Saturday, October 29, 2011

Foggy

In case you've been losing sleep over my previous post (Lord knows, I have), the sweater has definitely shrunk back in the direction of its original proportions. The question remains: Is it bigger than it was before I blocked it (cuz the size was perfect, esp. given the short row horizontal bust darts I finagled)? In truth, I'm afraid of the answer so I'm telling myself it's still not dry. I suspect my nerve will return when it's irrefutable that the sweater is no longer damp i.e. tomorrow or 70 hours after it first got wet.

I am definitely less traumatized than I was yesterday. After all, it's just a sweater, in the end. It took me 8 days to knit it and I learned a lot. Worst case scenario: Another Xmas present off the list.

The clasp still has not arrived so I can't really assemble it for a photo. I will, likely tomorrow, give you a blow-by-blow of what I did well, and what I could have done better. I know, you can't handle the excitement :-)

Yesterday evening I started knitting some fingerless gloves to go with my keyhole scarves. The pattern is Vancouver Fog by Jen Balfour:

That's a little preview of the lovely cable. The pattern is written for double-pointed needles, but I don't have them (nor have I used them), so I am using magic loop. It makes it a little bit less intuitive - and, seriously, this cabling is quite a bit harder than that which I worked flat in my keyhole scarves. I've never made a glove / gusset / thumb finger (really small diameter knitting) so it's all a bit experimental. I'm hoping it's going to work well though.

I've chosen a couple of other fingerless glove patterns that take a skein of yarn - so that I can use up some of the extra balls I couldn't return for one reason or another.

Anyone knit this pattern? What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. You know I'm crossing my fingers for your keyhole top -- but I am also admiring your pragmatic assessment and willingness to adjust if the shrinkage isn't as desired.

    Are you cabling with a cable needle? or just shifting the stitches without an additional needle? Whichever, your works looks lovely, even, and that yarn really lets the cabling shine. I haven't used that pattern, but I've made numerous iterations of Miriam Felton's Serpentine Mitts -- similar, but with fingering rather than worsted. Right now I'm making some Fair-Isle patterned mitts from a free Spillyjane pattern -- have you seen her stuff? Fabulous fun!

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  2. I really hope all goes well with your sweater.

    The cabling in the new pattern is beautiful. The color looks luxurious to me, I can't say exactly why.

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  3. The cabling is beautiful. I haven't made that pattern either. I somehow find magic loop confusing but can see how, if you don't have double-points, it would have to do.

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