Knitting update

1. Demi. It's in the home stretch. Back and both sleeves are done and I'm up to the armhole on the front. I would really, really like to finish this in time to wear it once or twice before the season passes.

2. Top-down handspun raglan. I've finished the yoke and am a few inches further into the body than I was when I took this picture. I had a minor setback with it last week, due entirely to my own hubris — I hadn't bothered to look up how to handle the body/sleeve split because I've knit plenty of seamless sweaters and have a pretty good sense of the proportions and how to calculate to fit myself. So I set aside 8% of the stitches for the underarm and knit merrily away on the body. It seemed Not Right though, so I looked it up and learned that when you're working from the neck down, you need to add stitches under the arms instead of taking them away. Which sort of makes sense if I don't focus on it too much. I actually have knit top-down sweaters successfully in the past, so I either did it wrong before and it turned out fine anyway or I did it correctly and then blocked out all memories of the process. Brains are weird.

So I ripped back a ways since not only had I screwed up, but I also had 8% more sweater than I was really interested in having. It seems to be back on track now. I'm putting in some princess darts, but just to nip it in a few inches at the waist. Since this isn't next-to-the-skin yarn, I'll have to wear something fairly substantial under it and don't want the shaping to be too extreme. The neckline looks a little wonky in the photo, but it isn't really. That's one mistake I *didn't* make.

3. Road to Not-Golden. I'm stalled on this one. I got a few repeats in and lost interest completely. I think the problem is that it's just not something I'll wear. I like the colors, but I'm not all that wild about the pattern itself. So I think that I'm going to rip out the colorwork portion and do stripes instead. Same proportions, same cap sleeve effect. Just narrow stripes instead of crazy multicolored diamond-y geometric nonsense.

I had wanted to do this sweater to see if I still had the chops to do stranded knitting before I tackle Venezia. Turns out that I do.

I like the wrong side better.

I actually started Venezia at the end of February, but had trouble with the hem flaring out after a few inches of colorwork and ripped back. Instead of the one called for in the pattern (cast on provisionally, knit a few inches then unpick the cast on row and knit it together with the live stitches — pain in my ASS, let me tell you), I think I'll do a sewn-down hem with a purled turning ridge. It may be just the eensiest bit less elegant, but should lie flat more dependably, so it'll look much better in the end. I did take pictures, but managed to delete them without uploading and never got around to posting about any of it. I want to rechart it for myself to make it clearer which color is background and which is foreground and I'm not going to start it again for a while anyway, so I'm not counting this as an active project. Just one that'll pop up eventually...

Comments

[Phoe]

I like the reverse side better too.

[dana]

Venezia hems not lying flat is a gauge issue, not a turning row issue. You must must must make sure that your plain knitting gauge is the same as your stranded knitting gauge. I stupidly tried to knit the hem with the same size needles as the body (see? stupid) and got an awesome tutu effect. Snip, unpick, knit downwards, repeat (@#$@ gauge). So now Venezia is in time-out.

[Gina]

Wow! That is a lot of impressive knitting. Demi is so pretty!