De-Tension Slip

Now you see it, now you don't. Generous readers will assume that the bottom picture is the "before" picture and the top picture the "after." That's really sweet of you, but you're wrong.

I'd noticed in the sleeves that the tension tightened up a bit once I started the colorwork. This is normal and par for the course with multicolor stranded knitting. Yarn is carried behind the work and isn't interlaced with nearby stitches. This lessens the stretchy property of a knit fabric, which by it's nature should be flexible in all directions. You can see how it pulled in once the white yarn starts n the photo bellow. But I still thought it looked acceptable and likely fixable with a bit of blocking.

Then, while knitting a few nights ago, I noticed that the body of the sweater was pulling in, too. A lot. I noticed this when I was less than 10 rounds from finishing the body. So I stopped to think. And think. Here's what I concluded:

• Blocking wasn't going to fix this problem. I'd have to be pretty aggressive about it, and the pattern would be too stretched
• The fabric was too dense, with little drape to it. I didn't want to it to feel like I was wearing cardboard
• If I just forged ahead and cut the steeks, I'd have a bunch of pieces of cut yarn and re-knitting would be a splicing nightmare

So, I unraveled it back to the start of the colorwork. Sigh.

Here's what happened. The pattern called for knitting a gauge swatch, but didn't specify to knit it using the pattern. I suppose any experienced Norwegian knitter would know to do this. I would know to do this, too, if I were knitting a garment that was all stranded. But if not given instructions as to how to swatch, I usually just do the first thing that happens in the garment, which is a big old field of black stitches. I'd had to go down a size, in fact, to get gauge. So now, I'm going to go back up a needle size to get a bit more room at the top.

There's no teacher like experience. But I'm not discouraged. Process knitters knit. It's what we do. I'm kind of excited, actually, to get another crack at this beautiful pattern. Back to it! And while I'm at it, I just might revisit those sleeves, too...