Sun 15 Jul 2012
I finished knitting the lace ribs sweater way back before the move, and had even seamed and blocked it, Â too. And there it sat, ends unwoven, for nearly a month waiting for me to get back to it. I finally found a free hour and a needle this week, and am happy to say that the sweater is now done. We took it to the beach last night to get a few photos. We were losing light quickly, so it was a little bit tricky to get a good photo of such a dark fabric. The first is closer to the real color, but the second shows the pattern better.
I wore it to work on Wednesday, and it’s the perfect blend of warm (to compensate for overenthusiastic air conditioning) and ventilated, to let me walk back and forth to the train in the summer heat. I have a feeling that this one will be a staple of my summer wardrobe.
I put the finishing touches on the pattern on Friday and it is ready for test knitting, if you’re interested in a summery sweater knit. I’m hoping for a mid-August publication date. My version is knit in Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere, and the small size took a little over 2 skeins. The lace is knit flat and then seamed to give the garment structure.
Unfortunately, the waving lace sweater has not been making much progress. I ripped out the back panel, and have started again, and I’m thinking that I probably will redo the front panel, working two balls at once to even out the color. I almost always do that anyway, but the yarn color looked so similar in the skein that I didn’t bother this time. Lesson learned, I suppose. I’ve been taking a bit of a break from that project this week; the delay is actually kind of a good thing, since it will give me a chance to get caught up on the pattern writing so that the knitting doesn’t get too far ahead.
I’m really looking forward to having another lace sweater soon, though, because the Lace Ribs worked so perfectly for summer office wear. I’m hoping to get back to knitting it this week.
In the meantime, the Mike sweater is growing by leaps and bounds. We got the measurements that I needed last weekend by borrowing a favorite sweatshirt for quick comparison. I’m past the armhole split now, and am about an inch into the main body.
The accent stripe has been fun to knit. I really like stripes that have some kind of asymmetric design to them, but often get myself tangled up in thinking about how to space them just right so that everything balances out. This time, I’m just knitting a stripe here and switching color there, changing back and forth whenever I feel like it. So far, I think it’s working.
The big question now is how far to continue the accent stripe. The sweater weighs 8 oz right now, and I have 13 oz of Harriet yarn left. I am guessing that the arm split is about a third of the way into a Raglan sweater, which means that I’ll be cutting it close. I think I’m going to add another couple of ounces of MacGyver before continuing on, just to help stretch the yarn a bit more. Of course, that means that I’ll have to unspin and then respin another hank of MacGyver, which I’m not looking forward to in this heat. Still, a little insurance is a good idea, and it shouldn’t take too long to get it done (hope, hope). My spinning wheel has been calling to me all week, so maybe this will help to scratch that itch.
Love the look of the lacy sweater!
I agree, the accent stripe looks nice.
The stripe in Mike’s sweater looks really good. Your lace sweater is great and I love the periwinkle blue yarn. 100+ again next week! Whew—
Your lace sweater turned out lovely. It sounds perfect for office wear, although I can’t imagine how you can stand to walk out-of-doors in it this time of year! Maybe I just overheat too quickly…
Lovely lace ribs. The fit is divine.
And the Mike sweater does look great – awesome accent stripe. You could always consider a bit of color in the ribbing if you run low on yarn then…