Saturday, July 2, 2011

Oooh Pretty!

One side of the Jan sweater is complete:



While I recognize the gratuitousness of 3 shots to show the same thing, cut me some slack, cuz man, this has been a labour of love. An insanely frustrating, almost-crushing-at-times, labour of love. Seriously, peeps, I'm amazed the yarn could manage as many rip backs and re-knits as I put it through.

I have learned so many things in this process so far:
  • How to rib (on mega tiny needles)
  • How to yarn over and then knit 2 together
  • Lacework repeats
  • Decreasing stitches "in pattern"
  • Binding off in rib
Perhaps the best lesson of all happened earlier this week when I worked with an expert at my LYS who explained to me exactly how I was going to have to intuit the lace work as I decreased "in pattern". As you can imagine, once one starts removing stitches, slavish devotion to the pattern and the math involved re: number of repeats no longer applies. You can only imagine how freaked I was when I figured out my math was useless - that I would have to understand what to do next by considering what had come before. (People, who says things unironically like, "I freaked out to learn the math was useless"?!?!?)

I don't mean to overstate the case, but this has been practically life changing. It means I won't need to check off every single stitch on every lace work row when I do the next side. I'll be able to observe if what I've done is correct because now I see how the individual stitches impact the look of the garment. It's not some great mystery anymore. Well, it's vaguely less of a mystery.

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations, it looks awesome!!

    The very best is when you reach the point of being able to 'read' your knitting. Meaning that you can see mistakes instantly and only refer to the pattern when it's time for something to change. The moment I realized I could do that, I may have geared up a little :)

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  2. It is beautiful, just beautiful.

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  3. My comment seems to have been gobbled by Blogger. I congratulated you and agreed with Ms. Modiste, but I also registered some nervousness about her suggestion of possibly "gearing up a little" . . . you don't do "a little," do you!?

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  4. Ms. M: Thanks so much! It's an amazing skill to read one's knitting!

    Mardel: Thank you!! You should make it next :-)

    Suzy: And I blame you - I mean "owe it all to you" :-)

    F: Not so much :-) But I intend to do a shawl next. Not a complicated one.

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