A sweater in the making: second post

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Here is my second post on the sweater I'm making. As promised on the first post. I've worked on a swatch and, in this post, I'm going to summon up my conclusions.

Third step: first swatch

  • The 4x2 ribbing looks fantastic on this yarn. Definitely a keeper.
  • I've used alternate cable cast-on (yes, I did it in pattern) but I must find a better cast-on method, I don't like the look of it. After some research on this subject, I've concluded that plain long-tail cast-on is the best for this kind of ribbing.
  • My gauge (so far, before washing and blocking, which I absolutely must do before starting the sweater) is 18cm/24st, ie. about 13st/10cm.
I haven't finished the third step, as you may realize. I need to knit a much larger swatch and block it to get the right gauge. More importantly, I still need to find a nice cable for the sleeves, the Durrow cable I've been flirting with takes about the entire number of stitches on the sleeve, and that simply doesn't look good.

Forth step: second swatch

I'm going to cheat and attempt to make a sleeve of my second swatch. So I'll cast-on 26 st, which is my current guess for the perimeter of the cuff. These are not a multiple of 6, so I'll make sure the inner part of the sleeve is where the lack of ribbing will occur. I'll then include the ribbing as I go along doing increases. I'll try to make a cable of my own invention and see how I like it. If I don't, I'll have to start from scratch and regret all the trouble I put myself by computing and working sleeve increases and so on. I decided to do a very discrete cable, just the opposite of the Durrow one, I'm sure he'll like it better.

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