Festive pullover

After much knitting and frogging, I finally discovered that Arbor couldn't be made in worsted weight acrylic yarn -- or, at least, I didn't have the skill to do it. The k3tog's just were too thick. Plus the yo's didn't add anything. (The blue yarn marks sections of 10 sts.)

But, I liked the i-cord cast on. And I liked the idea of doing a non-raglan pullover.

(To join the i-cord in the round, I picked up a loop at the starting edge and knit it together with the third st in the ending steps for the cast on.) I ended up casting on 110 sts -- 11 groups of 10 or 22 groups of 5. That gave a nice sized neckband. Then I knit around once and then decided that I liked the reverse side of the cast on better than what may or may not have been the right side. So, that gave me an i-cord cast on plus a round of purl sts.

I wasn't too sure that I had enough white yarn for the sweater and so decided to use some green left-over yarn as a decorative touch. After trying several variations to the Arbor pattern, I looked in my stitch book and settled on a trellis design. To change colors, I knitted around in the new color (in the reverse direction from before since the wrong side was now my right side). By making pfb's (purl front and back) in the first trellis pattern round, the repeat of 5 became a pattern repeat of 6. In a subsequent round, I made a pair of pfb's to get a pattern repeat of 8. It looks as if I'll have to make another pair of pfb's to get a pattern repeat of 10, which will give me enough sts for the rest of the garment. By accident, I have 4 pattern repeats for the sleeve section, 7 pattern repeats for the front (and back), and 1 pattern repeat to cast on for the bottom of the sleeve opening -- or 160 sts around for the garment itself and 50 sts around for each sleeve opening -- which is just about perfect, I hope.

I've called this a Festive pullover because it sort of reminds me of a Christmas tree. Though, if it were done in different colors, it would be equally cheery.

Sorry about this being such a technical post. I wanted to get the details and development down so I wouldn't forget. I'm also really happy how the sweater is turning out.