Zig Zag Knitted sweater

 Back in September I wrote an update on my knitting including the sweater that I was in the middle of - Well I finally finished said sweater.  

I started this project back in March.  I picked up this yarn at the closing down sale at one of my local yarn shops - Dee's Nimble Needles and Yarn.  I was browsing through what she had left and found this beautiful blue with green flecks alpaca yarn. It was classic Elite Inca Alpaca in colour 1146 -  But there were only 3 skeins left of it - not really enough to do anything with.  Then I found 2 skeins of the same yarn in the green colourway (1135),  1 skein of black (1113) and 4 skeins of Classic Elite Inca Marl in colour 1193 - a blue marled colour.  I decided to go ahead and buy them all and see if I could come up with something to make out of them.

I knew I wanted to make a sweater with the yarn so I browsed Ravelry looking for patterns that I could use with 4 or more colours.  Of course I couldn't find what I was looking for, so once again I turned to the drawing board - I decided to create my own pattern.  The first thing to do was knit a swatch to find my gauge, then I used that, and one of my basic sewing patterns to create a basic knitting pattern for a sweater. 

When I knew how many stitches and rows I was working with I then took some graph paper and drew out a pattern using all my different colours.  I decided to use the Marl yarn - which I had the most of as the back ground colour and then drew zig zags in all the other colours.

I wanted to make sure that I didn't have a lot of floats on the back of my work - mainly cause I only just had enough yarn by my calculations - I didn't have any to waste running in floats along the back of the fabric.  I didn't realise until I started knitting the front just how hard a job I had created for myself.  I was working with something like 15 different strands of yarn at any given time.

I created a device with a plastic container and a bunch of pegs to try and keep all my threads from getting tangled together but it wasn't easy.

The next problem occurred when I got about halfway up the front side and I realised that I was not going to have enough of the Marl yarn to finish the sweater.  In order to try and make it work I decided to add some solid sections of other colours to the top half of the sweater.

I decided to knit a strip of blue and then transition to the green at the shoulder with a strip of black in between.

I finished the front, and then the back - I ran out of the Marl colour 2 rows before I had stopped on the front so I just started the blue two rows early.  

But now I had to figure out what to do with the sleeves.  I started working them, two at  a time, from the top down so I could match the green, the black strip and then the blue with the front and the back sections.   

Once I had that done I had to make a decision - try and buy more of the Marl colour or work up the sleeves with the rest of the blue, green and black yarn.  I seared the web for more of the Marl yarn and came up blank.  The only option I had was buying from someone's stash on Ravelry.  I contacted one person but they had already sold theirs and forgot to update their listing, and the second person never got back to me so now I was totally out of options.

Back to plan B  knitting the sleeves in a different colour I came up with a sleeve design using the blue as a back ground and the green and black as accent colours,  threaded a life line through my work so I could easily go back if I had and started knitting.

I got to about 6" from the bottom of the sleeves and ran out of the blue yarn so continued with stripes of the green and black until I ran out of yarn entirely.  At this point I had 2.5" of the sleeve and the neckband and the sweater would be finished.  But I was totally out of yarn.

I basted it all together and tried it on.

Then did some magic on my computer to see what would work best.

Option1, go back to trying to find the Marl to finish the jumper like I had first planned.

Option 2, use black for the neckband and cuffs, Option 3 blue neckband and cuffs and Option 4 green neckband and cuffs.

After seeking input from my knitting group and my Facebook friends I decided to rule out Option 1 - Yeah at least I didn't have to pull out all that sleeve knitting and start again.  As for what colour to use to finish it off - I decided it would come down to what I could buy most easily out the other three.

I went back to Ravely and found someone willing to sell some of the blue and decided to go for it....I was only going to buy two skeins, but she offered me all 5 for only $5 more so I went with that.  Of course I now have 4 skeins left over....matching beanie and gloves?

I knitted up the rest of the sleeve and the cuffs in the new blue yarn, then did a 1 x 1 rib V neckband and finished it off with 6 rows of stockinette which when cast off rolls to form a beautiful edge to the neck.

All I had to do then was to sew it all together and I finally finished my sweater.

It was a long process but I really like the finished result.  There is really only one small detail that I don't love and that is a bit of gathering at the top of the shoulder seam.  I obviously got some of my measurements mixed up and to get the green and black lines to line up on the shoulder I had to do quite a bit of gathering at the very top.  It's not something I've overly worried about, just a small niggle in an otherwise good jumper.