Just don't know about this one

So I spent the last week applying the body ribbing to the Side to Side Cable sweater, after having seamed what I had already knit. I picked up every other stitches of the body and started the ribbing in the round. It was already 7 inches along before I decided maybe I should try it on before going any further. So I did. And it didn't go any further than my shoulder blades. I almost needed medical assistance to get out of the sweater, my circulation and one arm being nearly cut off.

Removed the ribbing, and now I have a cut-off sweater. I'm not sure it looks right. I'm not sure.

Side to Side Cable Sweater from Vogue Knitting Fall 2007

Some random notes:

I love the traveling cables from sleeve to sleeve, but honestly, it does not look terribly flattering on me. It kind of gave me broad shoulders. I'm ready to play football everyone. Ah, maybe it's ok. Ah, I don't know. I'm on the fence.

The pattern called for two strands of yarn held tog using 10.5 needles. I used one strand of DK-weight yarn and size 7 needles. The sleeves and the collar fit perfectly. If any of you guys end up following the pattern as written I gaurantee you the sweater will not stay on the shoulders. Unless that's the look you want to go for.

After the sleeves, instead of casting on 21 stitches on either side for the front and back part of the body, I cast on 31. It wasn't enough, hence the cropped look. 50 would have done it the trick.

The body was maybe was too tight. I probably should have used a size 8 or 9 needle for the garter stitch body portion only, and the 7 on the sleeve and cable portions.

Will definitely have to add length to the body, this time picking up more stitches and using a fatter needle.

But I can't bother to do this now, I need a little break first.

So, to be continued...

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Filed Under: Vogue Knitting

I'm knitting not a sock!

So I've been on a lying binge lately. I've been telling people that I've been really busy and haven't been knitting lately. That's why I have not been blogging lately...and not reading other people's blogs lately...and not reciprocating when they comment or add me as their friend on flickr or ravelry, lately.

The truth is, I've had time to watch every single Red Sox game on tv, and enough time to knit a whole sweater for myself.

Knit in one piece from the sleeve, to the body to the other sleeve.
I'm going to have to do this more often.

This is the sleeve detail of the "Side to Side Cable Top" from the latest Fall 2007 issue of Vogue Knitting. When I saw this my dormant sweater brain cells fired right up, and was carried back years ago to the Pre-Knitting Era, when I came across a sweater like this in anthropologie and fell in love. The way the thick cables traveled up one arm, across the collar and down the other arm again...I dreamt of a lifetime of wintery evenings snuggled in front of the fire...And then I reached out and touched its sticky, decidedly unsnuggly acrylic fabric, gawked at its yucky, inflated price tag and wept. Nothing could be done about it, I had to walk out.

So the bank didn't break that day, but oh my heart. It tells another story.

I tried to get my mother, knitter extraordinaire, to make a version for me. To my surprise she kinda went Hmmm and I was like, What do you mean you "need a pattern?" What do you mean you can't just Do It? and so she never did and that was the end of that.*

Things are different now. I know how to knit. It's so empowering.

Just the other sleeve to go and then the body ribbing to do, which I might omit for that trendy cropped sweater look we've got going on lately. I deviated from the pattern and used a DK weight yarn instead of two yarns held together for a chunky weight. The yarn I'm using - Cascade Lana d'Oro Tweed - is from way way back; the first bag of yarn that would be the start of my yarn stash, in fact. I bought it from WEBS, and being that I was a newbie and didn't fully understand gauge and yardage and sizing, I let the sales associate convince me that I needed 20 skeins of dk weight yarn in order to make an xs sweater. Ha ha!

By design there's some serious negative ease going on. I'm not going to tell you the width of the bust because you will laugh and I will cry. I'll be blocking the bloody bejesus out of this thing so hopefully it will all work out.

It has to!

And now the Season of Sweaters has officially begun.

*(My mother has knit plenty of her own sweaters on the fly, sans pattern. But I think this one skerred her. Or she was lazy. Don't tell her I said that.)

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Filed Under: Vogue Knitting