Questions and answers

I'm going to attempt to answer all the questions about the Opal sweater in one shot.

First of all, the pattern is listed at the end of the original entry...the incredible custom fit raglan....it's a fabulous pattern with plug-in-the-number blanks for all kinds of sizes. It can be found here.

And the stashbuster spirals pattern - one of the Six Sock KALs can be found here.

I used just one skein of Opal yarn, with some Phildar Preface (blue), Special Blauband (white) and some Regia (yellow) added. All but the Opal were incomplete skeins left over from other things. I used all but about 6-7 feet of the Opal!

To use the stashbusters technique, what I did was to pull off the skein four separate sections of one complete pattern repeat. In my case, it was easy as it went from red to red. Each section was probably 10-12 feet (but that's a guess...it was enough to wind up but not nearly enough to really wind on the ball winder.) I figured out how to divide this up around the total sweater....(220 sts divided by 4 = 55 sts a section) and knew that the last round was the longest (ie, double the quadrant or 110 sts in total). So in the middle of the front, I added a piece of Opal, starting with the red section of the pattern. I knit for 55 sts (or to the shoulder) and added another piece, dropping the first yarn and kept knitting. Midway across the back (or 55 sts later) I added another section of yarn and knit with it to the other shoulder. Here I added my last piece of yarn and since I needed to knit with this piece all the way around to where I had dropped the first one, it took me all the way across the front to the other shoulder. The "job" was barely noticeable once I got it going and I was able to make rounds of one color (in this case the red) 3-4 times before the pattern changed. Doing it this way, I have fewer ends to weave in (which I wish I could say about the top of the sweater!) and I think I was able to use the yarn much more effectively. Not only are the color rounds bigger, but only in a few cases did the yarn not match up like it should. When I ran out of the pattern repeat, I simply added a solid and knit a few rows with that before starting the process over.

I don't know if I've described this well, but that's how I did it!