After having been fixated with knitting sweaters in one piece, (who wants to spend time seaming up?!) and making several with raglan sleeves, I have realized that the weight of a man’s sweater works against it having very much support. I told my son on Thanksgiving that the next sweater I make for him will have seams across the shoulders and will hang better. “Do you know what kind you’d like (in the next year or two)? He was quite quick in responding he’d like a pullover with a quarter-zip. Well then… “What color?” Again, no hesitation: Black.
That night I began looking at possible patterns on Ravelry. I thought I’d have to modify something to get the right style with a quarter or half-zip and the right kind of collar. After all, there is not the proliferation of men’s sweater patterns as there are for women. Then I came across the Colton pullover pattern by Kyle Kunnecke. It had everything I was looking for!
Well I should get going on it right away since the birthday in late April pretty much guarantees no wear until next winter. I know, I’ll just wrap the pieces and the rest of the yarn along with a copy of the pattern so he can open it on Christmas Day and know what he’ll be getting! So, a trip to The Bead Merchant for some black worsted weight yarn. The alpaca wool blend is so squishy and lovely! How much to get? The ladies in our knitting circle suggest a sweater takes about 1200 yds. Okay then, 6 hanks at 220 yds should be enough. And there are a couple more hanks in the shop in case I’m wrong. (I couldn’t go by the pattern because I was making mine in a solid color.j
Worsted yarn with no patterning does work up fairly quickly. It took me a 2 weeks to use up 3 hanks, knitting up most of the back and one sleeve. Uh-oh, I’m going to need one more. The following Wednesday was knitting day at the yarn shop where Rene was very sorry but she’d already sold the rest of that yarn, but she could order more. More bad news: that yarn has been discontinued and she can’t order more. Well dang! Already well into the front piece by now.
Going through my head: What if I can’t find more of this yarn? What if I can only find a black wool with no alpaca? That’s surely going to be apparent where it changes! Maybe I can snip away the ribbing, reuse that yarn in the other sections and reknit the ribbing with “other” yarn. Maybe I can find a contrasting yarn and use that at the top of the front piece so it’ll look like just the yoke is different. Oy vey.
A search online that afternoon showed a yarn shop in Seattle called Little Knits with this yarn still in stock, discounted even since it’s no longer available. Ordered up a hank and kept knitting with what I had.
Week four, washed and blocked the front, back and the one finished sleeve and started seaming up while waiting for the last hank to arrive. The book, Finishing School, by Deborah Newton proved to be very helpful as my prior sewing up has felt a bit like I was doing it by the seat of the pants method and I have not been very confident in my results. With good reason as it turns out. :)
The last hank arrived last week, knit up the second sleeve, got it washed and blocked while knitting on the collar on the weekend. Seamed the sleeves in on Monday (Christmas eve) and sewed the zipper in on Christmas morning. Whew!
