The Revenge of the Leftovers: Mini-Pattern to Knit a Stashbuster Sweater

Hey fellow crafters, 

if you've been wondering what to do with your leftover yarns, let me show you what I did with (some of) mine.

At the beginning of the year, I've made it a mission to clean up my stash. If you've been following, you know that I went through all of my stash and reorganized it.  It went from this:

to this:

But then I had a full bin of partials, leftovers, and minis. I definitely needed a stashbuster project.

I pondered about knitting a blanket, but being a sweater knitter at heart, felt like I had to stick with what I would be using IRL.

So... I decided to knit myself a stashbuster sweater.

I didn't use a pattern, because that's how I roll in life.

But... Do you remember my Super Duper Quick Hat knitting pattern?

I drew inspiration for this super duper quick knit, and transposed it to my stashbuster sweater. 

This is what it looks like, unblocked and all because I like to keep it real on this platform.

Drum roll...

Ta-da!

Here's how I knit this sweater step by step, so you can do the same if you so wish. Think of this as some kind of non-tech edited, free-spirited, sweater recipe.

This recipe will work if you are a size L/XL (36-44" in circumference), more or less. If you are smaller, I recommend casting on fewer stitches (4, 6, 8), omitting the yoke increases but following the recipe. If your size is larger than L/XL, you can cast on a few more stitches (4, 6, 8) and spread them evenly across the neck, and if needed, add a round of yoke increases 2, and/or 4 inches after the short row section.

With a US 10 needle and using 3 strands of plied fingering-weight yarns held together, I casted on 80 stitches using my favorite cast-on and worked 7 rounds of 1x1 rib in the round.

For this sweater, I used 2 strands of light/medium gray yarns I had in stash, and 1 strand of partials/leftovers in a wide array of colors (that's where the addictive fun of deciding which colors goes where lies). I kept switching the partial/leftover strand every 3 rounds or so. I leaned toward using speckled yarns and semi-variegated, rather than plain, solid colors for this strand so it would blur the color change a little more.

Whenever I switched colors, I would use Stephen West's trick to weave in the working ends, which is basically this: you knit with the old strand and new strand together for 5 stitches then drop the old strand and keep going with the new strand (so for 5 stitches, I would hold 4 strands together). I opted to switch strands on the side, never in the middle of a round.

I allocated 12 stitches for the right back, 12 stitches each for the sleeves, 32 stitches for the front, and 12 stitches for the left back stitches (my cast on is at the center back) and placed stitch markers between each sections. Feel free to use the popular method of splitting stitches evenly across the 4 sections, but I find that for me this is what works best.

Then, switching to a US 10.5 needle, I worked short rows across the back, starting at the right back marker, making a short row across the back all the way to the left back marker, then went across, working 3 or 4 stitches past the previous short row before making a new short row, and so on and so forth. Whenever I was on the right side of my work, I would increase along the stitch marker to account for enlarging the back raglan-style (hence why there are more stitches allocated to the front, then to the back => because by the time I'm done with the short rows, the numbers of stitches will be close enough in numbers). I did the same thing when I reached the sleeve sections.

This is what the back looks like.

Once I reach the front part of the sweater, I kept going with the short rows, increasing the front too at the shoulder stitch marker. This creates a little arrow/triangle on the top front, which lowers the neckline.

Like this above.

One thing to note about this method of doing short rows, is that it will create more fabric around the back of the sleeve section than the front. Do not feel like it's wrong! I personally find that it helps the back stay up on your nape. It will look like this:

Why do I do this?