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Happy Sweater
I wanted a happy Beatnik. So far, so good. This is an acrylic/ wool blend that I wasn’t sure about using but it was the only brightly colored yarn the hobby store had enough of, plus it will make this sweater cost about $16 when finished, so I went with it. It is mustard. But don’t think of it as the mustard colored polyester pantsuits your parents wore in the seventies. Think picnics, lunch boxes, the corner deli, and the extra big box of crayons with all of the cool colors; that kind of mustard.
I decided to work this in the round since it was already going to be enough of a challenge to knit and I didn’t want to worry about seaming.
It is slow going with these cables, but really satisfying to watch it grow. My cat doesn’t like the color. She has attacked it several times, as if in fear; but I think it brightens the room and like it.
My only snags were a few times that I realized my cables looked wacky. I had cabled to the back instead of the front. It was very obvious and far down in the sweater. (This is what happens when you watch Lost on Netflix while cabling.) I usually just un- knit back to the place where I made the mistake, but I knew I could never unknit my way around this pattern without losing my mind. Besides, there was really no need to.
I decided to unknit just the messed up section of stitches and leave the rest on my circulars.
I isolated the group of stitches where I found the mistake and followed them all the way up to the working needles. Then I took just those few stitches off of the needles.
I began undoing the stitches from the top working down row after row until I came to the row beneath the one where I made a mistake and placed them on a slightly smaller sized needle.
Using the smaller needles, I begin re-knitting the offending stitches following my cable pattern one row at a time until I was back to the top of my work.
I slipped the stitches from the smaller needle back to my working needle and loosened the newly repaired stitches a little (since they were worked with a smaller needle and in a tight space.)
Good as new. I didn’t lose my mind or relegate myself to wearing a wacky looking sweater, unless you consider mustard wacky.
More about it on my Ravelry or Flickr.
Nice! Can't wait to see it finished! Hmmm … I think I have beatnik queued…
Thank you Meghan. I'm almost finished. I love the pattern but I didn't read it very well and used the wrong sort of moss stitch along the sides. Most people couldn't tell- but I can. Sigh. I want to make another in all wool and seamless, so I get another chance.
Holy Cow that's an awesome sweater, such a beautiful yellow too! Can't wait to see it finished. Wish I had the brainspace to knit something so complicated. I can barely get around a vanilla sock without my kids unraveling it!
Thank you, Angela, but it isn't as hard as you think. The pattern has a color coded cable chart on Knitty that makes it much easier. Using the mods I posted here : myso-calledhandmadelife.blogsot.com/2012/03/pull-out-bongos-man.html
also made it move quickly. But I do get what you mean about complex projects and kids. My children are older now and know to respect the needles, wherever they may be laying. My pets on the other hand…