Bubbles in Progress

After pausing on the kneesock last weekend, I went ahead and picked up the Little Bubbles sweater.

This sweater is knit from the top down. In the picture below, the green rows are the neckline. You can see one set of the pattern repeat with the yellow bubbles.


While this was the product of one night knitting, it was my second night on this project. The first night didn't go so well... my cast-on was a little uneven and my "make one" increase method was flawed. I was originally using the "knit into the strand between two stitches" technique which left little holes at each increase. Mind you, there are A LOT of increases as the sweater starts taking shape. You add at least 30 stitches at each increase row and there are 5 increase rows. So, I ripped out the first night's work and began again. I achieved a much more even cast on and my "knit one in the front and back loops" increase method (aka Bar Increase) gave me much better results.

One of the surprises of this pattern was the "bubbles" technique. I worked a similar colorwork pattern last summer when I made a baby blanket for my niece Cora:

The difference in the bubbles pattern is that instead of slipping the outline (yellow) stitches as I did in the blanket, you actually DROP the main color stitches and pick up the outline (brown) stitches. As a beginning knitter, one of my biggest fears was dropping stitches and now I had to do it on purpose! I quickly got the hang of it though. Here's a shot of the drop in progress...

Four rows of green stitches unraveled to reveal the brown stitch below.

Pick up that brown stitch and scoop up the dropped green stitches on your way back up. Then knit into the brown stitch, trapping the loose green stitches on the inside of the sweater.

My knitting pace, which is not incredibly fast, results in one row of bubbles per night. So, this is where I stood after two nights...

And after four nights...

And after five nights...


That's where I'm at right now. I've done the last row of bubbles and I've completed all of the increases. What began as 69 stitches per row is now 243 stitches per row! I've also realized the limitations of trying to re-purpose my size 2 sock knitting needles. They are 12" and 16" circular needles (I knit socks on two circulars instead of double pointed needles) which are great for the small circumference of a sock... but the 16" is not long enough for 243 stitches. So, I've divided the stitches onto both of the size 2 needles. You can see a needle sticking out near the top of the photo.

I'll be knitting again on Wednesday with the mom's and I'll take my knitting along on our 4th of July travels. I'm excited to see how the sweater body takes shape... looking forward to all those stripes!