Ribosome Sweater

 

Last December I found this pattern for a sweater I really liked called Ribosome    I liked the intertwined cable pattern on the surface and the slip stitch color work.  I've done several slip stitch color work projects lately and TBH I'm feeling done with that approach now, but I was all systems go a year ago.  

I wanted to use the orange alpaca yarn Melody and I hand hand-dyed last fall.  I liked the multi-color we dyed with it but I didn't think I had enough of the orange and multi-color for the whole sweater so I introduced a dark teal third color that picked up the teals in the multi-color.  I liked the way all the yarns looked together and they felt so wonderful to knit with.

I made a swatch and liked the way they looked.  The swatch was a little off-size from the pattern gauge so I went down a size in the pattern.

The yoke knits up first with short row shaping.

Then the body of the sweater is knit onto the yoke.  Spooky doesn't usually like to let me knit (he's too squirmy) but I loved this shot of him snoozing in my lap.

Knitting the sleeves was challenging-  I was playing yarn chicken with the dark teal because I needed enough for the cuffs.  It turned out I had enough green that I probably didn't need to have that solid orange block in the middle of the sleeves (I'd run out of the yellowy multi-color).  At least I was knitting both sleeves together on one set of needles (like I do with socks) so it was easy to keep them matching.  

Unfortunately when I finished the sweater a few weeks ago I absolutely hated it.  The colors looked garish and too bright even for me and they were not playing nicely.  

Even worse, it did not fit at all. It was huge, absolutely gigantic, and the yoke came down so far that the armpits sat like 8 inches below my actual armpits so my arms felt pinned.  I was really aggravated because it was a lot of yarn and nice yummy yarn too.  

So I did what you should never do with your hand knits- I tossed it in a hot load of laundry and then into the dryer.  I figured I was never going to wear it as-is so I might as well see if I could shrink it.

Well it worked like gangbusters!  It shrank up just perfect to fit exactly like I wanted with bracelet length sleeves and everything.  That's what I was going for to begin with but it was very hard to try on as I was working because of the ways that the sleeves were knit flat and both on the needles.

The other magical thing that happened in the wash was that as it felted, the colors got just a little blendier.  The orange is slightly softer, and the teal is slightly lighter.  The felted fabric is so so soft- it's amazing.  The sweater is super comfy-  I've worn it every day this week.  I've actually thought about trying to shrink another alpaca sweater I crocheted years and years ago that also came out huge.

I'm so glad to have "rescued" this sweater.  I hate knitting things I don't wind up wanting to wear-  it takes so much time and the yarn is so valuable.  I'm so unexpectedly thrilled with the end product.

And of course warm sweater season (which is only going to last a few days before we go back to 85 degrees) is associated with warm sock season, so I got out a pair of thick yummy knit socks I blogged about previously.