Product page for kit.
Jan. 1: Took yarn and stash photos. Cast on for gauge swatch.
First swatch with 5.0mm needles came out to 16x24. One stitch too few for stitch count, and correct for the row count.
For the second swatch, I didn’t think and used 5.5mm needles and wondered why my stitches didn’t get smaller! LOL!
Third swatch is being done with 4.5mm needles. Third time’s the charm!
Cast on 88 stitches on a 32” 3.5mm needle. I knit until the yarn barf was consumed, 6 rows. I hope to finish the rest of the collar tomorrow.
Jan. 2: Collar finished, and started on the body. The 4.5mm needles are much easier to work with than the 3.5’s for the collar. I changed the stated “m1” increase to my version of “lifted mirrored” increases. I’m hoping to average about 10 rows per day, with allowances given when it gets to the 300+ stitches mark prior to dividing for armholes.
Jan. 11: I paused work on this project while concentrating on Derek’s Popcorn MAM. I am currently about 2/3rds done the increases, and nearly finished the 2nd ball of yarn for this project. I have adjusted my project progress accordingly. I have also switched to a 60” cord for my needles as the previous one was getting very cramped with all the stitches on it.
Jan. 18: I have resumed work on this project again since Derek returns today. I am approximately at 50 of 67 increase rows before dividing for the sleeves. I am still having some trouble with this yarn splitting a little, as well as the stitches not sliding easily on my cables. I am attributing that to how small of needles I am using, rather than a flaw or deficiency in the cord itself.
Jan. 20: I changed the needle sizes I listed… somehow I neglected to update that after doing my gauge swatches! I started the third ball of yarn about 4 rows before “dividing”. I now have the sleeves on 32” cords (w/ caps) as stitch holders and am cruising down the body… or so it seems… a little more than 200 stitches (even knitting) goes so much faster than 300+ (plus 8 mirrored increases per RS row!). I “tried” it on, and the armholes will be big enough for me. I will try to get some progress pictures taken tomorrow when there is decent natural light.
Jan. 24: I am now into the 4th ball of yarn, and the body is over 6” from the armscye. I haven’t uploaded the progress photos I took a couple days ago yet… I will take a couple more tomorrow and get them all up.
Feb. 8: I had to frog a 10 stitch section up to the armhole as I had miscounted the stitches on that sleeve. I was able to reknit it without having to frog the whole thing, but it will need washing/ blocking to fix the uneven stitches there. When I started working on the sleeve (to save working the body for when I needed non-counting knitting), I discovered that my tension wasn’t the same in the round on 4.5mm dpns as it was on the long circular. I didn’t have 5.0mm dpns, so my best friend convinced me to try using the magic loop method with my 5.0mm tips. So far it has been working well. I adjusted how I was working the sleeve decreases to have them line up, rather than being on the same round… 3 sts before the decrease round, ssk, k1, SM, k1, k2tog.
Feb. 12: Continuing work on the body as well as the sleeve. I have done approx. 10” of the body section, and have only 1 or 2 more decreases to do on the sleeve. I want to get this project off the needles ASAP so that I will have a clean slate for when my KP-IDP yarn arrives.
Feb. 14: The sleeve was of required length for my size after the last decrease. That makes 92 rounds total from armscye to garter edging. It took several attempts to find a needle size I liked for the garter section. The final decision was a 3.5mm pair of tips, while doing garter in the round. The first round after the tip change (round 93) was purl. Using the collar as a guesstimate, I will be doing approximately 23 rounds to get my 2½“ of garter. My plan is for 12 “purl bumps” on the RS, then casting off knit-wise using a 4.5 or 5.0mm tip or dpn. I also intend on doing this many rows of the bottom edging even though I will be using larger needles. There will be a slight difference in width of these borders, but I think the “matched look” is more related to how many “purl bumps” are visible rather than the actual difference in width. I anticipate that difference will be ½“ or less regardless.
Feb. 23: I have now completely cast off this project. I didn’t count the number of rows I did for the body, but I did do the same number of garter rows as the sleeves (23), but stayed with the same size needle. That gave the bottom cuff a width of just under 3”. I will sew up the few ends, and then do proper measurements as well as final photography.