New Riddari

I am planning a new Riddari Jumper since I shrunk my last one slightly and I donated it to my mother as it was a little too small for me in the end. After knitting one for my cousin for Christmas I decided I wanted one for myself too, so here is the planning for it. I am writing it up on here instead of Ravelry to make it a little bit more accessible.

I know that my gauge is a bit small for this pattern from previous knits. I knit to 20 stitches per 10cm instead of the 18 of the pattern, so at 0.9 x pattern gauge. Annoyingly this pattern doesn’t have finished garment measurements or list the ease that it’s designed for, but taking the gauge and cast on numbers it looks like the pattern is designed with zero ease! Based upon that I need to knit a size larger than the XXL that the pattern goes up to to get any ease in the pattern. Although since I am changing this to a zip front again I will add a little bit of extra ease to the pattern by adding the steek stitches and then the zip and zip band.

Since I want to add extra width to the body of the jumper but don’t actually want to increase the size of the neck by too much I think I will add an extra increase to the yoke pattern (I am planning on extending it downwards as well) instead of adding an extra yoke repeat which would be the “easy” way to add extra size. I will have to rechart the whole pattern, but since I am going to play around with the colours of the sections to change the way the pattern looks I would probably have to do this anyway.

I am thinking about adding extra length to the colourwork pattern on the yoke as I don’t actually have enough wool to do the whole of the background in one colour and am planning on using two very similar colours as the background colours for the yoke and for the main body.

The other change that I am planning is to knit the jumper top-down instead of bottom-up as this will give me a better idea of what the colourwork will look like and if the garment will fit. Also, I love being able to spread the yoke out and see the pattern as a circle, before knitting the rest of the body.

So I will be casting on for the size XXL using 4.5mm needles and adding an extra increase to the yoke pattern to add the extra width I need to the jumper. I may adjust the number of stitches that go into the arms compared to the body to make sure the arms are not too small, since adding a zip placket to the front of the jumper will give me more room on the body.

So starting with the finished stitch count (111st) + 5 steek stitches, I will cast on the neck of the jumper and come back afterwards to knit the ribbing for the collar as I feel the cast on edge adds extra support to the neckline to stop it stretching out with wear. I may still choose to go back and add some extra reinforcing to the neckline in the form of a bias strip sewn to the neckline.

I am looking forward to seeing what this jumper turns out since it will be the first one that I have knit that will have a dark background, so will look quite different to my previous versions. I preparation for this jumper I decided to actually organise the colours of Lettlopi wool that I have in my collection so decided to make myself some swatch sticks with the actual wool. The colours here are not the best representation of the colours of the wool as it was just a quick photograph taken on my phone but one day I will try and take them with the correct white balance correction on my proper camera to use as a digital reference too.

Now to go and play with colours to decide what to use! then the fun of knitting can commence.