Inspiration shows up when you least expect it...(pt. 2)

For the past few weeks I have been wracking my poor addled brain for THE PERFECT STITCH PATTERNS for the seaside sweater I'm designing.

In typical fashion, I'm simply biting off more than I can chew. With all of the elements that I'm looking to include it could make for the busiest, most deplorable mess of a sweater known to mankind.

First, lets look at the pros: I've already got the buttons for it (Thanks again to MADEFORFUN at etsy. The beach stone button set she put together for me is just what I was looking for!) , so its a great starting point. I'm thinking that I will go from the button band I originally planned on to the twined cables on either side (unless that gets a bit busy...then the cables will be the first bit that I drop) and then I want to go into a linen stitch to suggest the sandy beach.


Egads! Time for the cons: The one stitch dictionary that I do have doesn't have anything remotely resembling what I'm looking for to transition from linen stitch to something remotely resembling the motion of the waves, so its going to be a hardcore mess of swatching transitions to see what works and whats even possible. Then, there is the small matter of weather or not to make a subtle color transition as the patterns change...for some reason, I think that would be tremendously cool, but ummmm....how to make it happen? Knit to that point and then try to dye and set the color? Dip dye the finished sweater? I'm not so good at estimating my yarn yardages to dye prior to knitting, so its not really an option for me. I guess I could knit the waves first and try to transition to linen. It might be a bit easier to do it that way if I make the transition over a few rows...

Oh, here's an idea...I could make the "coast line" curve from the bottom to the top area, and over onto the sleeves-making the equivalent of a yoke out of the linen and having the waves work all over the back and down the arms. if the line of the waves is done properly, it will be really flattering. I think I'm liking it so far!

Swatch. swatch. swatch. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can get it to work out.