Sat 27 Dec 2008
Hope you all had happy holidays! Between spotty internet connections and no spare moments, I managed to go a whole week without blogging. You missed hearing in real time about my re-knitting (three times!) of the top of the raspberry sweater, some handwarmers, and a half a sock. If it weren’t for that sweater, Branden would have been right; I would have been short on knitting, left with just a sock by the end of the trip.
But, obligingly, I suppose, the sweater refused to play nice. I knit it once, and the sleeves didn’t fit nicely once grafted on. I pulled it out and tried re-grafting, but it needed extra length in the front, unless I wanted puffed sleeves. Not being Anne of Green Gables, I prefer a flatter shoulder seam. That meant pulling back to the neck split so that I didn’t end up with a huge neck opening. But first, I attempted to avoid the obvious by knitting moss stitch saddle shoulders. I tried taking stitches from the saddle shoulders and switching them front to back to make an interesting almost-cabled neck opening, but they were too wide to cross nicely. Then I tried just a simple boat neck opening, which worked much better.
Just a hint: moss stitch saddle shoulders are not delicate and feminine, even if they do sound like a good idea at the time. In fact, unless you’re a fan of military epaulets, I wouldn’t suggest going with that style.
After careful consideration and much muttering, I ripped back and reknit.
This time, I stuck with plain stockinette for the shoulders, which was the right choice. (I knew that from the beginning, but didn’t really want to admit that I needed to ungraft the sleeves again and pull back that far) I wanted to echo the moss stitch cuffs at the neckline, so I made a large moss stitch turtle neck. I was sure that the neck opening was too large at first, but once I put the collar on it was just about right.
I was ready to begin the grafting when the plane touched down in Boston on Wednesday. I finished the sweater on Tuesday. So much for running out of projects to work on !
I’ll post finished pics tomorrow. It’s dark already (actually, I don’t think it was ever light today), and it takes prettier pictures with at least a little natural light.
I wish that I had thought to take pictures of all of the intermediate sweater steps, but I was working and ripping at family gatherings, and just didn’t manage to get out the camera. I also made a set of handwarmers for my ex-roommate and best friend and completely failed to take a picture of them. They were in Cascade 220, and came out very nicely for a colorwork pattern that I made up as I went along.
Besides a half an alpaca sock, that was it for holiday knitting projects. We got back in on Christmas night, and started work again yesterday. Holidays are such a whirlwind deal!
Hope you had a great holiday season, got to spend time with family and friends, and managed to complete all of your Christmas knitting on time!
Sounds like you've been busy with the knitting and visiting! I actually have a sweater I'm avoiding finishing right now because I'm not sure it's going to work…
Have a good New Years!
I had to laugh at your advice about the moss-stitch saddle shoulders, since I had literally just considered doing that for my next sweater and then abandoned the idea! I'm glad to have that instinct verified (although I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that)… I'm glad that trip went well and that you're home safe 🙂