With An Eye Towards Colour Work

At last, and after a few rip backs, Scottish Sweatrrr has sleeves attached

 

 and I am looking forward to colour work.  On this sweater, there will be some  plain knitting before I reach the colour-work part of the yoke. 

Long ago, in reading one of Elizabeth's books, I noted that she commented that she preferred a yoke with a shorter colour-work portion.  One where the colour work starts about halfway  up the yoke from the sleeve/body join.  Being short I knew as  soon as I read Elizabeth's description, that it was the yoke style for me.  The next question was - How to make it happen that way.

Step one of course is to select a colour-work pattern that isn't too deep.  Step two is to not start the colour work too soon. Sounds simple heh?  I'm afraid I have to tell you that there is math involved.

First I counted the number of rows in my chosen colour work pattern.  I have 51.  Next I counted my row gauge.  By now I have 3/4 of a sweater for a swatch so  an accurate row gauge count was easy.  My row gauge is 8 rows per inch.

The piece of base information required, of course, is -'How far is it from sleeve join to sweater top?'  In my case, that number is 9 inches.  I want my overall sweater to be 23 inches long.  I knit 14 inches, then joined sleeve to body, leaving 9 inches of knitting to get me to the top of the sweater.  At 8 rows per inch and with a pattern containing 51 rows, I have about 6 1/2 inches of colour work.  When I subtract that from the 9 inches required, I see that I need to knit about 2 1/2 inches or 20 rows in the main colour before beginning the colour-work pattern. Right now I am at row 8.  12 to go.  Colour work on the weekend, I hope.