I’m in love with this Kelbourne Woolens Scout yarn this year, so naturally I decided to make another sweater out of it. This heather and navy together seemed like a great combination. I knew I wanted some stripes, so I thought single stripes would be fun.

I started from the bottom up for the back and was happily chugging along until I realized I might have some issues around the shoulder shaping section. For single stripes you have to knit across the row with one color, then move back to the beginning of the rows and knit across with the second color. You purl each color in turn. I didn’t think about how many ends this might make when I had to do some decreases and each color would no longer stretch to the end of the row. I cobbled some half-assed short rows together to make it work, but as you can see, I have many many ends to deal with for the back piece.

So now, my experiment takes me to working from the top down for the front piece. I’m starting with one shoulder at a time and I’ll join them at the neckline. As you can see from this little piece, I don’t have any extra ends to weave in. Hurrah!

I now understand why most single stripe patterns are fully in the round. People don’t want to mess with this business. I get it. I’m sure that’s where I’ll go next time, but for now I’m committed to this back and fourth attempt at a set-in sleeve sweater and I’m just going to embrace my ignorance and adapt as I go.

This sweater will live to eventually be finished, and that makes me very happy.