Snowflake Sweater
THE SPECS
PATTERN: The Winter Snow Scene in the January 2006 issue of Creative Knitting. I've never knit anything from this magazine before, but a couple of items in this issue caught my eye.
YARN: I'm using Cascade 220 from my stash in shades of blue (and cream). I really didn't have a lot of choice in these colors as they were about all I could find locally when I shopped for this yarn back in December. Apparently, there had been a run on blue and this is what I was stuck with.
NEEDLES: US 6
TIME: I was able to complete this in about three weeks of knitting whenever possible.
MODIFICATION: I modified the amount of ribbing on the bottom of the sweater, going for 1 1/2 inches of ribbing instead of three inches.
LESSONS LEARNED:
"Invisible" Decreases -- I really like the method for decreases used in this pattern. We slipped two stitches as if to K2tog. Then we knit one stitch and passed the 2 slipped stitches over the knit stitch. This made the decrease stitch virtually invisible, which was important for this project because the decreases all occur during the color work.
Cascade 220 -- I've never used this yarn before. It's sturdy and it knit up really well. I'm not sure if it will grow when I wash it the first time, but I really enjoyed working with with yarn. I think it's a very practical, affordable, sturdy, yarn choice.
The Yoke -- Whenever I hear yoke, for some reason I think of the word yolk. The yolk of an egg is not my favorite thing. Maybe that's the reason that I read the directions for the yoke and thought it had to do with the collar of the sweater. So, I ignored those directions when I joined the sleeves to the body. This leads to the next thing I learned.
Steeks -- I had to use the steek technique to get the sleeves to fit on the body because I ignored the steps for the yoke. It wasn't very difficult because they were very small--probably 6 stitches on each armhole.
