Lyon Sweater

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I finally finished my second sweater! After my first one turned out almost bulletproof, I intentionally knit this one a lot more loosely. I also chose a pattern with a more structured neck, and with more complex shoulder shaping rather than just raglan increases. I worked on it on and off, so it didn’t really take eight months of effort, more like two or three.

This is meant to be a women’s pattern. PetiteKnit does have men’s sweater patterns, but I really liked how this one looks. And I found a blog post by HandmadePhd who made it for her husband, which was very useful. I started out with size M (45ʺ chest circumference), but I did only 9 raglan increases instead of 16, reducing the stitch count by 56. This adjustment made sense to me, since it gave me the broad shoulders of M with a narrower torso.

The main way I loosened my gauge was by wrapping the yarn around my pinky just once, instead of twice like I do for socks. It feels more relaxing to knit this way and I’m going to try to keep doing it.

This was my first time knitting large stripes. I carried the yarn, and caught it once or twice every other stripe to avoid the floats being too long. It was annoying when the two balls of wool got tangled, but otherwise not too hard.

I blocked the sweater partway through and it didn’t seem to change that much. But when I blocked it again after finishing, the superwash wool grew like crazy! Thankfully it reverted to its original size after a little while in the dryer. The care instructions for Swish say “tumble dry low,” so I hope I can keep doing that and it will survive for a long time!