progress report

i waited until yesterday to pick up my stitches for the yoke of my cabled yoke pullover. i had to pick up 198 stitches in light black yarn ! ... thus, i waited until i had plenty of time to take my time doing that, and for a moment during daylight hours ... outside.


and today is overcast and dreary (i love it, but it's too dark for taking pictures outside on the porch), thus the even more color imbalanced indoor photo with a wonderful bathroom shot.


just a little fyi ... the rest of this post is going to be a lot of yadda yadda yadda about picking up the stitches, knitting the pattern, etc .... just sayin'.

so far, without modifications, math has been my friend. i knitted 18 repeats of the cabled yoke strip. the pattern does not tell you to knit X repeats but to knit for a certain length depending on which size you're knitting.

for me, that was 18 repeats. which, was a good number in relationship to the number of stitches (198) i was suppose to pick up for the top of the yoke.

198/18 = 11

i picked up 11 stitches per repeat of the cabled strip. i pinned my stitch markers onto the cabled strip at each repeat transition. the cabled pattern of the upper yoke begins as an 11 st. repeat. how convenient ! i shifted things over by 2 stitches so my cables would all be centered on that repeat transition of the long strip.

it was very helpful to alternate the colors of my markers, as when the decreases are worked, i would just have to pay attention to doing my p2tog's after either the green or orange marker, depending on which round i was on. that was a happy accident, but became an asset.

now, for the next part of the sweater, math should be my friend again with the #'s in relationship to the 18 repeats of the strip and the # of stitches i need to pick up. and, i hope i don't have to wait for another sunny day to do that part.

i did not tie off my yarn at the neck yet. i'm thinking i might want to add another repeat to make it a bit taller.

yarn usage: i had 10 grams leftover (from a 100 gram hank) after knitting the long cabled strip, and 37 grams leftover (from another hank) after knitting the upper yoke. i've allowed myself 7 hanks of the cascade 220, but according to the pattern i'll only need 6. better safe than short !