Laurabelle's Blog

I finally finished my Zara Cabled Tunic. This is a free manufacturer's pattern, using Filatura di Crosa Zara yarn. The yarn is lovely, but in this case I got what I paid for as far as the pattern is concerned.

For the first installment of the Zara saga, see my Knitting and Ravelry post.

My criticisms:

1. The suggested needle size (US #7) is completely whack for the pattern's gauge. The yarn band suggested needle size is US #4-6; #7 was a little loose but not bad. However, the sizing of the sweater was completely off with #7 needles, and I nearly always knit exactly on gauge (neither loose nor tight). The designer must be an extremely tight knitter, I guess. I ended up on #5 needles, which I think was on gauge for me.
2. The gauge is given over stockinette stitch, and the sweater is all-over cables, making stockinette misleading at best. Better to give gauge over the cable pattern. My recommendation is to start the horizontal yoke panel as a gauge swatch; one repeat should be exactly 4 inches.
3. Possibly related to gauge issues, I found that the recommended number of balls of yarn for my size was not sufficient. I needed almost another full ball of yarn (which I obtained through the kindness of a fellow raveler who happened to have the exact dye lot I needed).
4. Most of the stitch counts don't add up. The starting counts seemed okay to me for the most part (see below for the qualification of that statement), but every ending count was at least 10 stitches off. Lesson: Don't trust the pattern; do the math yourself.
5. In seaming, the pattern says to line up the cables of the front panel with those on the vertical yoke, which would be great except that the panel counts don't line up. On my size, for example, there are 22 repeats on the yoke and 20ish around the front/back and sleeves (28 minus the bound-off stitches on each side of every panel that end up as the armpit). I think that if I were to knit this sweater again, I would pick up stitches for fewer repeats on the yoke in order to make the cables actually match up.
6. The first version of the pattern (which I printed originally) was replaced by an updated version that fixed none of the problems I had found (gauge, bad math). In fact, the second version made the pattern worse by increasing the number of pattern repeats on the front/back panels but not changing the blocking dimensions. By the time I saw the second version, I had already knitted these panels; I didn't (and still don't) see where an extra repeat was going to fit. So if you've got the second version (starting with 184 stitches for the smallest size on the front and back), I recommend removing one repeat (22 stitches) and knitting the rest of the pattern the same.

I made one modification to the pattern that worked quite well. Instead of binding off the front/back and sleeve panels, I put the stitches on waste yarn. Then when it came time to sew the sweater up, I grafted the stitches onto the horizontal yoke (adding a cable twist, as if I were knitting, on the cables that needed it). This had the effect both of reducing bulk on the seam and of making the join almost invisible.

Now I've finished the thing, and I'm the first person on Ravelry to do so. Go me?