FO: Folded Pullover

I’m on vacation, but I left some posts behind so you wouldn’t forget me. Apologies for not responding to comments in a prompt manner—I’ll be sure to respond when I’m back.

This post is a ridiculously long time in the making. There’s no way—no way—it should have taken me nearly five months to knit this sweater. But as you’ll know from earlier posts about this sweater that it was not meant to be during the summer. I honestly think the heat was making my brain melt a bit. How else could I possibly account for the fact that I initially misread 13 centimeters as 13 inches? And I placed the markers incorrectly. All the while I was also knitting Loki’s Scarf. So if you are thinking about knitting this sweater, know that it should maybe take you two weeks, tops, if you have time to devote to knitting.

Yes, two weeks. I had knit the sleeves earlier this summer, but I completely ripped out the body on September 18, started it back up again on September 19, and finished the entire sweater on September 24. That’s five days for the body, joining the sleeves, and knitting the yoke. Two weeks, tops, people.

Which is a really good thing, because I know have to frog it and reknit it. Again.

The sleeves should not be at my wrists—they’re elbow-length in the pattern. The underarm seams should not be halfway down my upper arm. The neckline should not be falling off my shoulders. The pleats should be above my bust.

Remember last week, when I talked about the important of swatching and how doing multiple swatches to make sure you have the right gauge is important? I swatched once for this pullover on the recommended needle size and the fabric came out too big. But the aforementioned brain leakage let me believe that knitting one needle size smaller would totally fix that. Wrong. The pattern gauge is 23 stitches to 4″. My finished gauge was 20 stitches to 4″. That’s nearly an entire stitch an inch. I would have had to gone down at least two, possibly three needle sizes to get the right gauge.

I really like this fabric, so I did some math and figured out I’ll need to knit the second smallest size at this gauge (also, I don’t really love the idea of knitting a fingering weight sweater on size 3 needles). I did like how the modifications I made turned out. I just have to remember to do them again.

• Knit 7” before beginning waist shaping to account for my higher waist
• Moved the back decreases and increases more toward the center (with about 40 stitches on either side of the markers).
• Moved the front decreases and increases in to four stitches instead of two.

Maybe I should just take this as a sign that this sweater is not meant to be with this yarn and recycle the yarn into another project entirely. I really like the color of the sweater! It’s just completely unwearable in this incarnation. Phooey.