd have to look really closely to see where it "ended").  Then came time to do the short rows for the back and I was just ... stuck!  I read the instructions several times and I simply couldn't figure out where to start it! 😒😭🤦   For two (2!) weeks straight, I sat there, stared at the instructions and couldn't phantom for the life of me where to start the short row.  So, I did what all knitters have done before me (after the invention of the internet):  I googled it!  It's amazing the plethora of information out there on how to do a short row, but there's hardly anything on where to start a short row on the back of a sweater!  And, that's where my problem lies - I just couldn't phantom where to start it.  I can do it on socks - no problem!  But, on a sweater, it's like: Do I tink back to the "back" of the sweater, count the number of stitches needed and "center" it from there??  Do I knit another row and as I head 'round to the "back" start the short row then?  Do I just start the short row where I ended and just do it on the "front" instead??  I eventually found Tin Can Knits website and found some instructions on their website but, again, it was really for how to do a short row.  So, I gave in and simply emailed them to just ask them what I should be doing. 😒  I had given them a brief description of my problem, describing in that my inquiry that this was not to ask how to do a short row but where to start the short row and sent a picture of my sweater with lots of stitch markers showing my "thoughts" on where the short row should "begin".  So here's where I'm at:

After a few days, I (very fortunately and gratefully🎉) heard back from Tin Can Knits and they said: Start where I finished the chart. Huh!  What a concept. 🤦  (why didn't I think of this?!) The only problem is that if I make that my "back" side, you could maybe figure out where I ran out of yarn on the pattern. 🤦   They also gave me a "complete" copy of the pattern which was exceptionally helpful because as I was looking it over and reviewing my book, I noticed that I followed the wrong portion of the pattern after the yoke was done.  It also clarified which sizing I was supposed to use for the short-rows and thereafter (which is also good because I was actually following the yarn type, not what the instruction stated!🤦 ).

So, some ripping ensued to correct the adjustment round (as well as adjusting my sweater a bit to account for the short-row rounds) and we were back in the race. 🙌 🎉👍  Well, sort of.  I did manage to continue with the body and start (and finish) the decreases for the body and that's when I nearly ran out of yarn on my 2nd to the last ball of yarn I had allocated for the body (yes, you read that correctly - this means I had one ball of yarn left for the body).  That meant that my 1 ball of yarn only got me about 3" (7.5 cm) of the body.  This did not bode well. 😳😱  So, I decided that I would put the rest of the body on hold and work on the sleeves since I had allocated 1 ball of yarn each for the sleeves.  If I was lucky, maybe it wouldn't take all the yarn (maybe half a ball? 🤞🙏) and I may have enough to finish my sweater ... 🤔🤞🙏🍀🐰

 

So, it was time to move to sleeve city.  I had found that while doing the body, it was still very loose fitting which made me wonder how big/loose the sleeves would be. 🤔  So, being slightly smarter, as I was 1-2 rows into the body, I had already picked up the sleeve stitches onto my sleeve cables (this made picking up these stitches soooo much easier than doing it after the body was complete because the stitches were still "fresh").  Following the pattern, I knitted a total of 5 rows (instead of 8) then started the decrease.  Additionally, instead or doing 5 rounds between decreases, I did 3 rounds.  I did a total of 8 decreases before knitting in the round 25 times.  Then I realized:  Oh no ... I'm running out of yarn ... I was down to less than half a ball of yarn and I just barely hit my elbows. 😳😱  I decided to press on and just use up whatever green colour I had to finish off the sleeves.  So here's the rest of the sleeves: I repeated the decreases 10 more times, knitted in the round 3 times, then did a 1x1 ribbing for 10 rows and bound off.

As I was working on the sleeves, I realized that the body was way too big.  So, I decided to rip it back to 3 rows before the underarm portion and tried again.  

