Eleven of those sweaters were my own designs, mainly to use up oddments of stash.
And now my twelfth Ravelry sweater design, That Touch of Pink (yes - I am a Cary Grant fan), may make it out into the wider knitting community.
I actually knew what I wanted the bottom 'third' of the sweater to look like, therefore the sweater would be designed bottom up. Once I had completed that section I knew that I wanted it to be plain to the armholes, seamless and set-in sleeves therefore the body was knit in the round up to the armholes. I also don't have a waist that I want to highlight... Next decision was neckline. Not a V-neck and not a crew neck and not too low either... and just a touch more contrast colour. Top-down sleeves to match the contrast colour stripes on the bottom of the sweater and cuffs to match the neckband.
I was not happy with the first sleeve I made - it was very messy/gappy around the armhole due to the much lower ratio of stitches to rows being picked up. I came up with a much neater solution for the second sleeve which also solved the issues I have with getting wrap and turn to look good. It was well worth the effort of then ripping out the first one and re-knitting it...
Okay, I now have a sweater that I love but that was the easy-ish part...
1. Grading. And this means spreadsheets. And I went to town on this. Starting with the basic desired widths/lengths for body/armholes/neck/shoulders/upper arm/wrist/sleeve for 5 sizes. Every section broken down into subsections for row counts, stitch counts, decreases, pick-up stitches, stripes start, stripes end, short rows with cross-checks.
2. Yarn yardage estimates. Having read a few forum threads on this topic I decided that I wasn't going to use the suggested method of estimating sweater area against the yardage from a 6 x 6" swatch. I had an actual sweater with known yardage of both colours. I had a detailed spreadsheet so I could calculate actual stitch counts pretty accurately for every section of the sweater/size and also for just the contrast colour and use the ratios of stitches for the other sizes against my yardages. My only concern is how much contingency to add...
3. Schematic. Yes, every good sweater pattern should have one... I watched a video on creating one in Microsoft something or other. We use LibreOffice which has a Draw app. Took me a few hours before I finally got the hang of it and a couple of shout outs to Paul when it wasn't doing what I wanted. Changed a couple of settings and all was fine once I was organised enough to actually write down the key measurements on a piece of paper. I am actually quite chuffed with how it looks.
4. Tech editing. However thorough I think I have been there is always the chance I have made a blunder somewhere... Sent the pattern to be scrutinized and am awaiting news...
5. Testing. Once I get it back and any corrections have been done I will open a test. I already have 3 volunteers without putting out a call :)
