finished object: poetry in stitches sweater
Finished sweater!
pattern: Poetry in Stitches, by Solveig Hisdal - page 66
yarn: yarn kit from Sommerfuglen
needles: circular 1's and 4's
gauge: 27 sts. and 27 rows to 4"
started: mid-August 2006
finished: December 12 2006
notes:
It's done! It's done, I'm so glad and excited to wear this one. This was a really fun colorwork project to knit with the beautiful colors and huge-scale floral design. While the flowers look organic, they are also symetrical and therefore its easier to remember the row chart when knitting. The pattern calls for 25 stitches per 4", but I had a hard time matching that gauge, so I went with 27-28 stitches per 4", which made my finished sweater 40" wide instead of 44" according to the pattern. Luckily that fits me better than 44" diameter.
Instead of sewing the main body of the sweater to cut open the sleeves, I tried crocheting secure the openings before I cut them, then picking up the stitches for the sleeves and knitting them already attached to the sweater. This probably would have worked better if I had decided on this earlier and added sleeve steek stitches to the body of the sweater instead of crocheting secure the main body directly, as the design has some really long floats. But because the yarn was really tacky it worked out okay. I also had some puckering from the loooong floats which I was able to steam block out, and I did more weaving in on the sleeves.
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Labels: finished objects, PIS floral sweater
posted by cheryl at 1:32 PM
6 Comments:
I love it! Thanks for posting the info regarding gauge and sizing. I have the same bust size so I'll try to get a smaller gauge on mine also. It looks great on you!
A question - did your row gauge change also, and if so did you do anything different regarding the sleeve length? They look perfect in the pictures.
Hi Janet,
Let's see, the pattern calls for a row gauge of 29 rows to 4". I ended up getting about 27 rows to 4". Essentially, every dark orange band I knit was 5" tall and every light orange band was 4 5/8" (you'll notice that the dark orange has a few more rows in the pattern repeat).
Because the pattern was so large I didn't want to stop it in the middle of a band, so I did five full bands from the bottom to the shoulder seams. My sweater is 24" high including the picot band.
As for the sleeves, I was worried that 4 full bands would be too long. It looks like even the model in the book photograph has the sleeves pushed up. As I tried them on mid-knitting, I was very surprised to find that the length was fine.
My backup plan in case I had to knit a partial band, was to knit the top three floral bands, and knit the fourth following the leaf chart for the cardigan on pg 138. This probably only works if you're knitting the sleeves top down.
Let me know how it goes! It's a great sweater - good luck to you.
Ewww....so pretty! Nice job!
Wow, so beautiful!
OMG! Okay, so I am just stumbling upon your blog. Why is it you only have 5 comments on this beautiful sweater!
IT IS LOVELY!!!
beth (big geek knit blog)
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