Another FO!

And I have finished seaming another project. It is beautiful if I do say so myself, and something that I'm going to be very excited to knit for real.

The yarn was Lush, a lovely angora and merino blend from Classic Elite. I can't get over how lovely and soft it is. I expected it to shed much much more than it did, but really the only time I had some issues with fuzzies was when I was seaming it. While I was knitting, it held itself together in the yarn incredibly well.

The sweater, Autumn Pullover, was just a simple boatneck pattern with seed stitch edges. It calls for the yarn that I used (shocker!), I got gauge just about, and it fits like a dream.

This was the first time that I've ever seamed a big project, and it was much easier than I expected. It just took some patience, and a lot of watching internet videos and looking at different diagrams. Once I figured out how it worked, it seemed to turn out nicely. And the seams along the sleeve were incredible and fast.

So fiddly, yet so good

Since I was worried about running out of yarn, I decided to go ahead and do the applied icord finishing on the shoulders and neck of this sweater.

My mind, she is blown.



It's kind of a pain, since you end up knitting four stitches for each stitch, and I had to pick up a lot, but the finished product is amazing. It just adds something that polishes the sweater so very much. I was concerned because some of it was curling, but the applied icord just made it so much more substantial. I am in love, and am considering adding it to another sweater that I've been working on.I'm just about to my waist on the sweater, and I think I will keep going until I am out of yarn. I might need to buy another skein, but a four skeined vest for the price of one? I can definitely handle that.

Vest of Frustration

This vest has been started and stopped a few times. A friend gave me some delightful malabrigo with the one caveat that I actually use it, and not just let it wither away in my stash. Since she gifted me with three skeins, I figured I'd try it as a vest. However, I wasn't happy with most of the vest patterns that I could find. I wanted a deep scoop or v-neck in a worsted weight yarn. (Crisp was very close to what I was looking for, but in sport weight. And while I do love Wendy's patterns and advice, there is no way that I was going to pay for a pattern and then basically have to rewrite it.) I cast on for something of my own, but quickly realized I wasn't talented enough/was too lazy to do the math to make the neck look incredible.

Then, along came Bramblewood.

I love cables, and the scoop was just the right depth. I started the 33" on size 6s, and then realized that it was not going to work out for me. The gauge was making my hand hurt on 6s, so I moved up to 7s, but the size I was making was not going to be big enough for me in the shoulders. I also wasn't crazy about the way the cable pattern kind of blended into the rest of the stockinette. (If you look, when the cables are the furthest out, it makes it smooth between the rest of the stockinette body.) As I needed the needles for something out, I put the project in time out for about a month and moved on.

Lately, I've been kind of a knitting fiend. I seem to be happiest when I have a sweater-ish project and a sock project on the needles, so I decided to restart this (on size 7s, knitting the 36" size) on Wednesday. I did add an extra purl stitch to the cable pattern to keep it from flowing into the stockinette, and I'm really pleased with how it's looking. Once I joined in the round, I did find that the yarn has a slight tendency to pool, so I'm alternating skeins, and I am loving the striping effect that I'm getting. It is coming along quite nicely, and I'll hopefully have enough yarn to finish this either this weekend or early next week. The good news is that there's minimal finishing, so I won't have any reason not to have a smart fall vest soon.