Noro Shinryoku Jumper: how I made it.

Hot on the heels of my intense love affair with this yarn, which produced the scarf and hat here, I managed to snaffle a few more balls of gorgeousness (70% wool, 30% silk) from the same eBay source (I’ve a sneaky suspicion this particular yarn may be discontinued but with the right gauge, there are plenty more beautiful colour-changing yarns out there) and embarked without much of a plan on a raglan sweater. I wanted the same beautiful combination as the hat and scarf, so I stuck with 2 rows of each of number 4 and number 8 colourways, alternated.

What has resulted is an almost-cropped (waist-length) fairly boxy raglan sweater with a wide neck. And I love it.

I’m a size 12, and 5 foot 9, and this is how I made it:

This sweater is knitted in the round, top down, using long circular needles and the magic loop method.

Gauge: 17 sts and 28 rows for 10cm

You will need:

4.5mm circular needle 100cm minimum
5mm circular needle 100cm minimum
(Note: if you get 120cm needles, it is easier to try it on without having to transfer to scrap yarn first, but it’s a little tight on the needles if you don’t pull some of the cord through in a magic loop fashion)

Around 450g (810m) yarn (2 different colourways of the same yarn) if you stick to the gauge.
I used a little over 2 x 100g balls each of colours 04 and 08 of Noro Shinryoku

8 x stitch markers for the raglan sleeves

1 tapestry needle for sewing in the ends.

Glossary:

K: Knit
P: Purl
PM: Place Marker
Yo: yarn over (bring the yarn to the front as if to purl and perform the next stitch from there, creating a ‘hole’ or new stitch
K2tog: knit two stitches together
SM: Slip Marker

Directions:

With the 5mm needles and whichever colour you choose to start with, cast on 120 stitches.
Join in the round being careful not to twist the stitches, and knit around twice.
Introduce the second colour and knit around, placing markers thus: K12, PM, K2, PM, K44, PM, K2, PM, K12, PM, K2, PM, K44, PM, K2, PM

The last Marker is the beginning of the round
The K2 are the constant line down the middle of the raglan sleeves (the K2 raglan ‘strip’)
The K12 are the sleeves, and
The K44 are the front and back.

On the next round (and every second round of each colour) you are going to make the increases. It sounds complicated, but once you’re underway, it makes more sense!
Remember to include the marker at the end / beginning of the round.
Raglan increases: K to 2 stitches before the marker for the K2 raglan ‘strip’. Yo, K2tog, yo, SM, K2, yo, K2tog, yo
You will do this 4 times per increase round, for each K2 raglan ‘strip’.
And you will perform the increases every other round, on the second round of each colour.
On the round after the increases, K the yarn-overs as stitches.

When you have 48 sleeve stitches each, and 80 front and back stitches each (and still the 4 x K2 raglan ‘strips’) K around 4 times in stripe pattern without making any more increases. (You can get rid of all the stitch markers now, except the one that marks the beginning / end of the round).

On the 5th round, divide for the sleeves as follows:
Put 50 stitches on scrap yarn, cast on 4, K82, put 50 stitches on scrap yarn, cast on 4, K82
Move the marker to the middle of the first cast-on 4 for the new beginning of the round.

K around in the two-stripe pattern to your desired length (mine is 120 rows, or 60 stripes, or around 40cm from the cast-on neck.)

Switch to 4.5mm needles and K1, P1 rib for 10 rounds.
Bind off using your favourite stretch bind-off. My favourite is Jeny’s 🙂

For the sleeves:

Transfer the sleeve stitches from the scrap yarn to 5mm needles and pick up 4 stitches under the armpit, so you have 54 stitches on the needles. Take the middle of the 4 cast-on stitches as the beginning of the round, and have 27 stitches on either side of it on the circulars for the magic loop (so the loop comes through at the top of the arm as you can see below).

Knit the two-stripe pattern for the desired length minus 3.5cm for the cuff. (Mine are 75 stripes, 150 rows from the cast-on)

Switch to 4.5mm needles and K1, P1 rib for 8 rounds.
Repeat for the second sleeve.

Neckline:

With the 4.5mm needles, pick up 118 stitches evenly around the neckline.
K1,P1 rib for two rounds.
On the third round, continue the K1,P1 rib, but K2tog twice at each shoulder (114 stitches)
K1, P1 rib for 7 more rounds and bind off using your favourite stretchy bind-off.

Sew in all ends.

Enjoy!

Note: Initially, I knitted a moss stitch hem which, while it was really pretty as you can see in the pic of the sleeve being worked above, I didn’t like because of the way it sat ‘out’ at the waistline. So I frogged it back and re-worked it with a rib hem.

Ooh, and note 2: If you’re interested in the rather fabulous chunky socks I’m wearing in the pictures, they are my Beauteous Boot Socks, knitted in Novita 7 Veljesta on 5mm needles. And as I have mentioned previously, lovecrafts.com have made a sock-knitting tutorial using my pattern, which you can find here.

Happy knitting! ❤

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