A New Favourite Sweater

Last year on 2nd September (no my memory is not that good - I checked the date on Ravelry) I cast on Seneca, a lovely cabled sweater from the book "Made in Brooklyn", by Jared Flood.

Today I finished it....

Seneca

Seneca is a seamless pullover style sweater with a cabled yoke, and hemline and cuff details.  It features round yoke construction with short-row shaping, a sewn bind off, and sideways cable motifs.  I knit mine in Cascade 220 Heathers (olive/moss greens).

Initially, I had a little trouble getting gauge on this sweater, but that's because I subbed the yarn called for with the Cascade 220.  Although still a worsted weight yarn, my row count was a little short, so I made a mental note of that and added length to the body and sleeves.

This pattern was an easy knit, and the construction was fantastic!  Who doesn't love seamless knitting?  BUT, as much as I love cabling, and I really, really do, the sideways cable motifs were responsible for quite a few outbursts of profanity!  It was really cool knitting the cables sideways, but my poor little fingers didn't like the aggressive increasing required to give the cables a "deep relief" appearance.

I did make a few mods on this one since I wasn't knitting entirely to gauge. 

• I went down a needle size to 4mm to obtain gauge.
• I knit the body in the 36ins size even though I'm about a 37-38ins gal.  The next size up was to fit 40ins, and that was just too big.
• I tried cabling without a needle, but found it more difficult with this pattern because of the sideways cables and the tightness of the cables themselves.  It was just easier to use a cable needle one size smaller than my knitting needles.
• Every time I had to M3 from one stitch, and M1 either side of this stitch, I used a 2.5mm cable needle to help knit into the back of the stitches.  It was too tight otherwise.
• I added 2ins to the length of the body cos I like my sweaters to sit on my hips, not above them.
• I knit the sleeves in the 40ins size because on most sweater patterns, the sleeves are just a bit too tight for me.  The 40ins size only had two extra stitches anyway.
• I knit the sleeves two at a time on one 47ins circular needle.
• I added 2ins to the length of the sleeves, and could have possibly added another half inch.  Blocking might give me the desired length (I like sleeves to come down about 2ins past my wrist).
• When I joined the sleeves and body at the yoke, I had to decrease 4 sts evenly around yoke because the sleeves had two stitches each too many (being the 40ins size).  The extra four stitches would have thrown off the cables.
• I used Kitchener stitch to join the seams under the arms.  The pattern doesn't mention how to do it.
• There were a few bits of errata in the pattern, but I figured them out as I went along, and they've all been documented in Ravelry anyway).

As I write, Seneca is blocking and drying.  I have a feeling this will be a new favourite sweater!  And yes, a few of you did hear me say that I'd probably never knit this one again.  Well, I'm going to rescind that statement.  The fit was well worth the punctured fingers LOL.