My Current Project

It's about time for a photo on this old blog - dontcha think?

So here's what I have been working on lately:



You can click to see it larger.

It the seamless yoke sweater from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears. It started out life attempting to be a seamless hybrid sweater but I didn't like the way that looked so - frog frog frog and back to the drawing board. My Mom had this wine colored yarn in her stash for ages and when I went over for Christmas I saw it - bling - light bulb over the head - and the sweater became a yoke sweater. It's for hubby - the poor, but warmly clad victim of all of my experiments with new knitting techniques. :)

The blue yarn is Rowanspun Aran and the wine yarn is either Classic Elite or Twilley's and, as I said, it is of ancient vintage. The wine colored yarn is every so slightly thicker than the Rowanspun but I didn't think it would make any difference for my gauge and it hasn't. I think they go really well together. Serendipity!

This is only my second try at fair isle & so far so good. My first attempt was a small headband I made for my daughter about a year or so ago. You can't tell from the photo, but I hold one color in each hand - the design color in my left and the background color in my right. So I "pick" and "throw". I'm not having any problems getting the right amount of tension in the floats - probably because in my regular knitting style I work with the yarn really spread out on the right needle and I work each stitch sort of excessively far down on the right needle as well. Most things I have read about getting good tension on fair isle recommend this exact same thing so, lucky me! Maybe now I will have more confidence to tackle a larger fair isle project in the near future.

I used EZ's percentage system and everything seems to fit so far. I had hubbs try it all on as it was knit. I'm going for a slightly long, slightly loose look so - we'll see! I'm at the point where all I have left is to knit the neck ribbing (which I tried earlier tonight and ended up frogging - didn't like the look of EZ's method for avoiding holes at the end of the turning rows - or at least I didn't like my interpretation of her method!). After that I weave the armpit stitches together & sew down the hems & cross all my fingers and toes while hubby tries it on.

Wish me luck! Even though I have double and triple checked the fit along the way I'm still nervous because - during the long blog silence - I knit my daughter a raglan sleeve pullover sweater out of Cash Iroha and using a percentage system (not EZ's but pretty much the same thing.) That sweater was knit top down, seamless, and only took four days to knit! It was a real pleasure every step of the way. And when I went to try it on my daughter - I could pull the blasted thing over her head!!!!! WTF? I measured properly, swatched and checked my gauge etc... The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the percentages I used were based on adult measurements and didn't take into account the big heads kids have. :(

But what to do with the darn thing at this point? As I see it, there are two options.

1. Bite the bullet & frog the whole thing.

2. Somehow magically figure out how to steek it and turn it into a v-neck.

Any suggestions??

PS - I left a message for the Yarn Basket (not Yarn Market as I had previously said) about the errant yarn. Any bets as to how fast they will get back to me?? LOL!