FO: Chuck Sweater

This project started due to a very unfortunate oversight - I forgot my knitting bag at work on a Saturday and I had no project to work on the following day. Not only did my knitting bag have my project at the time (the sleeve of the Susan Shaw Cardigan) and the instructions for the other sweater I was working on (the Belladonna Cardigan), it also contained my notions bag which has the jump drives I use to hold my entire knitting pattern collection that isn't printed out yet. So I was at a standstill with all projects I was actively working on and I couldn't even pull up the file and see the pattern info. This meant that I needed a project pronto and it had to be one that I already had printed out. I had printed out the Chuck pattern and earmarked it to use this yarn a week before, but I went with the Belladonna instead. Lucky me! I grabbed the stuff and started working on yet another sweater.

This is only my 2nd ever pullover style sweater I've made. Living in Florida, I don't tend to need that level of warmth all day very often, so I've just stuck to cardigans that I can take on and off as needed. I've always liked the design of the Chuck sweater by Andi Satterlund though, and I was just in the mood and decided to go for it. 

This yarn has been in my stash since May of 2014! Almost 10 years! I ordered it as a contender for the Myrna Cardigan when that pattern was released and Andi was running a knit along. I ordered this color thinking it would be a bright, grass green color. When it arrived, I was immediately disappointed. The green has much more of a yellow tone to it than I was thinking based off the color on my screen. I went with an undyed yarn for my Myrna (which I also ordered with this yarn and also don't like, lol) and this yarn just sat in my stash all this time because not only was I mad at the color - I also only ordered 3 skeins. At the time I was just going by the recommended yarn requirements for the Myrna, which are admittedly low because that sweater is cropped and short sleeved - but this means I didn't really have enough to do a lot of the styles that I would have liked to use this color for. In the end, I went with this pattern because I know Andi's patterns are good for squeaking out a sweater on limited yardage. 

The sweater itself was very quick to make, even with a few hiccups and alterations as well as finishing a fingering weight sweater at the same time. I made the whole yoke area that Saturday and Sunday only to realize that my shoulders were twisted. I knew it felt weird to knit, but I just kept knitting and told myself it's the way it was laying on my needles. Nope! I had to unpick the picked-up stitches at the shoulder, twist them the right way, and then graft them back on. This is completely invisible from the outside and looks great inside too, so I was pleased it was a fairly easy fix. From there I just knit and knit until joining at the underarms and got about 3 inches down the body before I realized another mistake. Andi's patterns always come out very wide on my shoulders, so I decided to try out knitting a smaller yoke size and then increase to my usual Medium at the bust. I started knitting what I thought was a Small at the shoulders, but I forgot to double check how many numbers over from the first I should be knitting for that size. Turns out I was knitting an XS the whole time and the increased to a S. I tried it on at that point just to see if it could be fudged, but the underarm stitches were visibly stretched out and I knew it would bug me. SO I ripped back. Then I noticed a mistake in the cables I had known about and just decided I didn't care and it was just a few rows above where I had pulled back to, so I pulled that out as well. In the end, I went back to above the bust itself and sacrificed about 5 or so inches, lol. Good thing I enjoyed knitting this pattern.

This is a very potato-chip style knit because the cable pattern has you just wanting to knit one more row. I really enjoy knitting cables and I seem to forget that after each project, so I really enjoyed the actual knitting of this - way more than the Belladonna cardigan with multiple lace charts to keep track of. This pattern because pretty mindless pretty quickly and it was just what I needed. When I knitted 2 repeats of the center cable as the pattern is written, I knew it looked very short so I tried it on. I accounted for the extra 16 rows of ribbing at the bottom, but it was still comically too short. I have a long torso both above and below my bust, so I'm used to lengthening Andi's patterns a bit. This was made it more of a design choice though. You have to do an additional 30 rows for that cable design and I still liked the cropped look. I didn't want this to go lower than my natural waist. I knit the 3rd cable repeat and thankfully it worked out fine. I shortened the ribbing at the waist to 12 rows simply because I was at the end of my 2nd ball of yarn and wanted to get the sleeves as long as possible. The length of the body could be just a smidge longer if I'm honest, which made this a bit difficult to style. Now I just need to make a dress that it can go on top of :)

The sleeves were an absolute breeze. I'm not sure if it's just that I haven't knit any of Andi's patterns in a long time or if I really have gotten that much faster at knitting, but I was able to complete each sleeve in just 2 days - I night to make the sleeve cap, the next night to knit the rest. At this point I was working with the remainder of just 1 ball of yarn, so I weighed it and split it into 2 equal sized balls just to make sure they were identical in length. I was fully expecting them to be much shorter than the pattern calls for, but I was able to knit the full sleeve length just shortening the ribbing by 3 rows. Crazy, right? I got this entire sweater EVEN WITH EXTENDING THE WAIST out of just 3 skeins of yarn. I'm still pretty shocked about it. Something about knitting a size smaller for the shoulders must have compensated for the length I needed to extend body length because the pattern says it should take 680 yards for the full size Medium. I used 660 and had just scraps left. Kind of a knitting miracle, that.

All in all, I'm really happy with this project. The fit is great - even the shoulders and the length - so my alterations worked. I finished just a few days before December, so the green color lends itself to that festive vibe even though it can still be worn all year (unlike last year's Christmas sweater which is limited to just that season). This yarn is finally used and I had just exactly enough. Those are all such big wins that it almost doesn't matter if I even get to wear this much, lol, which in reality I may not. Even if I only wear it a few times, this was a very fun project to knit and I just love how it turned out.

Summary:

Yarn: 3 skeins of Cascade 220 in Palm - $18.13

Pattern: Chuck by Andi Satterlund

Time: 1 month

Total Cost: $ 18.13