This time, I followed the decreases but instead doing the decreases every 7 rows & decreasing 4 times, I decreased every 3 rows for a total of 5 times.  Unfortunately, I still wasn't able to "recover" that much yarn despite all the additional decreasing.  I would have to find more yarn ... 😳😱

So, I searched Ravelry to see if I could beg someone to sell me their stash of Villawool yarn (presuming I could find anyone with the same colours) - no luck; no one had the colours I had.  So, then it was onto Yarnsub to see what would be a comparable yarn.  I was able to find something on Knit Picks (Swish) that might be comparable but the colourway I was looking at wouldn't be available for quite some time. 😒😭🤦  Back to the internet to search again.  I searched Ebay - no luck; then I went onto Etsy and fortunately, I found this from Bonnie Lane Makery:

After consulting with Marsha (the owner) and sending her a picture of my sweater, she confirmed that the last three (3) ball of Oats n' Cream yarn she had would be a good match as long as it wan't too close to the yoke.  And fortunately for me, it would be further down on the body and sleeves so, hopefully, no one would notice the slight difference too much.  So I ordered it and got it in a little over a week.  Here's how the yarn looks with my sweater:

Not so shabby and it does look like a very close match. 

Now, all I need to do is to figure out how to migrate from the green to the cream for the remainder of the sweater and sleeves.  One thought is to do stripes but, as I thought about that, I didn't like how it could be too busy and detract from the masterpiece of the sweater: the yoke.  Another idea was to simply colour block it but, I didn't like that idea either as it just seemed too harsh to suddenly go from the dark green to that natural colour.  Then there was the add a few stripes then go to the new colour but it just didn't sit right with me.  There was the snowfall method or just adding in another colour work motif method that was slightly more appealing to me.  With the help of Hubby, I finally settled on using a portion of the current yoke chart to do the transition on the body.

So, here's what I ended up doing for the rest of the body: 

Decreased 20 sts from the back of the sweater and continued to decrease every 3 rows for a total of 2 more times (total decreases = 7 to date).  Since I wasn't sure how much more decreasing I needed to do, I thought I'd try my sweater on to make sure that it was fitting right.  As I tried it on, Hubs pointed out that my back was "puffy".  I checked the mirror and low and below, he was right - it was puffy, exactly where I had inserted the short rows! 😳😱😒😭🤦  

So, again, I emailed Tin Can Knits with my "current" dilemma and Emily and Alexa both said: Wet block your sweater (aka wash it) and see if it blocks out.  If it doesn't then rip it back; if it does, at least you know what it will look like and continue on! 🤞🙏  It blew my lil' old mind - the concept of washing your sweater while you're still working on it to see if something would block out! 😳😱  Of course I followed their advice and viola! It did block out! 🙌 🎉  

Now, it was back to the journey of continuing to decrease the sweater and transition to the new Oats n' Cream colour.  I continued to decrease every 3 rows for another 4 times (for a total decrease of 11 times for 161 sts); then knit 28 more rows before I k2tog (to decrease the number of sts for a total of 160 sts) then started the yoke chart at Row 12 (as shown on the yoke chart) to make the transition to the Oats n' Cream colour.  Once I was done with the transition (10 rows), I added 2 sts to each side (total 164 sts) & knit 8 rows in the Oats n' Cream colour, 1 purl row before doing another 16 rows in 1x1 ribbing.  Then (finally) binding off.

I must admit, I really struggled with determining how to transition between my original green colour and the new Oats n' Cream colour.  Besides waiting for the new yarn to actually come in, that mental "are you SURE this is going to work" debate that took place in my mind really helped to put this sweater on the back burner where I simply dragged my feet on this project. 😳😖🤦 Once I was able (and ready) to just "accept" what I was going to do and to get myself to move forward on it, finishing up the sweater was actually a quick process.👍

And here's what the finished sweater looks like:

Front

Back

Left

Right

I really like how this sweater turned how (despite my hemming and hawing).  Now, I just need to either crank up my A/C or be able to travel again to actually enjoy it! ❄️❄️❄️