More Swatching

Last night I worked on the color transitions some more, which surprisingly included corrugated ribbing. I’m not particularly skilled with stranding, though at some point I did knit with both hands, which helped a lot, especially with the yarns winding around each other. I do okay purling just English style, but the yarns get super wound up with each other. This was just a swatch. On a sweater, there’d be many more stitches and many more yarn crossings. For ease of execution and to minimize the sliding of stitches from one end to another and losing track of when I need to increase and to avoid increasing on the back side, I can work each color separately, working two rows per color. The net effect is about the same.

Of greater concern than how to execute this part of the design is how to handle the sleeves? My plan was to stripe them without any slipped stitches, as a way to accentuate the construction of the sweater -- to differentiate it from a typical circular yoke construction. With corrugated ribbing — even if I work one color at a time — if I work across the sleeves in each color separately, I will have twice as many rows in the sleeves in that section of the pattern. I’d rather not cut the yarn.

On further reflection, I will have more rows in the sleeves than in the body, regardless of which slipped-stitch pattern I use; in other words, all of my slipped-stitch rows will have this problem. One fix for this could be garter stripes on the sleeves. Another option is short rows, but nah, I don't think so.

I could scrap this whole idea and make the entire yoke garter stitch, starting with garter at the top edge and working my slipped garter stitch pattern, first one way and then its inverse. This would be so much easier. Maybe I'll save the transitions pattern for something else. If I do this, then I'm ready to go. I will surely want to develop the transition idea, but I can do that later, for something else. It seems I ran past the finish line without realizing it. I had high aspirations. But I want to focus on the construction of this sweater, so I'm happy with it being about that, and less about a fancy transition.