I just ran into my uber-boss (not my immediate superior, but HIS superior) at the water fountain, and she complimented my sweater – then when I told her I’d made it, she gushed over it for almost a full fifteen seconds!
And now I have to take a conference call. My day is so exciting!
Finally:
Sorry I couldn’t get a shot of the whole thing at once… I could only get my roommate to try once, and the shot she took came out so blurry it was useless.
Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “Percentage Sweater” recipe from Knitting Without Tears.
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (100% wool), 11 balls Sapphire Heather and 1/2 ball Lake Ice Heather
Needles: Knit Picks Options, size 8
Started: January 24 (around 3 a.m.)
Finished: February 27
Pattern Modifications:
Really, none – it’s more a recipe than a pattern anyway, so I just followed the directions. I even had, coincidentally, the perfect gauge such that for my measurements I used the 200 stitch body that she used as an example.
The only slight things I changed were:
- Provisional cast on for the turned hems, and then a joining row of K2togs around, rather than sewing the hem up later.
- Ribbed collar rather than hemmed.
Comments:
This was the perfect first sweater project. I really like how it came out, and it was really easy! I did, of course, make it a little more difficult for myself by using provisional cast ons, tubular bind-off, and knitting backwards on the saddles. The knitting backwards does seem to have messed up my gauge a little bit – the shirt-yoke back was definitely baggy right off the needles, but a thorough blocking did help even it out a lot, and it looks fine when it’s on (though you can still see some of the bagginess when it’s laid out flat).
And is that a cleverly-designed construction or what? You can barely see where I grafted together the two sides, and only if you know what you’re looking for. You can also see where I messed up one of the corners… but I’m going to pretend that I don’t know that, because if I knew you could see it then I’d have to rip it out and fix it, even though I’ve already declared it done.
And the raglan\saddle shaping is great, although I think it works better for a man’s sweater. My shoulders aren’t quite broad enough to pull it off. Also, I’m not exactly a DD, but my bust does stretch the shaping out a little bit. Next time, short rows! Just a couple should give me enough room to avoid the bat wings. If you want to see this shoulder treatment knit perfectly and modeled on on a proper manly frame, check out brooklyntweed’s sweater here.
Oh yes… and the sleeves are extra-long, and the hem hits at exactly the right place on my hips (which even my fashion-oblivious roommate noticed and complimented me on), and I love it. A whole lot. And it’s warm and cozy and perfect for the tail-end of winter.
So overall… three cheers for Elizabeth Zimmerman! I’m very pleased to declare my first-ever sweater officially finished.
… but you’re not going to believe me when I tell you why I didn’t post last night.
I got home from work at about 7:10, and… passed out. Completely. Woke up at 8:00 this morning to go back to work.
I was so tired that even though I saw the package from Girlyman, I couldn’t even stay up long enough to listen to the brand-new CD (which is of course currently playing in my work computer). So please forgive me.
The Seamless Hybrid is finished blocking, and I tried it on quickly this morning. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. My next sweater WILL be perfect. In theory. So as soon as I do get a chance to take pictures, there will be FO posts for that and the Sock Madness Round 1 socks. No guarantees that I won’t pass out again tonight…
The Seamless Hybrid is done. Finished. Kind of anticlimactic.
The shoulders don’t fit me perfectly, but I’m hoping I can block it into shape. But of course, that requires washing and blocking… and I won’t have time to do that until Friday… and then I’m spending this weekend in Maine again so I’ll let it dry all weekend and come back and take pictures on Sunday…
Or if it still doesn’t fit right after blocking, I’ll rip out the yoke and redo it with shallower raglan decreases and a narrower saddle. So no pictures yet – just when it’s really and truly done, blocked, and declared perfect.
Elizabeth Zimmerman, on raglan decreases in a seamless sweater:
“You will find yourself progressing like a house on fire, as the rounds will become shorter and shorter.”
She couldn’t be more right – and it got even faster once I got to the saddles. I thought I was moving super-fast when I finished the body and both sleeves and united them on Saturday – and then the yoke started speeding by and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Even weaving the underarms went by like a flash, and I’m now finished with both shoulder saddles, and about 1/3 of the way across the shirt-yoke back. I stopped last night when I got to the end of a ball of yarn… but I can’t see any reason I won’t finish it tomorrow. (Why not tonight? Because I’m going dancing, of course! And now it’s too big to bring along – so Bayerische will be coming dancing with me.) Sorry there are no pictures – the battery in my camera is dead, and I was on such a roll with the knitting that I didn’t want to interrupt it to go all the way to the store to buy new batteries.
I think the reason the saddle shoulders went so quickly is because after just a couple of rows I decided that turning the entire sweater around every row so I could purl back just wasn’t working for me – so I “unvented” knitting backwards. I know other people have done it before, but I wasn’t working from any instructions – I just figured out what I needed to do, and knit backwards instead of turning and purling. My purling is a little slower than my regular knitting anyway, and I think my backwards knitting is about the same slightly slower speed – but I saved so much time by not turning and rearranging the bulk of the sweater!
