Shawl Collar Pullover

This is my latest endeavor.  I've decided that since I lost quite a bit of weight (which is still ongoing) I had to give away all the clothes that don't fit and buy new.   That was fun but now Fall and fast approaching and Winter will be here soon and I need clothes.   I have some blue jeans I bought, my favorite brand was on sale last month and I bought 3 pair that "almost" fit then and do now...Yaaay!    Anyway, for the last 3 years I've worn sweatshirts.  They are comfy and easy to throw in in the morning but gee wizz, I had 4 sweatshirts that I was either washing or wearing every day and I decided to keep the smaller ones for those days I really just needed to throw something on and  give away the bigger sloppy ones and make myself some sweaters that fit.  The shawl collar is the first of those sweaters that fit. 

The yarn is Lion Brand's Amazing, color is Roses.

                                        Bright Magenta, deep fuchsia, and dark wine red

It was knitted on my LK 150 mid gauge machine.   

I've put a picture above that shows the "real" color of the yarn, my picture comes out with a wierd color.      Its amazing yarn, so it has an appropriate name.  Its labeled as 4 (medium weight)  by the Yarn Council measurements which is a bit heavy for the LK 150 but I've found you can't always go by that number.  I think the reason this knitted so nicely on my LK was because the yarn is softly spun and gives as it stretched.  In fact if you aren't careful, it will pull apart as you're sewing up the side seams.  That's OK but I was a little worried about pilling with this softly spun yarn.  What I've found though is that if you knit it a little tighter it might  not pill as easily as if you knitted it loosely.  So...I made 2 tension swatches.  I used tension 5.5 and tension 5.  I ended up not being able to tell a lot of difference in the look and feel but went with 5 because it knitted easily enough, wasn't any strain on the carriage and still felt soft.   My gauge ended up 19.2 sts by 29.7 rows over 4 inches.

The pattern is a Lion Brand Freebie, its called Modern Lodge Pullover and you can find it at the Lion Brand web site if you search for patterns.    Of course, my gauge didn't match their gauge so I had to rechart the sweater.   I used their schematics for most of the sweater but wanted my sweater longer than theirs and the sleeves a little longer.  I made a bit of a mistake in the neck, my front neck opening isn't as wide as theirs but its OK although I have changed the pattern in my charting software to make it wider.   

I used Knitware for my charting software because I love the set in sleeve in Knitware.   Other than that  and the length, I made my sweater the same as theirs although I didn't check to see how many inches their ribbing  was, etc.    The sweater fits so well that I have gone in and changed a few things and resaved it with a different name for my next project which is a round neck pullover out of Diamante on the standard gauge machine.   I love knitting software and that's why...once you have something you like, make a couple changes and you have another one you like.   

One thing I had to do with this sweater just because I was using the LK 150 was the ribbing.  I did the sweaters ribbing by hand manipulating a 2x2 rib but the sweater front and back took forever to do that so when I got to the neck ribbing I used my knitting needles.  They called for a size 6 so that's what I used as well.   I picked up the back neck stitches just as they said to do in their pattern and I knitted my 2x2 ribbing for a row, then increased 8 stitches and knitted back, 8 more and knitted and repeated these 2 rows 6 more times.  Then I measure it around the neck of my sweater and decided to do 8 more each side and then changed to size 8 needles and continued knitting till it was the correct width which wasn't that many more rows since my neck wasn't all that wide at the bottom (their directions said to continue until it fit the opening then sew to the bottom neck, lapping right over left).  Well, obviously I didn't have that much more to go.  Anyway, the neck ribbing was going to be difficult to do on the LK I thought and it would break my back sitting there doing it, plus I wouldn't be able to measure as I knitted so HKing the ribbing was the answer.

Love the finished sweater, now I'm waiting for a cool day to wear it but don't want to say that out loud, I really don't want Fall to arrive this quickly.