Ruthless Knitting

Pattern: Source unknown, though I have a feeling that Grandma made it up as a way of using up leftovers. Huge thanks to Emilee, who pointed out that the lace pattern looked like Hedera, thereby saving me a lot of grief.
Size: 37-inch chest, 22.5 inches from shoulder to bottom hem
Yarn: Various worsted-weight wools in Aran color
Yarn Source: Grandma via Aunt Cathy
Needles: US size 8 and 6
Notes: In early March, I received an unfinished sweater and a large amount of cream-colored yarn in a box from my Aunt Cathy. My grandma had knit the pieces of the sweater but never finished it. There was no pattern, and no one seemed to know why it had been abandoned. (See my post about it here.)

Among the first things I noticed was that the cream yarns used to knit the sweater did not match. Later I concluded that this is probably why Grandma abandoned the sweater: I think she conceived it as a project to use up various stash yarns that looked like they matched but then sewed it up and realized that they weren’t close enough. (I wrote about coming to that conclusion here.) The problem was noticeable only in the sleeves; the front and back seemed to have been knit in the same shade.

I then learned through experimentation that one cannot make up for the fact that yarns don’t match by overdyeing them. Overdyeing just makes them not match in another color, and the problem actually becomes even more noticeable. So I couldn’t just seam the thing together and overdye it to hide the color problem: at a minimum, the sleeves would have to be reknit and a neckline added on for the sweater to be salvaged.

Next, I based the sweater together and tried it on. I didn’t really like the low neckline Grandma had planned. After doing nothing for several weeks, I decided to raise the neckline on the front and back pieces. But I didn’t have enough yarn that was a close match to reknit long sleeves and raise the front and back. Instead, I decided to knit short sleeves and rip back both the front and back partway so that I could alternate between the original cream and a new cream. In extremely good light, you can see a subtle striping effect on these pieces, but it’s virtually invisible most of the time, as is the color contrast between sleeves and body.

Grandma did most of the work for me on the sleeves. I followed her long-sleeve design and used the same number of stitches at the widest point. The only decision I had to make was how big around to make the sleeves at the bottom edge and how long I wanted them to be from the underarm. Figuring this out took a little trial and error, but it worked out in the end.

It was an interesting journey trying to complete this project, and I’m quite pleased with where I ended up. It’s a special thing to have the finished sweater to wear, and I like to think of it as a collaboration of sorts with my Grandma, who I never had a chance to sit and knit with.

Other posts about the Thelma sweater are here and here.