The cozy time of year is upon us, which means I’m knitting, and Betty & Judy Lodge Sweater happened both quickly and smoothly. I already have plans to make more of them because it was so straightforward and easily customizable.
I had some stash yarn in a nice, dark brownish-grey that I used for the main color. I also had some natural white and hand-dyed aran leftover from Dude Deux Sweater. I made some calculations to offset the needle and yarn size differences, determined I had enough (and honestly if I didn’t have enough, I could just rip it all back anyway), then got to work.
The directions were pretty clear, even though I got a little confused on the shoulders. The sweater is knit from the back yoke / keyhole first, then over to the front yoke, then joined to do the body in the round. All things considered, one should do the color work at the time of building the front yoke, but I did not. I couldn’t decide on how I wanted to decorate the sweater, so I waited and decided I would teach myself how to doublestitch when the time came.
I did hit a spot where I was confused, but it was my fault. The sweater can have puffy or straight sleeve caps, and I just wanted straight, so I missed a vital direction and ended up making the shoulder cap in the wrong place. Once I figured it out where I went wrong, it was smooth sailing.
The doublestitch was new for me, and prior to this I had never successfully performed it. I think this stitch is also sometimes called “Swiss Darning,” and is often times used to reinforce weak areas like elbows, armpits or shoulder caps in existing garments. What’s nice about this technique is that it just looks like a regular knit stitch. Done with the same color yarn, it would be impossible to know where the original stitch is versus the doublestitch.
I made the chart on graph paper using a generic one I found on the internet, but then altered to be less symmetrical. I followed the graph for the leaves and acorn, but improvised to connect them together with stems / branches to give a more organic feel to it.
Since the aran yarn is slightly thinner than the worsted, when I doublestitched, it looked natural and flush. The only part that looked raised at all was the nut part of the acorn where I used the main color for the body; since it was not much I didn’t really concern myself with the slight raise.
I knit this on size 7 (ribbing) and 8 (body) needles using worsted weight yarn. I knit using the size 38 to match the stitch count to give this 42 body the proper negative ease for a vintage fit. It took a total of about 3 weeks to knit up, including the double stitch. More technical information (but not that much more, really) can be found on my Ravelry notes: Betty & Judy Lodge Sweater.
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