Solstice Sweater Swatch
Nov. 26th, 2019 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzLast week I did up a swatch for the next big project I will be working on (just as soon as I finish knitting the Daybreak shawl!). I fell head over heels with the Solstice sweater so right after buying the pattern I started on my swatch.
Left: Purple as main colour, navy as contrast. Right: navy as main colour, purple as contrast.
A few notes!
This is fingering yarn (sock-weight) and knitting it on 3mm makes for a very tight fabric still (I knit my socks on 2.75 mm and 2.5 mm). For stockinette with a lovely drape I'll have to go for 3.5 mm needles.
In Brioche stitch it will result in a very loose fabric, so I will need to go down half a needle size for the Brioche part, to 3 mm needles.
The navy skeins are pretty solid-coloured, but the purple skeins are very tonal. All in all, I love the heathered look the purple yarn has, so that will probably be my main colour.
Usually you'd knit a test swatch to get close to the gauge you need for a sweater. However, I'm confident enough I can calculate my stitches if my gauge is different from the pattern. I'd rather get a good drape on a comfortable needle while having fun knitting, than wrestling with a smaller needle and grinding my way down a landslide of stockinette trying to finish a project I hate just because I had to match gauge!
So for the stockinette I'm sticking to 3.5mm needles, and I'll be using 3 mm for the brioche part up top.
It's also pretty clear from the swatch the main colour will be the reddish purple colour because it's more varied in tones and just more interesting to look at. However, both Kat and Anemoona liked the navy colour better for the brioche part.
I think it would look weird, if you consider all the parts of this sweater. The main body is knit in stockinette and I've already established it will be knit in the tonal purple-and-red. But if I knit the brioche part with navy as main colour, that would give the sweater a big blob of blue right above the bust, while being purple the rest of the way. There'd also be a little purple triangle at the shoulders.
Wouldn't that be weird?
I kind of loved that the tiny shoulder triangle would emphasize the contrast colour that would shine through at the brioche part. Part of the charm of brioche is that you can see the secondary colour shine in the background. The little shoulder triangle lifts that background colour up and highlights it right at the top of the garment. I love how cheeky it is.
I'm just a little scared if I were to use the navy as main colour in the brioche, the cheekiness would disappear and it would just be a reference to the main body of the sweater.
It's good to have swatches. Now all I have to do is finish the Daybreak and I can cast on! (Oh, and order some more of the Abril colour...)
Left: Purple as main colour, navy as contrast. Right: navy as main colour, purple as contrast.
A few notes!
Usually you'd knit a test swatch to get close to the gauge you need for a sweater. However, I'm confident enough I can calculate my stitches if my gauge is different from the pattern. I'd rather get a good drape on a comfortable needle while having fun knitting, than wrestling with a smaller needle and grinding my way down a landslide of stockinette trying to finish a project I hate just because I had to match gauge!
So for the stockinette I'm sticking to 3.5mm needles, and I'll be using 3 mm for the brioche part up top.
It's also pretty clear from the swatch the main colour will be the reddish purple colour because it's more varied in tones and just more interesting to look at. However, both Kat and Anemoona liked the navy colour better for the brioche part.
I think it would look weird, if you consider all the parts of this sweater. The main body is knit in stockinette and I've already established it will be knit in the tonal purple-and-red. But if I knit the brioche part with navy as main colour, that would give the sweater a big blob of blue right above the bust, while being purple the rest of the way. There'd also be a little purple triangle at the shoulders.
Wouldn't that be weird?
I kind of loved that the tiny shoulder triangle would emphasize the contrast colour that would shine through at the brioche part. Part of the charm of brioche is that you can see the secondary colour shine in the background. The little shoulder triangle lifts that background colour up and highlights it right at the top of the garment. I love how cheeky it is.
I'm just a little scared if I were to use the navy as main colour in the brioche, the cheekiness would disappear and it would just be a reference to the main body of the sweater.
It's good to have swatches. Now all I have to do is finish the Daybreak and I can cast on! (Oh, and order some more of the Abril colour...)
