FO Friday: Scrap yarn entrelac sweater
Yep, it's as crazy as it sounds. But, also easier than you might think. And at the same time, will take a lot longer than you expect.
THE IDEA
I had actually been dreaming about making this scrap yarn entrelac sweater for a long time. I have so many half used skeins of yarn, I knew I needed to make a significant scrap project soon. The last time I did that, I used up all 4,500 yards of acrylic yarn I had. It turned into a queen size blanket that took me only 4 months to knit. So for this project, I actually saw someone online make one years ago, and just knew I had to make one too.
THE PATTERN
Now, I haven't really designed or made too many sweaters. So especially with not knowing how to knit entrelac, I needed to find some sort of guideline to follow. I couldn't find any patterns in fingering weight yarn at the time of starting it. But I did find a pattern that used DK yarn, called Hip to be Square. I was lucky in that my gauge swatch I made somewhat matched that pattern. That is....my squares that were 10 sts wide measured to be the same gauge as her squares that were 5 inches wide. So two squares of my fingering weight and the pattern's two squares of DK weight were the same. So I followed that pattern to shape the neckline and the armholes. After that, I winged it with some waist shaping and tapered sleeves.
I made a progress video on Instagram that ended up going viral, and learned that there is also another entrelac sweater pattern called 'Lil Lac Sweater.
WHAT I HAD TO LEARN
I had never knit entrelac before. So I had to learn that right off the bat. Nimble Needles tutorials is what saved me on this project. But what he didn't teach me, was that to make your life immensely easier - you must learn to knit backwards. Otherwise, you will be non-stop flipping your project back and forth and back and forth and back and.....yeah, see how annoying that gets rather quickly? So for sanity's sake, learn to knit backwards for entrelac.
DESIGN CHOICES
I started making this sweater by just picking out random yarns. I didn't want any yarns that were similar to be within 3 squares of each other. But with using over 40 different yarns, it was getting hard to choose between them all. So I divided them into two piles - multicolor and solids. Then I alternated every row with these two styles. This helped narrow down my yarn choices from square to square.
Then, towards the end of my body, I realized I wanted to tie the sweater together somehow. I wanted the body hem, sleeve cuffs, and neckline to all be one color. And after that, I decided I wanted my last row of entrelac to be this color. But the problem was, I didn't decide this when I started my project. So my neckline wasn't going to match. But then, aha! I remembered I had my gauge swatch sample. I took that and did an experiment. I frogged a few of the filler pieces and re-knit it, to see if I could do it. It worked! So then I went back on my sweater, took some pieces out, and replaced them with the green color I chose.
HOW LONG IT TOOK
This sweater took me 10 months from start to finish. I worked on it a little each day in the afternoons. Now, this does include me frogging half the sweater. Yeah. I have a tin full of scrap pieces that are all like 3 feet long. It's because I tried to add waist shaping, but underestimated how much it went down after moving each square from 10 stitches to 8. So I frogged about four rows, back to where I decreased to 9 sts per square and finished the body. That worked great! And I figured that all those extra scraps I will use on future projects.
That time also included weaving in all my ends. Now, that is another sanity-saving tip for you. WEAVE IN YOUR ENDS AS YOU KNIT. Especially on something like this, there is no way I was going to do all of this at the end. But I am also insane - each end is woven in twice and is tied with two knots. I don't want this baby coming undone anytime soon.
FUTURE PROJECTS
Oh yeah, I'm not done. 10 months of cursing and tears and misery wasn't enough for me, I plan to do more. I will be making a matching pair of socks, hat, and probably fingerless mitts. I'm a masochist I suppose, in some way...
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