The tussle with the Bohus Forest Darkness sweater continues. I think I am winning. Maybe?
I ripped back to the colorwork, then tinked out the last color pattern including the final plain increase round. That was five rounds of 400 stitches each. It was in pulling out those rounds that I discovered the moths had nibbled on color 306 in the penultimate color pattern. That was another four rounds to pick out. Grrrr.
After all the pain of tinking, I finally got to start knitting forward. The color patterns proceeded pretty well. I was able to wet-splice the yarn the moths had eaten. I put in a lifeline after the colorwork. I worked the short rows. I used the same number of short rows as written in the pattern, but I spaced them 4 stitches apart instead of 5. And I used the German short row technique. After working the crescent of short rows, I put in another lifeline. After adding about an inch and a half in the front, I divided for the body and sleeves. Another lifeline. And since then, I've been knitting merrily in the round down the body. Every 14th round, I work 8 decreases evenly spaced. And I put in another dental floss lifeline.
For the record, original Bohus sweaters were worked flat back and forth and seamed. I'm not quite sure why? The body is stockinette. It is faster and my tension will be more even if I am working in the round rather than purling back on wrong sides. I don't see any reason this sweater would need seams to stabilize it. The yarn has a halo that naturally wants to felt together. In fact, the colorwork ends up looking almost like a watercolor. This is a different effect from what is typical in a Fair Isle garment, where crisp colorwork is desirable.
I should add here that not increasing before the final colorwork pattern did alter the look of the yoke. Bohus patterns are designed not to align. This is part of the aesthetic and, again, distinctly different from the Fair Isle tradition. The penultimate and final colorwork patterns in the Forest Darkness yoke both have multiples of four stitches. When worked as written, the increase round between them adds 48 stitches, changing the count from 352 to 400. 352 is 22 multiplied by 16. 48 is 3 multiplied by 16. It turned out the "easy" way to work the increases was (knit 7, increase 1, knit 8, increase 1, knit 7, increase 1), then repeat the whole sequence all the way around, thus adding 3 stitches into each group of 22. Consequently, those irregular increases break up the pattern alignment. When I skipped the final increases, I didn't see an obvious way to make the patterns misaligned. It is the sort of detail only someone very familiar with this pattern would notice.
I'm planning to stop the body of the sweater at my waist not my hips. Soon
I'll need to decide when to begin the ribbing and how much to work. Then I'll
get to pick up for the sleeves. Here's hoping the armholes are a good size!
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