Shalom!

I really liked the yoke pattern on Meghan McFarlane's Shalom from first sight. It is similar to Mini til voksne from design-club.dk, which I had been looking at for a while. But design-club only sell their patterns with yarn, so that would be something like $100. Their yarn comes from Henriksens Uldspinderi, and I can just drive there myself and buy directly from them at a discount. I understand that knitting designers have to make money, but we costumers don't enjoy being treated like idiots. I'll pay a reasonable price for a good pattern, but I'm not going to buy your overpriced yarns.

So. In addition to being free, Shalom also has a nicer pattern on the yoke. I found that purling tbl is not as bad as its reputation, and it really makes the pattern so much more elegant.

I changed a number of things. First, I knitted long sleeves. If it is cold enough to wear something this bulky, chances are my arms will be cold, too. I used some mystery Icelandic wool, which I believe is 100 m per 100 g, knitting on a 6 mm needle. Did not try to get gauge, just made up some numbers on the way. The pattern only has one (small) size, so I made it larger by adding a 4th pattern repeat to the yoke:

After the 3rd repeat, I had 159 pattern sts (plus 10 edge sts). I increased 46 sts more or less evenly over the pattern part, for a total of 215 sts. I arrived at this number by looking at the previous increase. 159 is 130% of 123 sts, so the next number should be 130% of 159 = 205 sts, plus 10 edge sts = 215 sts. Don't know if this logic fits with general rules of yoke shape, Zimmermann percentage system, and so on, but it seems to have worked well.

So I knitted the 4th repeat, and then the next problem was how to split the stitches for body and sleeves. McFarlane splits the stitches to make bit fluffy sleeve caps on purpose, but my situation was different as I wanted sleeves. So I just put the yoke on an measured on myself. This resulted in 46 sts for each sleeve, 59 for the back, and 32 for each front.

The sleeves are only very slightly tapered, decreasing 4 sts on the first 20 rows. I increased a few stitches in each side on the last 10 cm of the body, to give a bit of illusion of a waist (I have none).

That's that. Love how it turned out:

Fitted Forecast

Here's my version of Stefanie Japel's Forecast. I've made quite a lot of changes, replacing the ribs on sleeves and body with shaped knitting in pattern. And, of course, removed the bobbles in the cable, because I don't want to be covered in nipples, especially not on the arms. Also, I made the button bands and cuffs in seed stitch to match the collar, and I have to say I like it better with less pattern confusion, and I think my version looks nicer on my body, while the original looks better on skinny girls!



Here are the changes in more detail:

• I knitted size L, with 10 extra sts cast on under each arm, for a less tight fit under the arms (176 sts).
  
• I knitted the 176 sts to just under the bust, then started decreasing, 16 sts over 11 cm, which with my gauge was 4 sts on every 10th row, 2 in each side with 6 sts between decreases
• Then, I increased 4 sts (2 on each side) on every 4th row 6 times, then on every 7th row 3 times. I also increased 8 sts between the cables that run down the back, so they flare a bit away from each other (saved the sts for later).
• The sleeves are tapered, starting with 67 sts and decreasing to 47 sts by decreasing 2 sts on every 8th row. I finished with 4 rows of reverse stockinette, 12 rows of seed stitch, then cast off with knitting on the wrong side.
• Then, I picked up all the sts of each front and the bottom edge, and knitted 3 rows of reverse stockinette (2 sts increase once on each corner), then seed stitch button bands (8 rows each) on front and cast off like on sleeve cuffs.
  

The back, showing off the increases between cables, and on the sides: