FO Alert: So Long and Thanks for All the Fade

I am so excited to share my most recent finished sweater!

As regular readers will know, I recently joined lolodidit's online community and assiduously started stockpiling her gorgeous yarns. For my birthday, my husband bought me five skeins from her Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy collection: 42; Hello Ground; Life, the Universe, and Everything; Oh no, not again; and Don't Panic - to be used in a fade sweater. The colors coordinate so well that this project was formed in my mind the first day I saw them!
I love Andrea Mowry's Comfort Fade Cardi, but I don't like DK weight sweaters as a rule. So, as I usually do, I decided to use a CustomFit recipe for the yarn I actually had (lolodidit Loriginal) and while I was at it, I opted to use garter stich instead of reverse stockinette, and to make the sweater tunic length as well. Along with these changes is the standard pieced construction of the CustomFit recipes, which means six total fades for this sweater - the back, two fronts, two sleeves, and the collar.
I decided to knit the sweater fronts and sleeves two-at-a-time, but even still, by the end I was getting weary of the same thing over and over 😂 After I seamed the back to the fronts and set in the sleeves (using the bright pink Don't Panic, as you can see from the back photo), I picked up the stitches for the collar and had to improvise a bit with the yarn I had left. Since I opted for the garter stitch and the longer body, five skeins were eaten up pretty well before I got to the collar! I did manage the short rows and alternating along the buttonless button band, but I came close to using up all the first four skeins, and even did use up all of the 42 and Hello Ground! I actually got a couple more skeins of the 42 to finish up the final bit of the collar (which took about 10g), with enough for a future project as well.
Some other fun facts - I did 42 rows of 42 at both the hems and cuffs before starting the fade. I spent about three hours planning out the number of rows for each solid color and each fade before I cast on. I plan to use this CustomFit sweater recipe again for a cardigan, although I'm not sure I'll do another fade this large for quite a long time. So long, and thanks for all the fade!

 

For more details about my fade sweater adaptation, check out my project page on on Notion here!

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