Dan remembers that this design practically knit itself. I cast it on while I was suppose to be packing to move back to college, and got to the neckline once all my boxes were in my new off campus housing room with my two new roommates. I knit all the way up the Mass Pike, and rt 17 through NY. I had a milk crate full of yarn balls, and the tiny ones kept escaping, always when my new roommate was near.
It irked her tidy soul. Years later I made her a temari ball to hang on her Christmas tree, and she said it reminded her of my escaping yarn stash.
I started the sweater like a typical bottom up raglan, but when I got to the sleeves, I did all the decreases on the sleeve side, after graphing them to get the angles right. I’ll have to look up what the decrease rate was, it certainly wasn’t at the usual raglan one. Once I got to the top of the sleeve, I put those stitches on a holder, and finished up the shoulders and neck with short rows. Once I’d grafted the shoulder seams, I combined kitchener/Swiss Darned the top sleeve stitches in place. I couldn’t bear to cast off the shoulder seam back then, and I’d never read that a cast off seam in a shoulder resists drooping down the arms. This sweater had such short sleeves, and I’d given it such small ease, that it never did droop. And that was dumb luck, not forethought.
I tried it on in front of the mirror with the ends of my circular needle sticking out the back of my neck. They probably looked like Frankestein’s Monster’s neck bolts. My roommates though I should end it off there without the sailor collar, and Dan agreed with them. It would have made an elegant crew necked tee shirt with a triangle of Quaker Welt under the neckline. But I wanted that triangle to show me where to pick up my stitches for the collar, and I didn’t want to stop until I knew my idea would work.
Once I had the stitches down the v of my neckline picked up, I formed the square collar from the back of the neckline with double increases every other row. I don’t remember the rates I used to pick up the short rowed stitches down the front of the sailor collar. I did finish it with a double row of purls with 3 rows of stockinette in between, and I ran out of yarn on the last purl row, had to frog and re-position it. The collar took as much yarn as both sleeves.
On Dan’s next visit to me at Houghton, he admired the sweater, even with the collar, and I was inordinately proud of it.
All that was left to do was show it off at the yarn store and be obnoxious.