I hereby declare knitting backwards to have set my house on fire. 
I went to my second ever Stitch n’ Bitch last night, and made the cuffs of the sleeves for the Seamless Hybrid – I’m doing both at once so they’ll match and I don’t have to keep eight million pages of notes on where I increased, and stuff. I did turned hems, but I scrapped the contrasting-color idea because a) I didn’t have any of the contrasting color on me last night, and b) I didn’t really like the way it came out on the body hem. Brooklyntweed’s was fantastic, but I think I didn’t use a good color for it, or something. Next time I’ll be more careful.
Can anyone who’s made an EZ Percentage sweater advise me on the sleeves? I suspect that they’re going to be tight, especially around my upper arms. If I do extra increases to keep it looser, how will that affect the shoulder shaping?
Anyway, I’ll post pictures later today – even with the snow (an actual snowstorm, finally!) I’m still at work today, but rehearsal tonight is certain to be canceled, so I’ll have time to take and post pictures. The lighting will be pretty bad, of course. I wish I’d had time to take some pictures this morning, with all the cold white light coming in through the blinds in my room… I love snowstorm lighting. But there’s no chance at all that I’ll be home before it gets dark.
The thing about insomnia? It sure does help me make progress on my knitting!
Thanks to everyone who gave input on what I should make next. There wasn’t much consensus on the patterns, but everyone seemed to agree that I should use the Anne. So, this:
… with the help of a cooperative roommate-swift and my trusty pen-nostepinde, became this:
… which, last night, started to become this:
Yup, I’ve started a Pomatomus. That picture is a bit dark, but the lighter ones came out really bright blue, and I wanted to bring across the deep purple that’s the base color of the yarn. I love it! The yarn is super-soft, and the pattern is gorgeous and works really well with the subtle variegations of the yarn. It’s light and airy, and even though it looks like a complicated pattern and a crazy chart (the above picture, my current status, is exactly one pattern repeat above the ribbing), it’s surprisingly easy to get into a rhythm with it. I started it on DPNs as suggested in the pattern, thinking that it might make it easier to keep track of the pattern repeats, but they’re so easy to see that I switched to my usual ML. Nothing against DPNs – I just have a tendency to drop them and lose them… can’t lose one end of a single long circular.
I know I like this pattern in this yarn, but I’m a little worried that it’s going to be too small. It’s super stretchy, so it’ll fit, it’s just that I don’t know if I want it to look as stretched out as it will have to be on my wide feet. I’m going to let it sit a little longer before I decide whether or not to rip it and start over, modifying the pattern to make it a little bigger. I do know how I’d modify it – the question is just whether or not I want to.
Also, as much as I love the Pomatomus, it’s just not satisfying my cable cravings. So when I woke up at 4:30 in the morning…
It couldn’t be helped. Really.
And this way, I’ve satisfied both the Pomatomus and the Bayerische advocates. Monkey comes next, I think – maybe with more of the Anne yarn. I do love that yarn – I think it really is worth the expense. The mohair and nylon in it should make it wear really well, and it works up so easily and beautifully. I do tend towards solid or mostly-solid yarns, though – I should look into it. Their colorways vary a lot, as I recall – I could probably find more that I would like.
For the curious, my Bayerische is in Knitpicks Essential, “Grass.” I think it’ll go nicely with the “Pine” one I made a few months ago.
I think it’s an interesting coincidence that both of these patterns are based on twisted ribbing – with all of the knit stitches worked through the back loop. I love twisted ribbing. I also love how both patterns flow so beautifully and organically out of the top ribbing of the sock. I have to give Eunny so much credit for making that happen! There are three different kinds of increases used in the setup row after the ribbing, and they work SO well!
So yes. Sock love.
And here’s what else I’ve been up to:
It has body! Well, some body, anyway. I’m guessing (and remember that this is my first sweater, and I haven’t done any actual calculations to back this up) that the body part is 1/3, the sleeves together will be 1/3, and the yoke will be 1/3. Which means that as I think I’m about half done with the body, the sweater itself is about 1/6 done! This is my mindless knitting – for conference calls and rehearsal downtime, and hanging out with friends. I have no idea how steadily I’ll be working on it – but my vague goal is to have it finished before Sock Madness, which (I just looked up) is tentatively starting on March 13… so that should be plenty of time. I think.
So yes, I have been busy.
Here’s what I have in progress at the moment:
What’s this? NO SOCKS?? That’s right – I have not a single sock in progress. What I do have is a fair amount of sock yarn (and more arriving today, according to SmartPost Tracking). So what should I make next?
The yarn possibilities:
The pattern possibilities I’ve thought of:
I don’t need it to be mindless knitting (I have my endless stockinette seamless hybrid sweater for that). I want something interesting. I’d kind of like to do cables – I’ve been doing a lot of lace lately, and I’d like to do something different. But lace is good too.
Any thoughts on what I should do next, and in what yarn(s)?
