Wise

I've been planning a sweater for a long time now--at least since the beginning of November. My Knitpicks Options needles were bought with this in mind. Yarn accumulated in October and November are hanging out together.

The only thing missing is a pattern.

It's a basic raglan sweater. (I've never done one before, can you believe it?) (No, wait, that's not true. I made one in the late 80's that was too small so I gave it away. That one doesn't count.)

A basic raglan can be top down or bottom up and is most likely to be totally seamless. I'm a big fan of totally seamless, except that....

I want to do the sleeves a different color, like a baseball jersey. So...I'll have to do the pieces separately and seam up the raglans (is that what I'm seaming up? ).

I want not-just-ordinary ribbing, eggplant and leaf green sleeves with Fibonacci stripes, and a grey body.



In my mind it sounds good, although looking at the yarn together makes me question the grey marl. It seems a bit more yellow-ish in person than in my head.

As all experts (and anyone that has knit anything ever) will tell you, first must come a swatch.

Here's my swatch: Using green acrylic yarn and size 7 straights (because I like the way they feel), I tried out a couple of ribbings.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Using the wrong yarn and the wrong needles does not count as a swatch. I know that. And yet here it is:



(The tangle of yarn in the background is where I caught the yarn on my foot--my felted clog to be exact, and dragged it 15 feet before I stopped to remove it.) (And check out my finished puzzle.)

Wise advice about swatching says to start with a sleeve. It'll be a swatch and a start of the finished product at the same time.

Wise....except I don't want to knit with eggplant now, I want to knit with grey.

Wise....except I don't want to use dpns now, I want to use my circs.

Wise....except I hardly ever do anything the wisest, most efficient way.

I think I'm going to use 7's for this project. Anyone else pick out their needles by which is their current favorite, rather than by actual sense they make in a pattern? If I didn't have my new needles, I might use 6's (my favorite bamboo ones) or 8's (still bamboo, but not quite as favorite.)

While I will do an actual swatch, I may not do anything more before starting.

Is that wise? No. I could figure out things like: How am I going to seam this together to look nice????

Will I? Most likely not.