I’m really, really wishing I had a working camera today. I have much to show you, and no way to show you. Le sigh.
Maude Louise has been blocked and seamed. Good heavens, Andean Silk softens up marvelously when it is blocked! It feels like butter. Soft, sleek, warm – this is amazing yarn, and the color just glows. Now, I’m not actually done with Maude, but I would still like to show you my progress. Right now, she’s like a big, strange, fitted tunic vest. I have not done the sleeves, and she needs a button band and a collar, and to be honest, I’m undecided on the technique and style for both of the latter. The sleeves, however, are to be done from the top down, thus eliminating my copious fears of knitting fitted sleeves, only to find that they don’t fit.
The Andean Silk not only blossomed when it was blocked, it did stretch a little, and it remains very stretchy. Thank goodness, because the chest is two inches too small, as planned. It was planned, but still, seeing it in action is something else, and it made me very nervous until I saw how well the fabric stretched. I’m not the most chestally endowed of women, but I was worried that it wouldn’t close across the bosom. As it stands, the seed stitch V at the top, combined with the fact that it’s super super tight, should mean that I’m going to look rather more endowed than I am. Insert smirk here. I really love how this jacket looks to enhance all curves.
I’ve also plowed ahead with Eleanor’s tweed sweater, and that is very nearly done. Whee!
Besides that, I’ve made two swatches for the Seamless Hybrid. I’d like to show you those, had I a working camera, because one is stranded with a very thin, lace weight blue, and the other is plain. I like the plain better, as it happens, but the blue stranded one is pretty, too, just a bit too feminine for a man’s sweater. I was going to make a swatch cap, but to be honest, I’m nervous enough about whether I bought enough yarn, so I didn’t want to risk a large expenditure right at the start. So they’re just ordinary swatches, not quite right for a piece knit in the round, but good enough to have a fairly good idea of gauge. I was nervous about the quality of the Telemark, but I shouldn’t have been. It’s not a scratchy wool at all, and the color is marvelous. I’ve blocked my swatches, and we’ll see if that softens the wool any.
It’s been a very productive weekend knitting-wise, but largely because I’m still ill. I was planning on cleaning up around the house, but instead I made the bed, did the weekly shopping, and proceeded to lie prone on the bed for the rest of the day, knitting and reading. Well, and eating. Oddly, being ill has affected my appetite only in that it is greatly increased from the norm. I’m hoping this means I’m healing, and expending lots of food energy in doing so.
I’m thinking about that hooded jacket Mr. Kninja suggested for the smallest Kninja-lette. I’d like to try a Tomten jacket, but I’m wondering how easy it is to adjust, since the pattern itself calls only for a change of needles and yarn rather than substantive changes to the numbers involved. The 4 ply is very thin, and would require a larger number of stitches. If I double all the numbers or something, I wonder if that would work. My head is swimming just thinking about it. It’s been hard enough getting my thoughts around the math for my own patterns, but daring to trifle with something as mathematically elegant as the Tomten seems presumptuous. Surely wiser heads than mine will know. I will consult others before deciding what to do with that purple wool.
Because I can’t show you a new picture, here’s a picture of my very first sweater ever, modeled by the lovely Eleanor Jane when she was a brand new person. It’s the cardigan from the Red, Set, Go! baby set in Monkeysuits by Sharon Turner. I modified it a bit for the embarrassing fact that at the time I could knit, and I could purl, but I hadn’t learned how to carry the yarn forward and back, so I could not do both in the same row. The fact that this was a problem for a year is the truly shameful part, though the problem was overcome immediately after this sweater was made. I figure sharing this proves that really, anyone can learn to knit.
