Updated: Age and Stage

Another long week... I'd be lying if I said Tuesday's birthday wasn't somewhat of an anticlimax. Don't get me wrong - it beats the hell out of the alternative. And my friends have been wonderful - celebrating with me (and food and wine). What could possibly mean more than friendship? However, things have been vaguely relentless lately, if only in my own mind. I don't feel old. Of course, I'm not old. But I do feel momentarily older.

What's age if not experience? And, a propos of this, allow me to share a recent discovery: phyllo brushed with butter and dusted with sugar (baked till brown) is an awesome treat. When cool, pipe on some pastry cream and drizzle with dulce de leche / chocolate sauce / berry coulis and it's divine. But really, if you can only get it up to make the wafers, that's enough. They hold up well in a ziploc bag for days.

Alas, despite years of baking under my belt (um, literally), my knitting experience is fairly shallow.

Here's where things stand:

A word to the wise: I'm loathe to mention this, but note the broken pattern at the underarm (it moves horizontally for a depth of about 5 rows). Key when knitting this thing: You've got to end the upper back piece and front pieces on the same row (see below for construction details). The pattern is 8 rows long. I ended the back piece on row 5 and the front pieces on row 8. Regrettably, the pattern doesn't clearly stipulate how to manage this and my knitting experience is woefully brief. Live and learn, I say. It's really not noticeable when you're wearing it. And if this thing works out, I will no doubt make another.

This is a strangely constructed top-down pattern:

1. Knit the back from shoulders to mid upper back (to underarm). Put live stitches on a holder.
2. Graft on the fronts (one after the other) and knit, also to the underarm.
3. Merge all stitches onto the needle, cast on some extra stitches at the underarms of each side. At this point you knit down from the finished armholes.
4. Work flat from the underarms to the ribbed hem. Here's where you're supposed to make the knit buttonholes...
5. Pick up stitches at the armscye to make the sleeves. At this point, one has an option to shape the sleeves with short rows. I intend to give them a go.
6. Pick up stitches to make the shawl collar. At this point, one has an option to use short rows - though precisely how is a huge mental leap. I intend to undertake this option too...

You'll notice that I haven't made button holes on the rib band. That's because, in a gambit to improve structural integrity, I intend to hand stitch ribbon to the wrong side of the "button band" area (the lower rib) and then machine stitch the buttonholes. How vintage-plus!

Yes, you did read that correctly. The super-tired woman with a pathological aversion to machine buttonholes is going to give it a go. I will first practice on my gauge swatch, natch, but I'm opting to be optimistic given recent experience with my vintage machine.

Here's the fascinating thing: When you fuck with gauge (remember I went down a needle size but I'm using a thicker yarn than is called for - this yields 5 stitches per inch vs. 5.5) you have to think ahead. I'm more or less happy with sizing - well, I think the finished product may be too large, but not unwearably so. (I waffled over XS or S. Went with S recognizing that it might be too large, when combined with the larger gauge. It's hard to say at this point, but I think the project might be moving in that direction...)

One thing's certain though: My button band area has gone from a 2 inch width (on either side of the centre front) to 3 inches. Why does this matter, particularly? Well, have you run across 3 inch-wide grosgrain ribbon lately?   

Updated: I think I must have been high on drugs when I came up with that sentence... Having just finished binding off the rib at the hem (i.e. the sweater shell is complete minus shawl collar and sleeves), it occurs that grosgrain ribbon wider than 1 inch is going to look bizarre, regardless of what width of band I affix it to. Furthermore, I have a comfortable inch of overlap of the two side fronts at the lower ribbing (the bottom 4 inches of the sweater). If I go with wider ribbon, I suspect it's going to pull.

The issue here is that I am trying to apply a technique (ribbon stabilizer) in a somewhat different way - different than the way described in the tutorial to which I linked above, at any rate. That tutorial shows ribbon  (the exact width of a continuous, i.e. collar to hem, button band) overlaid on that band. I can't run my ribbon this way because the shawl collar doesn't permit it. I'm likely going to ribbon-stabilize along the bottom 4 inches of rib only. That's the area that buttons and buttonholes will lie upon.

Mokuba happens to stock navy grosgrain in every width under the sun (including the presumed unnecessary 3"). My intention is to purchase some tomorrow, a day I'm taking entirely for myself, during which I will dine out for lunch and dinner - with others! - and shop for yarn and notions.

So here are today's questions:

• What birthday has hit you hardest? Was it due to life circumstance? Self-imposed perspective on what age means? A brief moment in time?

• Have you used ribbon on a button band, the likes of which I intend to? How wide was the band? How did it work? Did your machine cooperate?