Mr Mosaic

Mosaic knitting has given me ideas - I've been experimenting with hats knitted sideways, combining mosaic knitting and garter stitch. Not quite there yet as one of them is slightly too big and the felted one is slightly too small, but I like them anyway. They look like rainbows with icing:

My Japanese-inspired mosaic sweater is finished - or at least practically finished. I might reknit the neckband, adding a few rows too it, but otherwise I'm very happy with how it fits. For my first neckband attempt I chose a darker shade of green to match the last patterned row, but the distance between them made the neckband look a lot darker, so I gave it another try with a lighter and brighter shade of green.

A good thing about the lighter shade is that it works better with the sleeve cuffs, where I added a small mosaic pattern. Perhaps I could call the sweater Babar? (The cuffs remind me of his feet, which is why I didn't choose a brown shade - who wants to wear dirty toenails?)

This sweater needed extra side panels or it would have been slightly too tight for my taste. (Also, there isn't much weight to lose when it comes to my rather scrawny chest, and sawing off a couple of ribs wasn't a particularly tempting idea.) I was prepared for this early on but decided not to make up my mind until I had knitted the sleeves, although my idea was to make use of a contruction I tried a few years ago knitting (and modifying) another design by Marianne Isager. I actually enjoy turning something necessary into an opportunity to add a nice finishing touch to a project.

side panel

This solution, using slipped stitches to create columns, echoes how the sleeves go with the body; casting off from the right side creates a ridge in the middle that not only goes with the shoulder joins, but also blends with the seam under the sleeve.

Finally, a couple of short-row details before ending this year's last and rather self-congratulatory blog post:

short rows that create a sleeve cap

short rows that create a sleeve gusset sideways

Happy new year!

Mosaic sweater progress

It took some thinking and rethinking (not to mention knitting and reknitting) before I made up my mind about the sleeves. I decided patterned sleeves would be too much of a good thing; instead they would be grey with slipped stitches to create vertical lines like the ones in the body, the one in the centre elongating the line created by the shoulder join.

Here's the first attempt - or, rather, the third one, but the first one I took a photo of:

The slipped-stitch lines are evenly spaced, with the same number of stitches between them as there are between the lines on the back and front. A good idea in theory but less so in practice; it would look just fine if the sleeve was a separate unit (a not particularly useful garment) but attached to the body it simply doesn't look very tidy.


Here's the final arrangement, where the lines blend with the mosaic pattern repeats. This solution entailed narrower centre panels, but I actually think it looks as if this might be the original thought rather than a solution:

Right now I'm thinking of different mosaic pattern ideas for the cuffs to add some colour to them. Also, I will probably also add something to the provisional neckband.