Last week when I was trapped inside during a blizzard, I ordered a huge shipment of yarn from WEBS - and that is not the reckless part. Yesterday it arrived and I immediately cast on for a sweater, without swatching.
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| I miss natural light. |
This will be a yoked sweater, knit top-down all in one piece. What is difficult about this sort of project is that they are hard to swatch for. It's possible to swatch in the round, but it's not pretty, or accurate. I figured the yoke could be my swatch.
I think I'm going to have to go up a needle size. I also realized that part of why I swatch isn't so much to get gauge, but to determine how much it may change once I wash the item, so I think I'm going to actually make a swatch now, after the fact, before I make any rash decisions about ripping out and restarting.
Another interesting bit about this yarn is that it's hand-dyed and there's no dye lot. This means that the skeins aren't all exactly the same, which is why there are two balls of yarn in that photo. With hand-dyed yarn, you need to knit one or two rows (or rounds) from one ball, and then the next one or two from another, alternating to sort of integrate the variations in a way that will appear more natural. One doesn't want half of one sleeve, for instance, to look lighter than the whole rest of the sweater. This was something I had not anticipated when I ordered this yarn, but I'm willing to overlook it, because look at how gorgeous that color is.
Wish me luck. Once I've determined I'm using the right needles I think this project might go quickly. I have fantasies of wearing this sweater this winter, which is utterly ridiculous, unless we have a lot of winter left. Which, sweater aside, I really hope we don't.
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