First sweater down

Hey needlework community!

It has been a minute since I’ve posted on NeedleworkMonday; it’s good to be back!☺️

Since the last time I posted about my experience knitting my first sweater, I have completed the project and the sweater is off the needles. I’m excited for it to get a little cold, so that my sister can model for me in her sweater.

This sweater took me a little over a month and it’s a pretty good start for sweater knitting, I believe. I used five whole skeins and each of the photos in the collage is taken after I was through one complete skein. It might be difficult to tell from the picture, but I decided to finish off the sweater with mock rib keeping with the cable theme of the sweater. It was the first time I knit mock cables and I enjoyed it a lot.

Being as this was my first ever sweater, I have some ideas to make my next sweater a better fit. Here are three things I’d like to do for the next time around:

1. Add short rows to the back of the sweater. I’m knitting a tank top now and other ravelry knitters who have worked on this pattern have commented how adding short rows to the back have made for a better fitting top.

1. If knitting a women’s sweater, I’d make the waist go in slightly to accentuate the curves. The advantage of handmade clothes is that you get it tailored to your liking and now that I have an understanding of the construction of a raglan, I could improve on the boxy design.

1. Knitting the cable detail on the sleeves, I was inspired to knit a large cable motif which would be the highlight. Also, I’m curious to see if I could create my own cable pattern. While traveling through Karnataka, India I came across some local art and I am going to attempt designing a pattern from that form of art.

I’ve been reaching out to knitting designers because I have so many ideas but I feel like I don’t know about knitting techniques enough to do as I please. However, there are a few projects that I’m excited to get casted on my needles. That being said, I’m going to pace myself and knit one project at a time. Loose ends (pun intended) give me anxiety and knitting is my meditation.

Keep those needles moving, folks!