it's over!
It's finished!! I finished this a few nights ago, but it's been drying from it's bath in the sink. What a fun sweater! It came out fitting perfectly after I blocked out the sleeves to make them longer and blocked out the chest to make it a little wider.
Check out the button I got for her:
You can also see the keyhole in that picture. I ended up ripping out the original incorrect keyhole (just the picking up stitches part) and reknitting it. I decided to start on the same side I originally started on. My end was there, from my long tail cast on, so I was able to re-attach the yarn on that side. To fix the problem of the inside out purls and knits, I knit all the purl rounds and purled all the knit rounds. As a result, my decreases were on my purl rows, and I p2tog on either side of the marker instead of k2tog. Hope that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't.
Speaking about re-attaching yarn, I used the
Russian Join method of grafting the yarn together so I would have less ends to weave in. There were almost none! It was my first time doing this, and it really worked well with the Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton.
Here's a close-up of the bell sleeve:
Please disregard the fingers that are in need of a manicure.I made another modification on the neck because of a
big mistake I made. I messed up on the number of repeats for the keyhole, so it ended up a little smaller. I really liked how it worked out in the end, though. Now I don't have to wear anything underneath if I don't want, because the keyhole is small enough. I like that part. I had to change the picking up stitches part because of the mistake, so I picked up 10 instead of 12 for each section.
Also, I didn't like the holey paired decreases and increases, so on the sleeves I made sure to have a plain knit stitch between the pair. You can kind of see in the pictures that it closed up the looseness a little.
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton in color #623 Toffee
Needles: Bamboo size 8
Pattern:
Angelica One last thing: I used
Anna's Button Loop Tutorial for the button hole at the top. It made such a clean beautiful button loop.
Thank you so much for all the inspiration and help! It was so motivational to see all the finished and nearly finished sweaters. Thanks
Yahaira and
Carrie for hosting the
Knitalong! Happy Knitting, Everybody!
nothing much to report
I don't have anything interesting to say today, because all of my projects are still in progress. I figured I'd humor anyone who still reads this blog, despite my recent lack of posting. Here are some pictures of my friend Trent, the hairiest knitwear model in the world. He is modeling
this hat that I made last year, out of Lobster Pot Yarns.
Hopefully I'll finish a project soon, instead of just starting new ones. Happy Knitting Everybody!
poorly lit picture of an unfinished sweater
It's not finished, but it's great anyway! It's almost done now- I just need to add a button and button loop, seam the arm, weave in ends, and BLOCK!
You can click on the photo to see the notes I made in Flickr. I've been using Flickr a lot lately- I liked how I could put a set of my future knits in the left sidebar.
Just a refresher: The yarn is Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton, and the pattern is Glampyre's Angelica, from Hipknits. My keyhole is smaller than the pattern calls for because I messed up on the repeats. I like it this way, though, because a lot of pictures of this sweater show more skin than I'd want from this sweater. I love the bell sleeves, but I hope they stretch out and get longer. I think they will, because cotton is known for stretching out.
Is knitting great, or what?
a post about my socks
I love knitting socks. I just love it. So many people don't understand why sock knitting is so much fun. They generally think it's too much work for something you are just going to stick on your feet. "Why don't you just BUY socks," they ask.
The thing about sock knitting is that you never do one part for too long. By the time you are sick of knitting the cuff (pattern or ribbing), you get to start the heel. Once the heel wrapping or turning gets sickening, it's already time to start the foot. Soon enough you are decreasing, and there are less and less stitches on the needle at that point. It flies by, and you have a beautiful sock.
I'm making the Embossed Leaves socks from the IK Winter 2005 issue. I am making them one at a time on circulars, instead of two at a time like I usually do. The pattern called for a cast on that I had never done before, so it made sense to just do one at a time so I can master the cast on before the second sock.
I'm using Koigu color P516. It's an interesting splatter dyed acid green. It looks like a beautiful color of puke mixed with snot. To me, that's a good color. This is my first time working with Koigu. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. It's definitely a quality yarn. It is springy, and the plys seem to never come apart. I got to see the Interweave Trunk Show, including the sock, and it was super soft. Soft, but not pilly.
The colors are awesome. No pooling, just interesting blips of color all over. I think my next Koigu project will be the skirt from Vogue Knitting Fall 05. It really shows off the complexity of the Koigu colors. I really like
Cosmicpluto's version, and I think I'll shorten mine too. It doesn't really take
that much Koigu if you shorten it.
Maybe tomorrow I'll make a post about this:
Happy Knitting Everybody!
