Star Wars Christmas Sweater

Someone please tell me what I was thinking.

I've agreed to knit my husband a Fair Isle Star Wars Christmas sweater, with no pattern. He wants X-wings, Stormtroopers, lightsabers, and the Death Star. Must look like a tacky Christmas sweater. I'm not totally sure what I was doing when I agreed to this- I can't even drink because I'm pregnant, so we can't blame the wine.

Weird judgement aside, I think it will be pretty cool. I normally HATE bottom-up sweaters where you knit body and sleeves, then join them, but that's what I'm doing in this case. I thought about it a lot and it seemed like the best way. I'm doing a circular-yoke pullover, in keeping with the classic Fair Isle theme. I started with a sleeve because I didn't feel like swatching, and a sleeve is basically a big swatch. I'm getting 5 sts/inch, which is a nice, quick gauge, but it doesn't allow for too much detail in the motifs. I wish I could have gotten just a bit more detail in the Stormtroopers, but honestly, they look like what they are, he likes them, moving on.

Pretty desperately needs a blocking.

The body is going to be slightly trickier than the sleeves. He wants a big panel over the chest that has a fight scene with the Death Star and various space ships. There's no way to do it except with intarsia. I'm thinking that I'm going to work in the round up to the panel, split the body into front and back, cast on an extra stitch at each side for seaming, then work back and forth in intarsia. Once the panels are done, I'll seam them together, continue in the round for an inch or so, pretending the seams never happened, then join body and sleeves for the yoke. The yoke will have rebel alliance symbols along with classic Fair Isle motifs.

I'm using Cascade 220 for the main color and the light blue. The white, two grays, red, and green (for lightsabers) are Knit Picks WotA Worsted. I'm planning to duplicate stitch the lightsaber blades in afterwards because I might be nuts, but I'm not crazy. Didn't want to do any three-color rounds. I tried that with the Stormtroopers, but my gauge went all over the place, each round took for-e-ver, and it looked pretty terrible. Ripped it back and did the whole helmet in white, then duplicate stitched the gray over the top. So much faster, so much better.

Stay tuned for progress.