There hasn’t been much knitting around here lately. Actually, that’s not strictly true. There *has* been a lot of actual knitting, but not much by way of finished stuff to show for it. One sock has been knit, frogged, knit, frogged, knit and frogged for the third time in the last three weeks. Once for size, once because I got bored with the pattern, and once because I made a stupid mistake and was so incensed with myself that the sock practically unraveled itself in the hope that it would calm me down. (Which it did.)
So I brought out this lovely skein of laceweight/light fingering merino called Lanita that I bought many years ago to make a shawl. I looked online for some shawl patterns, but like Huan-hua said recently, there is some serious lace shawl overload on Ravelry. My eyes begin to swim at all the prettiness and intricacy, and after a point I can never really sort one out from the other and decide what to make. So I looked at the Featherweight cardigan, which thousands of people have made, and which seems to be quite a lovely option for laceweight yarn. I seem to have enough for a cardigan in this yarn.
I swatched it and I have gauge (6 spi on size 4), but am not sure whether I like the way the colours translate from skein to swatch, and am having a hard time visualizing the variegated colours on a larger piece of fabric, and determining if I will like them. I love this bamboo forest type mix of colours, but they seem to shift quite rapidly in the swatch, something I hadn’t anticipated when I saw the skein itself. I’m not saying I don’t like it; there are a lot of people who’ve made it with gorgeous variegated yarn. I’m just not absolutely sure this one works for this pattern.
Also, while I do like the idea of this featherweight cardigan, am I setting myself up for long-term misery with laceweight stockinette? It’s not laceweight on size 6, say, when knitting the thin yarn on the thick needle can be murder on the fingers (to say nothing of temperament!). But size 4 might still be doable, plus this yarn falls just between laceweight and fingering.
Decisions, decisions!
I am suddenly, obsessively, in love with Judy’s magic cast-on and magic loop for sock knitting. Why haven’t I used either of these techniques before this? Move over bendy, bamboo size 0 dpns, I have some shiny size 0 circulars.
I bought these Pony circulars in India a few years ago, and the points are really sharp, but they are really useful for the twisted stitches of this pattern. Amazingly, it isn’t at all difficult to slide the stitches over the join.
Two years ago, I made this vest:
Like most of my vests (and unlike all my other handknits), it has stayed in the closet, hardly worn. I have finally, grudgingly, accepted that no matter how much I like knitting them, vests are not my thing. But this one, in particular, also felt a bit unfinished, and every time I tried it on, I felt that its sleeves were missing, and put it back. So I finally brought it out last week and put some sleeves on it. I had one extra skein, but needed another one. So I went to Stash, where I had bought this yarn two years ago, and wonder of wonders, they actually had a skein in the same colour, and in the same dye lot! I felt the universe was sending me a message. I *had* to knit these sleeves.
I am much happier with the results, and if the last 48 hours are any indication, this version is going to get a lot more wear. I gave it 3/4 sleeves to keep it a light, wear-in-summer-when-the-idiots-jack-up-the-a/c kind of sweater. Although I have to say, I wore it out to lunch today on yet another rainy, grey day, and the Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool is surprisingly cosy.
These ‘afterthought sleeves’ are my first attempt at top-down set-in-sleeves. I could have started at the cuffs and worked my way up to the armscye, and sewed the sleeves in, but some good advice on Ravelry from Suzeeq made this a more pleasant adventure. She pointed me to the instructions in the third post in this thread. I followed them, and in addition, I added wraps to the turns to avoid gaps in the fabric.
Rough calculations for ‘afterthought sleeves’, or ‘top-down set-in sleeves’
* Basically, you pick up and knit evenly around the armhole, starting at the base. I picked up 87.
* Knit the first 2/3 of the stitches (in my case 58; you go all the way up the front of the armhole, past the shoulder, to about a quarter of the back). Wrap the next stitch (59th) and turn.
* Purl back 1/3 of the stitches (in my case 29). Wrap the next stitch (30th) and turn.
* Knit 1/3+1, wrap the next stitch and turn. (k30, wrap 31st). Pick up the last wrap as you knit the last stitch.
* Purl 1/3 +1, wrap the next stitch and turn. (p 30, wrap 31st).
* Continue in this way, adding one more stitch on each side and wrapping the next, until all stitches and wraps have been picked up.
* Even out the total number of stitches. I added one stitch (88) after all the pick-ups were done.
* Now, knit in the round, decreasing for the sleeve depending on how close-fitting you want the sleeve to be.
* To decide the decrease formula, you need the following measurements:
>> Desired length of your sleeve. (11 inches; 8 inches minus a 3 inch cuff)
>> Desired width of your sleeve cuff. (6 inches)
>> Stitch gauge, if your cuff pattern is different from the overall sleeve pattern (8 spi). Also, my cuff stitch pattern was a 10-stitch repeat, so I decided to decrease down to 50 stitches.
>> Your row gauge. (Mine was 8 rpi)
* Now, subtract the cuff from the stitches at the armhole. (In my case, 88-50 = 38. I had 8 inches, ie 64 rows in which to decrease 38 stitches evenly down to 50 before starting the 3 inch cuff.)
* One decrease row typically has 2 stitches decreased, so there were 19 decreases to distribute evenly. Every third row would take me only 57, whereas every 4th row would take 72. So the first two decreases I did every fourth row, and the remaining every 3rd row.
* After decreases are done, begin the cuff. Once cuff is done, cast off loosely, especially if it’s a 3/4 sleeve. I did the Russian bind-off with 2 ptog continuously around the cuff.
This should theoretically make for a well-fitting sleeve. However, this is easier said than done. Figuring out how many stitches to pick up around the armhole to make for a neat and even sleeve at the upper arm is a trial-and-error method; I settled on 87 after three tries. Plus, the original vest itself had a deeper-than-normal armhole, and so I had to space out the pick-ups more than usual. If you look closely enough, there still are a couple of unexplained folds, but nothing that the drapey look and my ability to ignore minor problems cannot handle! Trying on the sleeve as you go along to see if it falls well is a must, and all the more so with this yarn, which stretches a bit with wear.
Ideally, I would have liked the body to be a few inches longer too, but I’m not complaining. It’s too much of a pain to undo the patterned cuff at the bottom to add length below. My friend Latha also approved of the new Wicked iteration as is:
I love revisiting old projects like this – apart from the now-you-know-who’s boss! feeling of it all, it’s neat to be able to actually fix a problem to make the garment wearable (all over again). Mel recently fixed one of his sweaters, and my reformed Rogue is much more well-behaved-fitting.
Has any one else modified or fixed your already-finished projects? I’d love to hear these stories of the afterlives!
