Knitting a Sweater

What goes into a successful hand knit sweater?

First have a pattern that would fit and flatter the wearer.  Second, pick a yarn and make a swatch.  The swatch should be at least four inches by four inches, but bigger is better. If the pattern has multiple pattern stitches the swatch should have them too. A swatch for each pattern  stitch is best in that case.  If the pattern is knit in the round you might want to take that into account and knit the swatch in the round.  The swatch should be washed, dried and block the same way the sweater should be treated. In addition, the swatch stitches should match the gauge required by pattern to ensure that if you knit it up it will be the correct size when completed.  A step further would be to weigh the swatch and the yarn left on the skein. This will help you calculate the yarn required to make the entire sweater.  Third, make sure you have enough yarn to make the sweater.

Before you start knitting the sweater, if following a pattern, read through the entire pattern to make sure you understand what is required. I recommend making a copy of the pattern and highlighting the parts that you should watch for, for example, Sentences like, decrease X stitches at the outside edge, while simultaneously ... I have on more than one occasion missed the while simultaneously instruction.

If the sweater has multiple increases or decreases it can be hard to see where you made the last one, so put some kind of marker in the sweater or mark on the pattern with hash marker how many rows you have done, with a mark for each row. So if the instruction is decrease five stitches every four rows you make a mark when you decrease and then knit three rows even, when you have four marks you know it is time to decrease again.

Finally, take the yarn off the needles every so often and put it on waste yarn so that you can check your gauge to make a sure your gauge is still correct. And you can also then hold it up to a sweater you really like the fit of to make sure the size is close to what you are hoping for in fit.

It seems like a lot of work, but hand knitting a sweater takes a lot of time, you want to it fit at the end of the process. So the extra time these steps take will save you a lot of time when you don't have to rip out your work to get the right fit or fix a mistake because you overlooked an instruction.