Rivendell Sweater

I recently started working on a pair of Rivendell socks. Just before I started the heel flap I slipped one of them onto my arm to stretch out the pattern so I could see it properly. It looked so nice there that I thought, “this would make a great sleeve.” My mind took off from there and before I knew it, I’d bought the yarn (Knit Picks’ Risata in Woodland Sage).

I was picturing a tight-fitting, long-sleeved pullover with a mock turtleneck. I couldn't really find any patterns like that in fingering weight so I started with some numbers from the closest thing I could find (a scoop neck) and did some calculations to get 36 stitches each for the front and back and 9 stitches for each sleeve for a total of 90 stitches.

Using the magic loop method, I cast on the day the yarn arrived. I made the neck about 2” before starting the increases for the body. The increases look a tinier bit messy than I’d prefer, but not so much that I’d rip it back and re-do it. If I ever do this again I’ll figure out a different increase method.

I decided on 3 repeats of the pattern across the front of the sweater as if it were an “opened up” sock. Since I’m doing it top-down and it’s a top town sock pattern, the pattern is right-way-up. I started the pattern at about row 34. I only made a couple of adjustments to the Rivendell chart. The first one was to “crop” the ends a bit for the first row of wrapped stitches since I didn’t have enough stitches across at that point for the whole pattern. The other was to switch a lot (but not all) of the YOs to paired lifted increases since I didn’t want all those holes across my chest.

Due to the ribbing, the negative ease and the stretchiness of the yarn, this thing looks like it’s made for a 3-year-old! Not to worry, it fits great so far.