Meanwhile, I'm Knitting

Sweater News

The Rhinebeck sweater isn't done yet, but we're getting there.

The collar is finished and now fits over my pointy little head. The hem has been completely redone and doesn't flip or flare (I'll tell you what I did in another post).

Then two nights ago I sat down, slid another episode of the original Forsyte Saga into the player (Fleur Forsyte, you are a conniving bitch, but I cannot look away) and wove in all the ends.

Talk about maximum result for minimum effort. It only took me about an hour, but when I was finished the sweater seemed to have taken a giant leap towards completion.

Encouraged by this, I did what I should not have done. I tried something new, when I ought to have shut the lights out and gone to bed.

The underarm stitches had been patiently hanging around on waste yarn since I'd put them there weeks ago. I slid those on the right side onto two needles, propped up Knitting Without Tears on the work table and decided this would be the perfect time to learn stockinette weaving.

Do I even need to tell you what happened next? No, I didn't think so.

Happily, the Jo Sharp wool I'm using is quite soft, so the living room window didn't break when the sweater hit it.

There's no photo. I can't even draw you a picture. It's too painful to recall. Though not as painful as undoing the screwy weaving and putting 40 stitches back on the needles again, dropping two for every one that gave no trouble.

[Note to Kathy Merrick: at this point I am so grateful to my crochet hook just for being there that I think I may need to learn to crochet out of sheer gratitude.]

The sweater and I will reconvene tonight (early) to revisit the matter of underarm weaving. I shall be armed with the video demonstration of Elizabeth Zimmerman weaving (thanks, Greg!), Montse Stanley, the Vogue Knitting Reference, and Mary Thomas. And it is going to work, or this time I'm throwing the sweater at the window again, but this time the window is going to be open.

Lace Report

If you had told me back during the "Branching Out" era that I would some day knit lace to relax, I would have said you were nuts.

But that's what I'm doing. Granted, we're talking dreadfully simple lace, knitted with sock yarn (Nature Spun, I think) on US 2 3/4 Inox needles.

Here's a picture:



I know, I know. It's not much. There's no plan for it, even. I'm just making a sampler using stitch patterns I learned in my classes at Stitches Midwest. When I get tired of working a pattern, I knit a few plain rows and do a different one.

Perhaps I will call this the "Fear of Commitment" stole.

Along the bottom is the Estonian "Peacock" pattern, with the "Twig" pattern running up both sides above. In the middle is "Chain Hearts," which comes from Orenburg, in a field of garter stitch. Above all of that, in progress, is the Estonian "Leaf" pattern (no nupps).

This is what I've been doing on the train morning and evening, and loving it. I'll keep knitting it until I get sick of it or run out of yarn, then bind it off and use it to practice blocking. It's too wide to be a scarf, so I'm calling it a stole.

Stole, scarf, table runner, antimacassar–whatever. All I know is it has no neckline and no underarms, and right now that's enough for me, baby.