I was going to write a blog post last week about my progress on my Granito sweater, but I was on the sleeves, the maths for picking up the stitches for them (they're knitted down from the body of the sweater) was straightforward* and I was racing along. After I'd finished the sleeves, all that was left to do was put the stitches for the pocket backs onto the needles from the waste yarn they'd been put on and knit those. That was also straightforward because I'd scribbled notes on the pattern regarding how many rounds I'd knitted so far at various points in the pattern, so I knew how many rows I needed to knit so the pocket backs (facings?) finished where the hem ribbing started.
I sewed the pocket facings to the sweater at knitting group on Monday, sewed in the yarn ends I hadn't got around to doing and yesterday I soaked it and smoothed it out to dry on the floor in the spare room. Today, I got my sweater drying rack thingammy out and put it in the garden to speed up the drying process.
Here it is:
I'm pretty pleased with it. There are a couple of areas which could have been done a bit better, particular the top corners of the pockets. Because those lines down the front are made by slipping two stitches every other round, putting the pocket facing stitches on waste yarn distorted them a little bit. I also tried knitting on the pocket facings by knitting them together with the 'bar' at the back of the slipped stitch row, but that was too loose for my liking (I know of at least one person who's made this sweater who attached the pocket backs that way, which is how I got the idea to try it), so I undid it and just knitted straight down, which I don't think helped smooth the stitches out.
There were a couple of very minor modifications I made to the pattern. I went down a needle size for the ribbing at the hem (the pattern doesn't specify to do this) because I know that I don't knit rib particularly tightly and I thought if I used the same size needle as for the rest of the sweater the hem might flip up. I also knit the first and last stitch on every row of the pocket backs/facings to give me a straighter edge when it came to sew them onto the sweater. Other than that, I followed the pattern.
I had enough yarn, so didn't have to go with Plan B, which would have been knitting the lower part of the sleeves in a contrast colour and using the same contrast yarn for the pocket facings (I also got that idea from another Raveller). With that in mind, I did the neck ribbing after I'd knitted the main part of the sweater, then did the sleeves and finally the pocket backs.
The sweater weighs approx 540 grammes and used approx 1290 metres of yarn, leaving me with around 30 grammes of yarn.
Would I make it again? Yes. It's a fairly straightforward, but interesting knit and has a nice shape. If I made it again, I might modify it slightly and twist or cable the stitches running down the sweater instead of having the slipped stitch columns.
As it's a nice sunny day, here's a photo I took earlier of the sweater hanging up on the garden fence!
I've now started crocheting a rather large blanket, so a bit about that next time.
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