Sometimes, my favorite ladies at Evergreen Fiber Works dye up an OOAK colorway that I just can't get out of my head. One such recent colorway was Wicker, a golden brown that caught my eye in the ready-to-ship section, on my favorite sweater base, Cedar Sock. The only drawback? Only 2 skeins in stock and I need 4 for a sweater! So when I finally pulled the trigger on these skeins, I picked out one of the dyed-to-order colorways, Huntress, to pair with it. My criteria for the accompanying skeins? A colorway I didn't already have in stash, and something that would provide contrast for a colorwork experiment.
I opted for yet another CustomFit recipe sweater, and to optimize my yarn usage I decided to knit the long sleeves of this sweater first. I designed a cable pattern to run down the center, the full length of the sleeves, and knit the entire sleeves in the Wicker colorway. Then working in the round from the bottom up in solid Huntress, I placed the colorwork design just over halfway up the body so it would end just past where I split for the sleeves. This ensured I used the Huntress for about 2/3 of the body and would have sufficient Wicker for the top portion of the sweater. I definitely cut it close on the Wicker but I ultimately had just enough to finish the shoulder and sleeve seaming!
This sweater was an opportunity to practice one of my most neglected knitting skills - stranded colorwork - but given my propensity to collect multi-colorway sweater quantities it was a skill I needed to tackle. I do have several colorwork sweaters in my queue, so I look forward to even more practice in my future.
One thing I learned from this sweater is knitting the sleeves first gave me an even greater sense of accomplishment when finishing the body. I felt more motivated to finish because I knew it was the last step before seaming and would give me the completed product that much sooner. Even though it didn't actually cut the knitting time at all, knowing I wasn't going to be relegated to sleeve island at the end of my project was psychologically satisfying. I think I'm going to be using this trick a lot more going forward!