I had originally planned this post just to be about the baby’s second Storyline sweater (and my third time knitting the pattern) but I realized I hadn’t made a post about my Storyline sweater, so I’m mushing them both together into the same blog post.
I started mine in August of 2023, but didn’t finish until February of this year. That’s a little under six months, which before I had a kid was an insane amount of time for me to knit a sweater (generally I average 3-4 weeks). Now I’m primarily just knitting after toddler bed time though, and that does tend to make things take longer.
I used Valley Yarns Northampton for this sweater, which I really like as a general all-purpose worsted yarn. I knit the baby’s first Storyline with some left over I had in my stash from my Galway Bay project, so when I decided to make a larger version for myself, I knew I wanted to use the same yarn.
I will preface this by saying I always use less yarn than what Tin Can Knits says to use in their patterns. As an example, the first Storyline the yardage listed for that size is 500 yards, and I used 469. That might not seem like a lot, but it’s 7% less yarn. For my Storyline (above), they say 1550 yards, and I used 1326, which is 15% less yarn. Even knowing that, I ordered the yarn to recommended yardage in the pattern because it ships from the US, and getting one skein because I ran out of yarn would mean that single skein would cost almost $30 Canadian. No thank you, I’ll just buy what they recommended.
Having this be my second time I knit it, I was just humming along, thinking I was oh so clever because I had this from the first time. Well guess what? I didn’t realize I had screwed up the cable on the back until I had finished the damned sweater.
So there you have it, I just kept humming along, creating three identical cables. It’s really not that big of a deal, and unless you knew, you’d never know. It had taken me so long there was no way I was going to redo the thing, so I’ll live with it! Other than that, I was incredibly happy with my sweater, and I’ll wear it for many, many years.
It does have the thing that all raglans do (which is why I normally don’t wear them), where they slide down your shoulders slightly. Normally I’m a drop shoulder or inset shoulder kind of person, but I did love this pattern and I’m glad I have it.
Because of the way the yardage worked with these skeins, and my purchasing at minimum 1550 yds, I ended up having about 650 yds left over. The 2-4 size called for 850. Knowing I’d use way less, I decided to test fate and knit that size for the baby with my left over yarn. I figure we have very limited amounts of time where she won’t care if we match and I can be a total dork about matching with my toddler, and this seemed like a prime opportunity.
Because of the way the sizing works, this size actually uses the back panel as mine, which is an adult size medium. However, since I had caught my mistake, I made the baby’s right on the back. Yay!
The keen eye will also see that the button band is different. I did not, in fact, need 850 yards. But the entire sweater minus the button band did need 650 yds. So I picked a contrasting colour of my own hand spun that was more or less the same grist and size as the Valley Yarns Northampton, and did the button band. I didn’t actually measure how many yards that took, but it couldn’t have been more than 10, so I’m estimating my whole yardage for her sweater was 660 yds, or about 23% less yardage than what the pattern called for.
This sweater huge on her. I knew it would be, but I also knew I’d be knitting it for at minimum a few months down the road, and I wanted her to get a good two years (maybe more?!) use out of it before I had to knit her a new one. The sleeves currently have to be rolled twice, the chest has got to have about 7″ of positive ease, and it almost hits her knees. By September/October she’ll have grown into it a bit more, but it’ll still be big. But let’s get as much use out of baby knits as we can, yes?
So just to have it all handily written in a list, my less yardage was:
6-12 month size (orange): 7% less yarn
2-4 year size (small green): 23% less yarn
Adult medium (large green): 15% less yarn
I don’t know what it is about me and Tin Can Knits, but the amount differences really are huge. Not sure if it’s like that for anybody else; and it’s not like I’m getting gauge, because all three of these sweaters were perfectly on gauge. I’ve also knit from Strange Brew before and found the same thing. I will say though, it’s better to have too much than too little yarn.
And one more photo of these adorable little European robin buttons I got to put on the baby’s sweater:
