A Cabled Yoke Pullover

Have you ever seen a pattern that you instantly fell in love with and had to knit immediately? A pattern that just grabbed you by the shirt and screamed in your face, "KNIT ME"? I found one.

It's Bergère de France's (BdF) #257 Pull Empiècement Rond, a yoke sweater knit in the round with cables at the yoke and rolled cuffs, hem and collar. I found this last week when I was looking for inspiration for my next sweater. It was kismet: I had 7 skeins of Cascade Pastaza, enough for the smallest size of this pattern. Plus, I got gauge! I downloaded the pattern, scanned the French, and put it aside while I finished the top-down cable raglan.

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I had to have my instant gratification, so I played with the picture. I took out the buttons; I even played around with colors: a pale silvery blue, a chestnut brown, and a dark grey. I like the dark grey best; maybe it's a seasonal thing. If things work out, I may knit another one in a finer gauge!

It took me 10 hours to get to this point in knitting. After dinner one night I sat down in front of the laptop and translated the pattern verbatim into English, using Chez Plum's Knitting from the French post and Tricotin's dictionary. (Five years of French in school having gone down the drain.) I rewrote it so I could understand it better. Then I charted the pattern, because I like to have a visual of what I'm knitting. Additional notes were made, and I adjusted the stitch counts and measurements. Then I started to knit; getting gauge immediately was awesome. I didn't look up from my work until BFF shoved a mug of hot chocolate under my nose. "Dude," he said, "you didn't go to bed last night." He also bitched about knitting but I was already tuned out and working on decreases. I was hooked!

In case you want to knit this, fair warning that Pastaza is a spun single and is quite hairy. If you have sensitive skin you may want to consider another yarn. Additionally, these cables suck up yarn, two skeins' worth. And, it's a heavy worsted, so even if you use the required needles, you will end up with a slightly bigger size. This is what I did. Two days later I finished the yoke and got into Ravelry. I remember seeing the pullover on Pamela's blog (here it is in blue), and through Ravelry I found another finished one and a work-in-progress. There is a craftster entry dedicated to the project, as well as another finished pullover in purple. Note the fit on the Craftster poster and Pamela.

I'm going to use this sweater project as a working example of how a knit can be customized to a person's taste. Let's talk about fit. The loose fit on the BdF model was one of the things that made me want to knit the sweater. I like the casualness here; the Craftster model is form-fitting chic, whereas Pamela's is formal but comfortable. Which fit do you prefer? In BdF's picture we're looking at a skinny model in a sweater that's clearly oversized, but fortunately for them, it actually looks good that way, or form-fitting, or comfortable. Pick a fit, it'll work.

For the record, my main bone of contention regarding *any* pattern that's published is fit. Please find the right sized model for the knit, dear knit designers, and indicate what kind of fit you will end up with. There's room for discussion here, but I'll leave it to these two articles to explain fit, both positive and negative: TECHknitting's post on negative and positive ease, and Knitty's article on Fit. The most important thing is to know your measurements, so that what you're knitting will actually fit you. I measure every single time I knit a project, and I always compare a favorite sweater whose fit I like to the specs of a project. Additionally, I like to have a looser fit in general. So it really boils down to the knitter: change the instructions to fit your body!

In my next post I'll discuss sweater construction. If you're interested in knitting this sweater and would like my notes and chart, let me know!

P.S.: We bought a unicycle, secondhand. As if we didn't have enough things to entertain us! BFF has had his eye on unicycles since he saw some neighborhood kids on theirs, and we finally got one. An hour of practice in a meadow, another hour at the train station parking lot, and... we're still learning. It's hard work, who knew!