Musings on design for sweater

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:13:31 +0000 (UTC), Penny Gaines spewed forth :

I'd start on a sleeve, myself. You can decide if you like the fabric (gauge) as well as learning how the color pooling will work. Less to rip if you don't like it ;)

You might look at some Noro sweaters/patterns for inspiration. Many of them are plain garments that take advantage of the color changes and pooling the Noro yarns are famous for.

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET. This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%. Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Penny, from the pictures, the dying of the yarn appears to have been computer controled. This means that the color changes will be more or less even in length and when knit to a certain gauge they will produce a pattern of color changes, such as stripes. By changing the gauge used, you can control the patterning of the yarn. It has been years since I knitted any thing using this method, but seem to remember measuring the lengths of the colors, figuring how many stitches each color would make, and how many color repeats there would be across the width of the garment.

DA

I think the sleeves will be fine, as far as the colour pooling will go. At the show, they had a bag made from the same shade: it had a definate striping effect. But I think the front of the jumper will be about four times as wide as the bag, and then the width of the stripes is very narrow.

Oh, I've seen some lovely Noro jumpers. My favourite is Rosedale United, in Knitty: if they'd been much of a choice of the right yarn at the show, I'd have bought some to make it. I don't think this yarn pools in quite the same way, though.

I've found another pictre of a WIP from the same colour yarn - but they'e socks:

Oh, that's an ingenious idea.

I've done my swatch (and washed it already) using 3.75mm needles and 4mm needles. It does seem to have a repeat, but I hadn't quite got back to the beginning, even after about 5.5" x 15". Looking at my swatch, I might get reasonable size bands, even if I just knit it as a normal sweater, with a front and back, rather then being in the round.

If you knit it in the round then the stripes would go around the body instead of being broken at the side seam. Don't know if matching the stripes would be important to you.

DA

Thanks for all the suggestions: I've started the back now, although I don't know what I'll do for the front.

With this wool, if you knit a narrow piece (like a swatch!), you get wide bands which fade into each other, over several rows. With a wide piece, you get narrow bands which merge, but it isn't quite the same effect. So what I've done, is I've cast on the back, and will use this to decide about the front.

So far I've done a moss stitch lower border and nearly two inches of stocking stitch. It seems a bit wide, but if it is too wide, I'll consider re-jigging the arm holes, and have the side seams slightly forwards. I'll wait until it is a bit longer before deciding, so I can get a more accurate gauge.

This is the first jumper I've knitted without a pattern, but I have an image in my mind of a fairly basic V-neck, which gets all its interest from the yarn. It's a real adventure.