100% knitting content. Don’t faint.

So hopefully you’ve all seen the latest issue of Knitty. On the cover is a gorgeous sweater in a really neat yarn. But it’s probably not the best choice for the deeply boob-endowed such as myself.

But I still love the yarn. It’s a bulky lightweight cotton [not a common thing to find]. Since before the Knitting Olympics [which I miss so much and cannot wait another 4 years for it to happen again!], I’d wanted to knit Shalom. Thanks to the goodness which is Ravelry for bringing it to my attention. I’d missed it in 2008 when the designer put it up for free on her blog.

It’s an awesome one-size pattern, and if it weren’t a top-down raglan, I don’t think I’d have taken it on. But it is, so I did.

My gauge is a smidge finer than what the pattern calls for, and lord knows I am not knitting the one size [the chest measurement starts with a 3. stop laughing.] in the pattern. So my scientific modifications so far are these:

– knitting on US#6 needles [the pattern calls for US#7, but the fabric would be ghastly loose], which gives me 3.42 sts to the inch

– cast on 77 sts. how did I pick that number? I guessed.

– set up the neck as prescribed, including buttonhole. set up the rib so that it looks the same as the picture.

– first set of increases done as per pattern

– second set of increases done more frequently — m1, k3

– third set of increases, ditto

At this point in the knitting, I’ve had it off the needles on waste yarn to see how it fits, and the flow from one band of ribs to the next looks good, and it appears like I’ll have enough fabric to go around my arms properly.

There’s a lot of guessing in this, and why am I telling you about my unscientific, non-mathematical approach? Because I know lots of you knit like this, and I figure you’d like to know you’re not alone. And because I may muck this up, but because of the top-down-raglanness of the pattern, it will never be beyond saving, as long as I check it on my body frequently.

So about the yarn: it’s really nice. Light as a feather, despite its bulky yarn categorization. And it’s ORGANIC, even! It’s textured, which doesn’t match the original pattern, but it’s the only yarn I could find from any company that would work to gauge. So I am embracing the bumpiness. The twisted rib is helping the yoke have the stitch definition the pattern calls for, and I am rather fond of it so far. The color is a bit sweet…something in me wants to muddy up the pastelly-ness of it. I might tea-dye a swatch when I’m done and see if that would do what I have in my head.

Once I get the sleeves [so to speak] to the right length/width and bound off, it’ll be smooth sailing to the hem. So there will be more trying on in the future.