Tegna is a pullover designed by Caitlin Hunter – that’s the pattern picture on the right, which is linked to the Ravelry page.
I cast this on with Koigu KPPPM in colourway is 534 a long, long time ago, but this week, this story had its resolution.
The pattern is unusual in ways I didn’t anticipate.
First off, every size sets up with an odd number of repeats in the lace pattern at the hem. My size requires a cast-on of 340 stitches which means (20 sts per repeat) 17 repeats of the pattern at the hem. So, the front and the back will be different and the side seams – there technically aren’t any, but there is a midpoint on the side to divide for the armhole – will be in the midst of a pattern repeat. I knew this would drive me nuts, so I cast on 320 stitches, putting me between sizes. This way there are 16 repeats, which is 8 for the front and 8 for the back, a change that gives me joy.
You might remember this pic of my Tegna on the needles after I completed the lace hem. I really wasn’t loving this colourway or its inclination to pool, so I began to switch between three skeins for the plain stockinette body.
The biggest issue is that I thought the t-shirt had an a-line shape, but it doesn’t. There are decreases over the lace – I decreased from 340 stitches to 224 – but then the body of the sweater is knit straight to the underarms. So, it’s actually more like a straight shirt with a frill on the bottom.
Here’s the schematic from the pattern:
It’s also intended to be a cropped sweater, but that’s not for me. I knit three inches more before dividing for the underarms. This is when I began to really doubt my pattern choice.
When you split the work for the underarms, the instructions are to add stitches at each side, front and back, for several rows after the split is made. I’m not sure why this would be, as it’s already got a dropped shoulder. I knit this and frogged it back. (On Ravelry, some knitters say this made a little bulge at the underarm. Hmm.)
I don’t love sweaters with dropped shoulders as I feel they look frumpy on me. Instead, I had a look at my gauge and stitch counts, and dug out my Hebrides cardigan pattern. The needle and gauge is the same. I’ve used those decreases to convert this sweater to having a fitted shoulder.
I would need to use the sleeve pattern from Hebrides to figure out a sleeve for this modified Tegna, so that the sleeve cap fits into the shoulder. I could start just below the cast-off for the underarm in the Hebrides pattern. I could go with a plain sleeve that is more-or-less fitted, or put the lace on the hem so it flutters a bit more. I was thinking this would result in a swingy top with a fluttery hem.
At this point, I’d made enough changes that I began to doubt the outcome. Plus, the sweater looked small. Here it is, fresh off the needles with the back done.
What’s interesting is that switching skeins didn’t seem to avoid the pooling of the colours – each skein more or less lined up, light and dark, with the others, creating the swirl. That’s either a strange coincidence or some kind of magic.
I gave it a soak at this point and blocked it out to check the sizing after all my mods. It did stretch, as Koigu does, and you can see the lace pattern better even though I didn’t block it hard.
And here it is with a t-shirt that fits me well, for comparison.
It is a straight t-shirt with a frilly hem. I decided to chalk this up to experience and frog it.
I also have the pattern for Latitude, which is a swingy sweater with stripes. This Koigu might end up there, maybe alternating with a solid-ish dark blue that I have in my stash.
I’ve thought for a while that I might like Latitude, but without the long sleeves. Just with fronts and backs, it ends up with a kind of short sleeve. I’ll wind up this Koigu, have a look for that blue and think about casting on.
Alive & Knitting 