Capstone Sweater: Finished

Rebecca

May 24

It's done, it's done, and it's time to talk about it! I finished this capstone pullover back in March, actually. I had so much fun knitting it that it was finished in just a couple weeks. But now, I'm about to talk about it on the next episode of the Wool Circle, so I wanted to share about it here first. Thanks to Stringbean, who did her best to take some pictures when I passed her the camera one random day - the photocrastination was bad with this one, but we did our best.

If you like, you can also see this sweater in moving pictures! I will finally be talking about this sweater at length in the next episode of the Wool Circle (ep. 118). I talked about how two of the panels came out last episode, and next episode I'll discuss the other two panels, and the sweater as a whole. In this post, you'll get some details about the final project, these rather hasty modeled photos, and a miscellany of thoughts and reflections.

The sweater itself is hacked together from two patterns. For the piecing, I used the idea of the Party Mix sweater by Julia Farwell-Clay (Knitty, Deep Fall 2012) and for gauge and top-down construction I used the Evendoon Pullover by Kate Davies (10 Years in the Making, 2020). For the nitty gritty on the yarn, check out this post.

Panel 1: Common Element

The construction of this sweater is so unusual! Julia Farwell-Clay really had a brilliant idea, breaking down a raglan sweater in such a way that you use approximately the same amount of yarn for each of the four pieces. That's a great way to do it if you have a set amount of yarn/fiber, say from a braid, and you'd like to showcase it separately in one garment.

For the front and back, this made for pretty straightforward panels which show off my gradient progressions nicely. For the sides, it's a bit more convoluted. You knit the sleeve cap first, then at some point you take on both sides of the raglan increase.

At the point where you'd usually separate a yoke into sleeves and body, you separate the sleeve from those extra stitches you've been adding. You then knit a side panel:

And come back and add the sleeve. A little more difficult for showing off progressions, but you can see the separate colourways clearly enough.

Panel 2: Common Element

The front and back panels, as I've said, were a bit simpler. You knit as you would for a pieced raglan, but stop raglan increasing rather sooner than you normally would for your size.

In the upcoming Wool Circle 118, I line up each colour combination with each portion of each panel, so you can see how each combo drafted colourway (18 in all) corresponds to its component parts. It's a bit forensic. There is so much going on that it's honestly hard to describe it all - range of value, pop colours, complements, and proportions. But what I have here is a reference. Along with the Skep blanket, I hope it provides enough of a reference that, when I go to do another combo draft, I have some idea of what I'm going to get.

Which colour went where in the sweater was a bit serendipitous. The colourway I had the least yardage of was the red Common Element yarn, above in Panel 1. I had about equal amounts of this green, shown here in panel 2, and of the red Progression yarn in Panel 4. The blue Progression yarn, in Panel 3, was a bit thinner overall, and had the longest yardage. The blues and greens, having greater yardage, would be most suited to the front and back, whose length would not ultimately be adjustable. This was convenient, as they are more my colours, and came out clearer and brighter. The red colourways came out much muddier, and the difference between them is less pronounced, making them better for sleeves. I could also make the sleeves shorter if needed.

Panel 3: Progression

This was the first of the true progressions, where only one of the four tops being held together was changed at a time. Since I really emphasized blues, these came out the brightest. It's sort of the odd one out of the four skeins, I think. On its own it's beautiful, but I'm happy this is not what I see when I look in the mirror, contrasting with the sleeves!

I have wondered at myself, wearing a sweater like this. For me, it's kind of loud, kind of artsy! But with all that blending going on, it has a cohesiveness that somehow feels right, even though it is very busy. I find I am growing in my joy at wearing bright colours - slowly, slowly.

Panel 4: Progression

I love how dark this progression came out, and how purple. Value is the key factor in evaluating colour combinations, and I still find it hard to *ahem* eVALUEate it when looking at a group of fibers. It's hard to break it down, when you're dealing with so MANY colours at once, to be sure!

I've gotten this far and still haven't talked much about the stripes. The white contrast colour is an undyed BFL/silk DK base from Sweet Georgia. Its natural off-white sets off these crazy heathered colours, and I cannot *tell* you how satisfying it is to mattress stitch those stripes together perfectly. They are a big part of why this sweater somehow feels Just Right.

I still haven't finished learning from this project. While I have given up all foolish ambition of trying to contain the magnificent diversity of colour, I would like to figure out how to describe the factors of combo drafting enough that I can communicate about it, and design another one. I am looking at the five braids I bought at YarnCentrick/Sheep and Wool in May, and they might make a nice combo draft... Hmm. No, focus! Seriously though, I think the logical next step is to spin a sweater quantity in ONE combination of colourways, take the time to analyse them a little more completely, and see how it goes. I am confident enough from this process that whatever I manage to put together, I'll probably like it. That's just how delightful combo drafting is.