**Ghost Horses Prancing On My Crayola Creation!** :smiley:
I apologize, I can get wordy.. I hope my notes will help others (or maybe even help me, if someone has a tip please leave me a comment). I think this has been the most excited I've ever been about a pattern! As a child I went through an "I love horses!" phase with horse posters on my wall, reading Black Beauty and watching the Black Stallion, having Barbie horses etc. I've always loved a good horse movie even as an adult (like Hidalgo:)) I actually loved knitting this sweater and I loved knitting with the wonderful Spincycle Yarn too.
**Size:**
I decided to do size 1. I probably could have went up a size as it was slightly snug in the bust area (however if I'd gone up a size, I think it would have been a lot bigger than I'd like. I am, *on average*, a US size 4 (sometimes 6) in clothes. (32D) I only add this level of detail because I hope it will help someone to not have to struggle with sizing decisions as much as I usually do when I take on a project :) I realize if I wet my sweater, I'm sure it will grow, but I like the rustic/handmade feel of some unblocked garments (depending on the yarn) and worry that wetting it degrades the integrity and it starts looking too perfectly polished (to me).
**Short-rows (first-timer):**
The short rows reference page was extremely helpful, but for some reason my pattern did not calculate accurately, when it was time to separate the sleeves, so I had to readjust this myself (thankfully, I was able to work it out on my own). If I would have kept following the pattern exactly, the back of the neck would have been positioned on the side of my neck... I almost put this project down when I saw the roadblock but I decided to work through it because of the love for wanting to have a horse sweater. If someone has encountered this problem before and knows what I may have done wrong on my short rows to change the neck position, please feel free to leave a comment to let me know, so I can avoid this in the future. I also pondered whether there was an actual need for me to have short rows (and to just skip over that part, because it would not have even mattered where the sleeve separation took place, if the short rows were not present).
**Sleeves:**
I wanted to add additional stitches on the underarm (I did not feel 2 was enough), but I was not experienced enough to try it, for fear my sleeves would turn out belled) The sleeve width still turned out fine but I kinda had to close up a few holes in the underarm area. I over-agonized about sleeves (To have them or not to have them) and matching up my sleeve colors, as that was something I had not considered when selecting a yarn color that *kind of* has a mind of its own and does its own thing (when I wanted a little more control over the next yarn color). I started sleeves, took them out and started them again (you'll see one of the pictures the sleeve color starts totally different) So, on the sleeves, I wound up breaking off after a color and doing the other side to try to match it up (because the colors pooled differently in the shorter round of the sleeves than the body (I did not worry about this as much on the body, for the most part, I let yarn colors roam naturally, *except in the horse section, of the pattern, I changed the yarn color to the nostalgia/purple, because I wanted my horses to stand out more*)... but I was being over matchy-matchy, for the sleeves and extremely careful on my first color-work sweater. *I probably would have been done a month earlier, had I not obsessed about the sleeves, but I'm not sure I would have been as happy with the end results.* In the end, I was glad I made sleeves. I was quite pleased with how they turned out. <3
**Yarn yardage used:**
Also, I apologize because I am not good with calculating the yarn yardage used so here is my response. I purchased:
4 skeins of Wilder - Light Gray (weight per skein about 59/60g) (leftover: 1 full skein and 12g of the 3rd skein)
4 skeins of DitW - Truth Bomb (weight per skein about 49/50g) (leftover: 1 full skein and 39g of the 3rd skein)
1 skein of DitW - Nostalgia (weight per skein about 49/50g) (22g leftover) not sure how accurate my scale is but I hope this helps.
*Additionally, Dyed in the Wool yarn went from thin to thick (and vice versa), where the Wilder yarn was consistently the same weight yarn throughout.*
**Needles:**
3.5mm (12in circ) from the start of the sleeves till the elbow
3.0mm (12in circ) from elbow of chart B down through ribbing/finish
3.0mm (16in circ) for the cast on and ribbing
3.5mm (16in and 24in circ) on the body through finish
**Experience:**
This is my 2nd completed sweater, but first color-work sweater attempted and completed). I've done other color-work garments (hats mostly). It was a bit confusing, in the beginning, with the stranded knitting floats and picking up for a M1L and not confusing the make-1 pickup, with a darn float, but I worked out my issue after the first few rows.
While I went through some changes/overthinking/head games with the sleeves (knitting them, then taking them out, putting them back, matching them up), words cannot express how much I thoroughly enjoyed this amazing pattern. This was absolutely my most favorite knit of all time. Spincycle yarn is also pretty darn great (beautiful and squishy...I love that you can pick the same colors as someone else and it still comes out looking a bit ooak!
I feel like I learned a lot with this knit. It was an adventure!
