The first thing I decided to do was pick a yarn, needles and do a gauge swatch. I decided on a worsted weight I had about 1500 yards of Berroco ultra alpaca in my stash. I grabbed some size 7 needles and cast on 30 stitches, I tried to keep the edges from rolling so much by adding a bit of garter stitch around the edges and set to making a swatch in stockinette stitch.
I need more garter stitch in future swatches I think.
Anyhow, my gauge came out to be – 22 sts and 26 rows = 4 inches
Now that I have a gauge I needed to decide if I wanted work top – down, bottom – up, raglan sleeves, afterthought sleeves, set in sleeves, V-neck, scoop-neck so many possibilities. I knew I would need vertical bust darts, I’ve only ever done short rows. Part of the deciding factor was that the tutorials with vertical bust darts were from the bottom-up and I was having a hard time visualizing it from the top down when one of my biggest issues is a sweater being too big on my upper torso….. to reverse engineer it would require me just starting increases right above the bust until I got the fullest point and starting decreases right away. It could be done but I wanted a v-neck at the same time and decreases seemed to be easier on my already taxed brain.
So here is how the sweater will be assembled.
Worked from the bottom up in the round. V-neck with 2 by 2 ribbing on the end hem, neckline and wrists. 4 bust darts to accommodate <ahem> “the girls” ,basic shaping through the waist and hips, a close fit 1-2 inches of ease, Knit on sleeves with a short row sleeve cap.
And there it is a vanilla sweater pattern customized for me. Here was my workspace when I finished writing up the pattern.
If you would like to know more about what’s going on around the farm and store upcoming specials sign up for the newsletter!
Tags: custom vanilla sweater, knitting, knitting blog, knitting good sweaters, knitting patterns, knitting projects, knitting sweater, knitting yarn, sweater pattern
