Chasing autumn, a yarn experiment, or how substituting yarns changes the characteristics of your garment. Yep, substituting yarn can be a big change.
Inspiration
Your cheer and excitement for the chasing rabbits top pushed me to make a third top. Yes, you read that right, a third one.
If you’ve been here a while it will come as no surprise that whenever I remake a garment, I am called to experiment. You’ve seen it with the eat cake sweater, the monthly sweater, and several other patterns that I’ve knit or crocheted through the years.
Yarn
For this third version, let’s call her chasing autumn, I decided to substitute the yarn and work with a wool blend. Now, with some patterns this isn’t such a big change, but going from a linen blend to a wool blend yarn is a huge difference.
Although they are both natural fibers, their drape and stretch are vastly different. The Lindy chain yarn I used in the Chasing rabbits top, tends to stretch the more you wash it. Not only does it stretch with each wash but it also tends to stay that way. This makes for a very drapey garment.
On the other hand, wool has memory. Depending on the type of wool the fabric may shrink back when dry. I’m linking a rather interesting blog post here for you if you want to go a little more in depth into the properties of wool vs linen.
Hook Size and Gauge
With this wooly substitution, the chasing autumn top of course required a different hook size. While the Romney Lambswool yarn could have handled a 4mm hook, the merino wool yarn felt too flimsy at this gauge. Fortunately, the 3.5mm hook created a light enough fabric. These changes of course affected my gauge, although not as much as you would think.
In the chasing rabbits top pattern there are two different gauges listed. One for a 2.75mm hook and one for a 3mm hook. At 9 rounds and 21 dc sts, my gauge for the chasing autumn top was similar to that of the Linen yarn with a 3mm hook. Yep, I know, twas shocking for me too.
Now, this difference in gauge meant that I had to play the sizing by ear. For the most part I followed size 1 but because the wool yarn created a much lighter fabric, the weight of the garment wasn’t enough to reduce the rippling on the back from making such an oversized Raglan garment.
Since I didn’t want to frog all the way back to the squaring off round, I reduced 10 sts after the splitting round. After reducing sts and a little blocking my sweater has a circumference of 42″ around the bust.
Another solution to reduce the bulk at the back would have been reducing sts after the lace section was complete. Reducing the armhole depth wasn’t an option for me. I needed all those 17 rounds to reach the minimum depth of 8.5”. Even with this depth I had to increase my sleeve dc stitches from 48 to 54 to get a comfortable width.
Yarn Amount
While 200g of yarn is enough to complete a short sleeve version, I wanted this chasing autumn version to be more sweater-like. This of course calls for much more than 200g . If you are curious, 200g of fingering weight yarn with a 3.5mm crochet hook will get you about 1/2 way (picure below).
Measurements for Chasing Autumn
*these measurements pertain to the length pictured below.
- From neckline to body – 12”
- Armhole depth – 8.5” with 17 rounds
- Neckline width flat 8”
- Sleeve length after splitting – 6.5”
- Sleeve Width flat – 13”
As you can see I opted for longer sleeves. Other than adding some sts to the dc section as mentioned above, I didn’t really change the overall instructions for the sleeve. I’m thinking of adding at least 5 more of the broad band st rounds which would be a total of 23 rounds before decreasing drastically for a cuff.
This post wasn’t created as a declaration that you should always buy the called for yarn. It’s but more of an invitation to consider how your garment will change when you substitute not just the yarn brand, but the fiber as well.
