The Versio Sweater – finished!
Knit. Washed. Worn. Finished.
And I love it.
I love the crazy colors, and the striping, and the fit, and the hood.
Love, love, love.
Apologies for inclusion of the phone, but it’s how I’m controlling the camera…
Project Details
The Pattern: Versio by Ankestrick
The Yarn: 1 skein of Julie Asselin’s “Merletto,” 1 skein of Sweet Georgia’s “Merino Silk Lace,” 1 skein of Fiberspates’ “Scrumptious,” and 2 skeins of Cascade’s “Forest Hills.”
The Needles: US 8 (5.0 mm) needle
The Gauge: 24 sts = 4 inches; 30 rows = 4 inches
The Size: small
The Modifications: lots
: held 2 strands of lace weight together throughout – instead of one
: different color sequence – but kept the stripes at 12 rows/stripe
: left out the cording
: added a hood – following Rililie’s notes
The sleeves are made using the contiguous method for working seamless top down set in sleeves.
While I think the method is really interesting, and something I want to play with in the future, the armscyes* on this sweater ended up way to large for me.
*The armscye is the measurement around the armhole of a garment – where your sleeve attaches to the body of a garment.
Part of that is probably so that the sweater can go over a shirt of some sort – and part of it is probably due to my messing a bit with the gauge.
It certainly isn’t the end of the world.
The original pattern has a deep, square collar, but I replaced that with a hood.
I followed the notes on Rililie’s Ravelry project page. I worked 6 stripes straight, then bound off the center stitches and worked 1 stripe on either side of the bind off, and finished with 2 rows on either side with the blue & yellow, before working a three needle bind off.
Every time I put on the hood I feel a little bit like a cartoon character.
Which I love.
The hems on the sleeves & body are turned hems that create a tube designed to have cording threaded through. I had planned to use yellow & blue cording, so it wouldn’t clash with the black & yellow hems.
After wearing it, I think I’m going to close up the slits in the sleeve hems (leaving just straightforward turned hems) and not thread the cording through the bottom hem.
I don’t think the sweater needs it, and I’ll find another use for the cording.
I wrote 3 posts about the process of knitting this sweater:
The Versio Sweater – beginnings
The Versio Sweater – a sweater body, sleeves, and a change of plans
The Versio Sweater – hood, finishing, and making twisted cord
A sweater that took 3 years to knit. And some thoughts on making teeny tiny steps forward.
I’m working on my transitional weather sweater (hopefully). This sweater took 3 years to knit, and it has prompted some thoughts on making teen-tiny-itty-bitty steps forward.
I knit a lot.
I have a handful of unfinished sweaters hanging about, and thanks to a swift kick in the butt from the self-made wardrobe project I’m finishing a bunch of them up.
This particular sweater has taken me 3 years and 1 month to finish.
As far as sweaters go, this one is pretty straightforward.
But the interesting thing about it, is how much my knitting has changed since I started it.
My actual gauge hasn’t changed (thankfully), the actual number of stitches per inch is the same as it was three years ago. But my knitting has changed.
My stitches are straighter.
My tension is more even.
You can definitely feel the difference.
And up close you can see the difference.
The fabric looks and feels smoother.
If you had asked me, before I picked up this sweater, if my knitting had changed in the last three years I would probably have said “yea, but not a whole lot.”
But it did.
I did some quick guesstimates of the number of stitches in most of the shawls I’ve published patterns for between starting and finishing this sweater, and the total comes out around 788,000 stitches.
I can knit about 30 stitches a minute. (In a lace pattern, relaxed, and following a chart. Averaged over a couple hours with breaks, pauses, etc.)
788,000 stitches.
437 hours.
16 shawls.
When you think about the fact that that’s only the knitting I’ve done for the patterns I’ve published, (no swatches, no sweaters, no unpublished shawls), that’s a lot of stitches, and a decent amount of time.
Turns out my knitting has changed quite a bit over three years.
One stitch at a time.
Over 788,000 stitches later.
The Versio Sweater – hood, finishing, and making twisted cord
The pattern for Versio has a wide deep square collar, but instead of working the collar I followed Rililie’s notes on Ravelry about how to create a hood.
I was pleased enough with the way it came out to use it as a starting point for the hood I worked on my (Hopefully) Perfect Transitional Weather Sweater.
After the knitting was all done and the (mountain of) ends were woven in, I went back and duplicate stitched around the bottom of the V neck to tighten the loose stitches, and fix some wobbly ones.
It’s a little bulky in real life, but not too bad, and I don’t think it’ll be noticeable while I’m wearing it.
The bottom hem, and the hems at the wrists, are worked flat and turned under to create a tube that you’re supposed to thread cording through.
Since I used so many colors on my sweater, and the hems are worked in the yellow and black, I played around with a couple different color combinations.
I tried four combinations: yellow & black; all of the colors together (yellow & red & blue & black); yellow & red & blue; yellow & blue.
I ended up going with the yellow and blue. The yellow and black cording got lost, and the other combinations looked pretty harsh, against the yellow and black of the hem.
Making twisted cord is a lot of fun, and a little bit addicting.
You basically hold your strands of yarn together, insert a bunch of twist, fold the length in half, and let it twist back up on itself.
Indstructables, Stitch Diva Studios, and About.com-Knitting, all have good tutorials on how to make twisted cords.
The tutorials above suggest adding the twist by hand, or using a kitchen mixer, or a power drill – but I just used my spindle.
This morning’s very rainy weather, has me super excited to be so close to done with this sweater.
