Polyrhythmic Sweater

 Ten days after I cast on, I'm wearing my new sweater!  Between the bright colors, the varied textures of the sweater, and getting to use a new yarn, this was a fun knit for me.

I was inspired to do stripes by one of the testers who is working on my Leap of Faith pattern right now.  She is doing her cardigan in alternating lime green and darker green stripes.  Also, when I was drooling over this new Good For Ewe sock yarn at my LYS, I was having a hard time deciding between these two colors.  Then it occurred to me that I might be a bit bored doing an adult sweater in just one solid color, and so, this idea just kind of easily came together.

It might be a little hard to tell unless you click on the picture to enlarge it, but this sweater is not entirely stockinette.  In fact, every third stripe is done in reverse stockinette (so it looks bumpy instead of smooth.)  The combination of the texture and the color stripes reminded me of that thing in music where you have a "two against three" thing going on.  If this sweater was music, it would look like this:









[I totally stole that little diagram from the "Polyrhythm" page of Wikipedia.  So here's the link back to the page in case you want to check out the original source.]
  
The color stripes alternated every other row (like the eighth notes in the bass) and the texture stripes exist in a "3 pattern".  I couldn't remember what this was called in music until I did a little Googling.  But thank goodness for the internet - I never could have come up with "polyrhythm" just from memory!

And so, the Polyrhythmic Sweater has been born, made, and is soon to be written into a pattern.  I believe that the Good For Ewe yarn I used is a relatively new yarn line, based just down the road in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I don't think there are many patterns published yet that use it as one of the recommended yarns, so I'm happy to be able to support a fellow Midwestern lady who is trying to do her thing!

Anyway, I was 99% happy with the way this sweater came out, but I'll be making one minor change when I write the pattern (and will do a small re-knit to fix this in my sample)...see how the sleeve cuff ribbing starts a few rows into the last purple stripe?  I think it needs to start as soon as you change to the color of the cuff stripe.  No big deal, and it'll only take me an hour or so to fix it.  But in the meantime, I'll enjoy wearing this cozy sweater over the holidays!