Oblique

Thanks to my friend Jenn, who was working when I stopped by my LYS earlier today, I finally have pictures of my completed Oblique to share with you!

Pattern: Oblique by Veronik Avery (Fall 2007 Knitty)
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool (100% wool), color 8085, approximately 2.5 skeins
Needles: US 7 (4.5 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: September 15/December 4
Mods: slight changes to the collar (see below)

I am completely thrilled with this sweater. I wanted something that would be warm and roomy, like a guy's old sweatshirt, but with a little bit of style. This truly fit the bill.

It took a while to get into a good rhythm on this sweater, which is part of the reason it took almost three months to knit. Every row has three different stitch pattern, two of which are a four-row repeat and one of which is an eight-row repeat. I had to make sure I was awake enough and had enough attention to spare when I worked on this sweater, and I also had to make sure I had my row counter handy. Eventually I had the stitch patterns memorized and could tell which row I was on without the counter, but I still needed it when I got to the shaping so that all my parts would match up.

This was the first time I'd knit a real (i.e., sewn up) raglan. I've done enough top-down raglan sweaters to understand how the shaping would/should look, but I'd never had to sew up raglan seams before. I discovered that I didn't loathe sewing up raglan sleeves like I do set-in sleeves; in fact, I quite liked it! The only thing about raglan seams that I didn't really care for is that I had to sew them all up before I could pick up for the collar, which meant that by the time I got to the collar, I had the weight of the whole sweater on my needles. I guess it's fortunate that the collar isn't that big and was relatively fast to knit.

The collar is where I did make a few modifications. For starters, I picked up about 12 stitches more than I should have (I don't know about you, but I never seem to pick up the same number as the designer!). I made sure to keep the additional stitches in a multiple of four so that the ribbing wouldn't get messed up. I also bound off for the collar in plain knit, rather than in rib as specified in the pattern. The reason for this is simple: The button bands are knit first, and the pattern didn't specify to bind them off in rib, so I just bound them off normally. By the time I got to the collar, I needed to match the button bands. I actually think it was a rather wise mistake design feature on my part, because had I bound off the collar in twisted ribbing, it would likely have been a little wavy and loose. I believe I also ended the collar a couple of rows early for aesthetic reasons.

The final verdict is that this is a great sweater; in fact, I've been wearing it almost every other day since it was finished. It's very warm and cozy, so it's also been doubling as a sweatshirt over my pajamas when I'm sitting in bed or at my wheel in the evenings. I'm definitely a fan of raglans now, too, so this won't be my last one.