Since last week, I’ve figured out why I was short on black yarn – I knitted an extra inch into the body, so there was at least one whole stripe’s worth of yarn in the wrong place. Still not convinced it’d have been enough for full sleeves but at any rate, I like the half sleeve on this.
Chalk it up to yet another happy accident! The body length would’ve been shorter than I wanted if I hadn’t extended it, and the sleeves are a perfect fit. During my try on last week I was concerned the jumper was too big, but not at all. Fits like a stripey dream.
I knit two together at the start of every odd row, and while it looks an unusual shape it really fits beautifully to the actual shape of my arm (which I’ve never considered to be particularly unusual). I also finished with two rows of ribbing, rather than five, before binding off because that’s how much yarn was available. I evaluated this, while on a train, by wrapping the yarn round my hand and counting the wraps both before and after a stripe. A whole sleeve stripe used 30 wraps, for those curious.
I knit the sleeves simultaneously, which was achievable by using two circulars and swapping just the active needle out whenever the yarn changed. I could do three rows per side (white, black, white) before picking up the other side so it wasn’t constant back and forth between sides, and it meant I could easily achieve having two sleeves the same length, whatever that length ended up being…
You can see from these pics the difference that some light wet blocking made – when turned inside out, the stripes made a kind of ribbing, with the black being much puffier than the white. After blocking everything is pretty even, and I gained an inch or so in length. I had expected a bit more growth, but if that had happened the hem wouldn’t be sitting so nicely on my waist.
The pattern suggests DK and lace but this isn’t a DK. I’d say you want to go for sport or fingering to get the stripes to lie flat. Also the suggested yarn is a little bit itchy, in the way of alpaca, so take that into account.
As a reminder, this is the Promenade blouse (Ravelry link) pattern by Caidree (Designer’s site) in Rowan Alpaca Classic in Noir (75g), and Rowan Kidsilk Haze in Aura (29g). It took me three weeks to complete and was super simple to make.
The Crafty Yarnster 