Monday, February 17, 2014

And continuing on...

More machine knit sweater goodness, this time an exploration of patterning using the punch card capability of the Silver Reed SK-280.

I used two cones of fingering weight (2/9) Shetland wool from Gardiner of Selkirk, Ltd.  This was a closeout from Webs, many moons ago.  I don't remember the price now, but it was a great bargain.  However, it sat in the stash -- mostly because it wasn't pleasant to hand knit, and it that point I didn't have a machine that would handle that weight of yarn.  Fast forward -- now I do!

The body of the sweater is plain stockinette, the ribbings are hand knit, and the sleeves are knit in a fair isle checkerboard design.  It was my intention to shape all pieces, except the neckline, with full fashioned increases.  However when I started my first sleeve, I saw that the floats from the fair isle pattern, plus the increases gave the edges of the sleeve a somewhat ragged look.  This may be inherent in the type of pattern I was doing, or due to inexperience on my part, but it was not satisfactory.  So, I did a few calculations, and knit up two separate pieces of patterned yardage for the sleeves.  Here you can see the yardage with a pattern drawn on freezer paper and lightly ironed onto the fabric: 
 
This method does waste a bit of fabric, but as you can see, not too much --
 
 
 

After cutting the side edges of the sleeves (top and bottom of sleeve were left on waste yarn), I ran it through the serger to finish off the edges -- scary, but it seems to have worked just fine.
 
 
And here it is all nicely finished --
 

The patterning on the sleeve portion worked out at a different gauge from the plain body portion -- I believe that is typical for fair isle.  A little more math let me work out separate patterns for the sleeves, and I made it easy on myself by selecting simple drop shouldered shaping. 
 
 
All in all, a simple project that turned out to the wearer's satisfaction.  And that is always a good result!



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