speckled machine-knit sweater

More experimenting with my mid-gauge knitting machine! I bought 4 balls of Caron Simply Soft Speckle from the Spinrite yarn factory outlet closing sale because it was cheap, and I liked the colour, but I had no idea what I’d do with it. Spoiler alert: here’s what I ended up making:

I think the process is more interesting than the result with this sweater: having only 4 balls of a worsted weight yarn in a speckled colourway added constraints that shaped what I ended up designing. Read on if you’d like to see my thought process, and how I adapted when things didn’t go as expected…

Design Decisions

1. Worsted weight yarn. Although Simply Soft is one of the thinnest of all the ‘worsted weight’ yarns I’ve tested and compared, I wasn’t sure how well any worsted weight would knit up on my mid-gauge machine. (To check this, I made a quick swatch on the machine, varying the tension every few inches until I found the settings that made a fabric I liked.)

2. Limited yarn quantity. Four balls of yarn is definitely on the low end for a sweater. I decided to design it with a fitted shape so I wouldn’t waste yarn on extra volume, and keep my fingers crossed that I’d have enough to complete the project!

3. Speckled yarn. Yarns that change colour can often look nicer in the ball (where the colours are all spread out nicely) than when they’re worked up (where the colours can pool or clump together strangely). But my bigger concern was that colour changes can also interact with a stitch pattern, so I hand-knitted a swatch with a few different ribbing options and decided that this yarn looks best in plain stockinette where the speckles are the main feature and don’t have to compete with any texture.

So that gave me the design constraints:

• Smooth stockinette fabric without ribbing at the collar and cuffs
• A fitted shape that still looks good in a chunkier yarn (so nothing too tightly fitted)

And, to stop the project from being too boring to make, and to give a tidy end result, I decided to build in some hidden features: folded hems, set-in sleeves, and interior waist shaping.

Problem 1: Knots!

I quickly discovered that this yarn was frustratingly full of knots where the yarn had been joined. I thought I might get away with ignoring them and kept knitting, hoping for the best. Once I realised that some of the knots were showing from the front (ugh!) I had to frog the whole thing and start again. I cut out all the knots as I re-wound the yarn, and made sure to change to a new ball at the end of a row as I re-knitted it, so all the extra yarn ends would end up along the side seams.

So much frogging! So many little balls to wind!

Problem 2: Bulky Hem

When I calculated the size for this sweater, I tried to leave plenty of ease so I can wear a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath, and I got that just right: the result is a smooth but not at all tight fit. But when I came to try it on: disaster!

The folded hem that looked so neat on the cuffs (you’ll see that in a later photo) looked overly bulky and flared around my hips. With the rest of the sweater being so fitted, that really wasn’t a good look, so I unravelled the entire hem from the bottom so I could hand-knit a new bottom edge.

Bottom stitches picked up and ready to hand-knit

I was still trying to keep the smooth look I’d envisioned for this sweater, so I found tutorials for several different folded hem methods and tried them all. But I didn’t like any of the results – I think the folded hem would have worked out much better with a finer yarn or a boxier, larger-fitting sweater – so I had to abandon the idea and try to think of a different bottom edging.

After a few more experiments, I figured out that a 3×1 rib with the purl columns twisted to keep them tight looks pretty good – it has enough ribbing to keep the bottom from curling up, but with narrow vertical lines breaking up the smooth fabric instead of a fully ribbed appearance.

The bulky folded hem on a cuff, and the subtle ribbing around the bottom

Finishing

I finished the very bottom edge with a narrow i-cord to match my neckline finish, which I intentionally left minimal for that smooth look I was going for. It’s not obvious that these are matching i-cords, but it made me feel a bit better to have some continuity, as I’ve ended up with three different edge treatments: folded hem cuffs, twisted rib bottom hem and i-cord neckline…

A 2-stitch applied i-cord to finish the neckline

With the i-cords finished, I just had many (many, many) ends to weave in! It’s so frustrating when yarn is full of knots from the factory, but I didn’t have the luxury of extra yarn, so I re-used all the small balls I’d made when I cut out the knots, and each new ball meant two extra yarn ends to weave in.

But finally, the sweater was complete! I’m happy with how it turned out: it fits very well thanks to the waist shaping, the speckles are nicely spaced, and, despite my unmatched edge treatments, I don’t think the design looks too chaotic. It’s a cozy addition to my wardrobe, and I’m feeling much more confident with designing and knitting with the machine now.

Reflections & What’s Next?

I did have some yarn leftover at the end, and if I were remaking this sweater I’d keep the shaping but add a little more all-over ease; I think that would be a better design choice, especially with a bulkier yarn like this. And I’m not going to do any more frogging(!), but if I did, I might change the cuffs to match the bottom edging.

One thing I’ve noticed about machine knitting: although it’s fast when you don’t make mistakes (and don’t add interior shaping by hand, which takes forever), I find the process of running the carriage back and forth to be quite tiring. It may be a knitting machine, but it’s a manual knitting machine – it’s still completely hand-powered!

I like having the option to knit plain parts more quickly, but I’ve missed the relaxation of forming stitches slowly by hand while I watch TV, so my next sweater will be the opposite of this one – a fine-gauge, completely hand-knitted pullover with a textured stitch pattern. It’s going to take a looong time to finish, and that’s just fine by me!