Hooray! Sweater number two is off the needles and into my closet (yep, it's a late edition to the winter capsule for sure.)
This one was a win. I used Julie Hoover's Beaubourg pattern and I would totally recommend it. It was built completely different than my first sweater. Instead of knitting in the round from the top down and then adding sleeves, this was knitted in three different pieces. So first I did the whole back (started at the bottom and knitted up, increasing dramatically to add the sleeves). Then I did the front in a similar way. Last I knitted the collar in a round. And finally I sewed (with yarn) all the pieces together with exposed seams.
I realize that sounds sort of complicated. But just like last time, I took the steps one at a time and worried about how to do each technique as it came up on my pattern sheet. When I didn't know what I was doing I googled and found the appropriate youtube video. When I still didn't know what I was doing, I made it up and hoped for the best.
I had a bit of trouble because I used a different & slightly thicker yarn then recommended. (I knitted this with six skeins of Paton's wool roving in natural - which I found for a great deal on amazon.) I ended up making a 4×4 swatch and found that I needed only 13 stitches to the pattern's 16 and so I had to do some math to adjust and make this work. (Sidenote. You know in high school we always wondered "when will I ever use algebra?" I use algebra to solve for X almost daily) I think my adaptation was moderately successful… the sweater still ended up a bit larger than it should have been.
EDIT : It was brought to my attention that math might not be the best soution here and depending on what you're doing you may want to use a different size needle to achieve the corrrect gauge.
The only real issue (aside from some small holes where I think I was messing up how to properly turn before the end of a row) is that the neck is a bit too short. It's supposed to be 6 inches tall (which it is) but I think it's also supposed to start a big higher (which it would if my collar wasn't so big). Ideally, it would fold over and look great (just look at those ravelry photos!), but when mine is folded over it looks odd (too short and gaping). I should have kept going for another few inches. But I didn't, and that's okay. Still wearable and a fun look that fits my style.
how to knit two stitches and purl two stitches to create ribbing from elise blaha on Vimeo.
I'm getting better at my purling and this pattern gave me some great practice. I filmed a short video to share how to k2p2 (or knit two stitches, purl two stitches) which is a technique that was used here to create the ribbing at the neck. I struggled to get the yarn placement right for a very long time and hopefully this video will help if you're like me!
Yay for knitting. I'm so happy with how this one turned out.
enJOY it 
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