I’m making pretty good progress on this Pensacola Sweater for the Tell Them of Us film. You can see the picture for the pattern, detailed notes about my knitting, and a link to the whole pattern booklet on my Ravelry project page. I won’t be writing up the pattern, but hopefully the details will help other replicate it if they wish.

I am chugging along. Yea for garter stitch! The sleeves and the neckline make so much more sense now that I’m at that part of the pattern, despite the scant details in the older pattern. My changes are only gauge-related in this area, and I’m also doing both sleeves at the same time by working from two separate balls. The original pattern instructs to do them one at a time. Here is a hasty Instagram shot of the progress: IMG_20140126_212030

It would have been wiser to check the length of the body on the dress form before I bound off for the neckline, but I got excited about moving to a new part of the sweater and I overlooked it. I will have to rip back about 2.5 inches tonight: an inch of the front side of the two sleeves/sweater fronts and the shoulder area. I’m adding an additional .75″ to the back side of the sleeve (making the total length 5.25″ there), then I’ll proceed to the shoulder stitches for about 1.5″, then make the front of the sleeve 5.25″ for a total of 12″ around the sleeve. The original pattern has a sleeve that only ends up being about 9.25 inches around, but I think this wouldn’t be a very comfortable amount of ease. While it looks somewhat ok on the dress form above, I was stretching it a bit in my denial. I’d rather err on the side of a little positive ease in the sleeves to fit more like the original pattern photo.

Here is a rough schematic of how this thing goes, if you’re trying to make it also. I’ve never knit a sweater this way, so I think that’s why it took me awhile to wrap my head around the construction. It’s pretty cool though. Keep in mind this is not drawn to scale. It’s essentially one big piece that’s folded in half and seamed along the sides. The collar and lower part of the sleeves are picked up and added. Pensacola schematicsAs soon as I get past the long sleeve rows this baby will really fly by! Looks like I might be able to participate in the Ravellenics without worrying about getting this done in time.

%d bloggers like this: