Yay for me! Rah rah rah rah! Wheee!
Finally something I can wear and be happy with!
As you may remember, I knit the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts last November-December. It went smooth as silk, looked fantastic, fit perfectly - except for one problem. The hemmed neckline was touching my neck and I hate that. HATE.
I have not worn it and did not want to wear it so I set out to figure out how to make it into something I could love again. My yearning to do fair isle led me to the decision to rip out the yoke and do some kind of circular pattern using the EPS.
I was nervous about ripping the neck hem but last Wednesday I needed something to do while on a conference call for work (shhh, don't tell) so I grabbed the sweater and a scissors and started to rip. I took out the entire raglan yoke back to a round above the sleeve join.
After an exhaustive search through my patterns, I decided that the Equinox Yoke Pullover by Michele Rose Orne from the Fall '06 Interweave Knits was the best fit, needing a decrease of only 2 stitches to make it work.
Recently I discovered where Walmart hid the Lion Wool - in the clearance aisle for $2.50 a ball! I bought the remaining 8 skeins of Winter White and went to town with the Kool-Aid and Wilton Icing Dyes. That little dyeing spree, plus another a couple months prior gave me plenty of colors to choose from. I grabbed a few that I knew would look nice with the Sapphire Heather main color and dove in.
The colorwork went surprisingly smoothly. This was my first attempt at fair isle in a garment and only the second time ever. I find it funny that I can't knit Continental, yet I can do fair isle with two hands no problem.
Another thing I liked about this yoke pattern was that it incorporated the main color and had perfectly spaced areas of straight knitting with the main color. The EPS worked supremely well with this design. I did a 25% decrease for the 1st decrease round, 33% for the second, then instead of another 33% for the 3rd decrease, I did 25% to leave a slightly wider neckline. After the last decrease, I did 2 rounds of 2x2 rib, then bound off in rib.
I love the result! I have the great fitting sweater body from the Hourglass Sweater, and the great fitting yoke using the EPS - and it looks gorgeous because of the lovely Equinox pattern.
The one thing that I'm not sure about is the neckline and the only thing there is that it's the same on the front and back. I would rather prefer it to be higher in the back. Wish I'd thought of that before doing the yoke, but live and learn. I may take out the bind off and try to add some short rows, but we'll see.
In the meantime, I'm quite proud of how my first fair isle project turned out!
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