The Versio Sweater – hood, finishing, and making twisted cord
The pattern for Versio has a wide deep square collar, but instead of working the collar I followed Rililie’s notes on Ravelry about how to create a hood.
I was pleased enough with the way it came out to use it as a starting point for the hood I worked on my (Hopefully) Perfect Transitional Weather Sweater.
After the knitting was all done and the (mountain of) ends were woven in, I went back and duplicate stitched around the bottom of the V neck to tighten the loose stitches, and fix some wobbly ones.
It’s a little bulky in real life, but not too bad, and I don’t think it’ll be noticeable while I’m wearing it.
The bottom hem, and the hems at the wrists, are worked flat and turned under to create a tube that you’re supposed to thread cording through.
Since I used so many colors on my sweater, and the hems are worked in the yellow and black, I played around with a couple different color combinations.
I tried four combinations: yellow & black; all of the colors together (yellow & red & blue & black); yellow & red & blue; yellow & blue.
I ended up going with the yellow and blue. The yellow and black cording got lost, and the other combinations looked pretty harsh, against the yellow and black of the hem.
Making twisted cord is a lot of fun, and a little bit addicting.
You basically hold your strands of yarn together, insert a bunch of twist, fold the length in half, and let it twist back up on itself.
Indstructables, Stitch Diva Studios, and About.com-Knitting, all have good tutorials on how to make twisted cords.
The tutorials above suggest adding the twist by hand, or using a kitchen mixer, or a power drill – but I just used my spindle.
This morning’s very rainy weather, has me super excited to be so close to done with this sweater.
The Perfect Transitional Sweater – Hopefully
I started knitting this sweater forever and a half ago.
It was actually September 17, 2011, and luckily I’m still (more or less) the same size I was 3 years ago.
I didn’t use a pattern, but the sweater is a basic top down, raglan sleeve cardigan, with slight waist shaping, stripes, a hood, some last minute ribbing, and a bunch of ends hanging about.
I’m hoping it’ll be the perfect transitional sweater.
It’s knit on a US 9s, out of Cascade “Greenland.” I couldn’t tell you what the colors are, or even how many balls of yarn I used – the ball bands are long gone.
Interestingly, my gauge hasn’t changed all that much in 3 years, but my knitting has gotten noticeably more even.
I’m planning a metal zipper for the front. It’s unblocked, because I still need to knit the sleeves, and I’m guessing/hoping that blocking with give me the extra 2 inches I need to make the fronts meet easily.
I added the ribbing as an afterthought once the entire body was knit. The original plan was for an all stockinette sweater with turned hems, but the turned hem was too bulky. So I ripped out the bind off and using a crochet hook, dropped down and then picked up each column of purl stitches.
It’s 4×1 ribbing, with 2 purl stitches at the center back, to make the numbers work out evenly.
I did raglan sleeve shaping, and plan on keeping the sleeves short, maybe with a white/green stripe and some ribbing, to keep the edges from rolling.
Hopefully I can finish this sweater up in the next day or two, because sweater weather is here, and this time it feels like it’s here to stay.
The Versio Sweater – a body, sleeves, and a change of plans
The weather is (finally) cooling down again here in New York, and it’s starting to feel like fall (again), so I took the opportunity to finish up the sleeves of my Versio sweater.
The pattern is Versio by Ankestrick (here on Ravelry.)
I’m using a 4 different lace weight yarns:
1 skein of Julie Asselin’s “Merletto” – the blue
1 skein of Sweet Georgia’s “Merino Silk Lace” – the red
1 skein of Fiberspates’ “Scrumptious” – the gold
2 skeins of Cascade’s “Forest Hills” – the black
Holding 2 strands of yarn together throughout the entire thing, and knitting it on a US 8 (5.0 mm) needle.
I’m also adding the hood modification that Rililie on Ravelry wrote up.
The pattern is knit top down, seamlessly, and using the contiguous set in sleeve method. I had never head of this method for creating set in sleeves – but I might have fallen a little bit in love.
The armscyes are a little bit deep on me, so it does some funky pulling/puckering under the arm, but not badly enough to make it unwearable.
The striping sequence has evolved a bit during the knitting process.
The original idea was to just use the blue, the gold and the red, working the stripe sequence you see on the yoke, for the entire sweater.
Turns out, I was going to run out of yarn really quickly if I did that – so I added the black, and planned on working the stripe sequence you see in the middle section of the sweater, for the entirety of it.
But I was still probably going to run out of yarn – so I switched to solid black for the bottom portions, and reintroduced the gold for the hems.
I’m a little ambivalent about the project right now.
I like it, but I originally wanted this sweater to fill the role of an easy to throw on – but not boring – works with jeans or a skirt, sweatshirt type sweater, in my self-made wardrobe, and that’s not what this is anymore.
Now, I’m seeing it as more of a sweater to wear with heels and dark wash jeans, still casual, but a piece that needs a little more effort to wear (and not end up being worn being worn by.)
I’ll see how I feel once I add the hood. But this sweater has definitely morphed into a sweater that is different than the one I originally planned.
