Leaf Lace Redux

Remember my Leaf Lace Pullover for the Knitting Olympics?

You may recall I had some concerns over how the sweater would buckle not far down from the neckline...well, I took the sweater out for a debut, and the buckling (which became more pronounced) simply drove me bonkers.

So I spent several hours over the weekend attempting to figure out how to de-and reconstruct the sweater. It seemed there wasn't enough allowance for the shoulder area, resulting in the buckling - and since I'm so dreadful at Kitchner Stitch (you'd think I'd be an expert after grafting the sweater together!) I decided I'd remove the kitchner, and knit up from the bottom. Unfortunately, this meant a serious overhaul was in order. My limited understanding of set in sleeves (and my desire to not have to rip out and reshape the sleeve caps) in addition to my even more limited understanding of neckline shaping made for a frustrating evening of pattern modification.

Behold! The fruits of my labors! Excuse the color - the photos in the original leaf lace pullover post are more true. I was so pleased when I was finished I simply couldn't wait until I had proper lighting conditions!

The set in sleeves went in fairly well, though it seems perhaps I have a little bit more space than I anticipated in the bust area - the photo is a little unflattering, as it seems a little lumpy - I assure you, I'm not lumpy and neither is the sweater. I don't know what was going on...and I didn't want to wait to post until I had better photos taken. You'll notice some holes over on the right shoulder (on the left side of the photo) and in the center of the v-neck...

The holes on the shoulder were intentional...and if you look more closely, they will resolve themselves into the leaf lace pattern. The holes in the center of the v-neck were not intentional...but they seem to mirror the eyelet lace on the sleeve. The holes are an artifact of twisted stitches in the center of paired decreases. I had initially done the neckline with a regular knit stitch in the center, but later decided I didn't like how that looked and decided to redo it with a twisted stitch, resulting in those unanticipated openings.

A closeup of the neckline shows the little leaves and the center stitches of the v-neck in more detail. In case you're trying to puzzle out how I got those leaves there while knitting from the bottom of the sweater up: The answer is those are actually knit from the top down and kitchnered to the body. If you look closely, you can see a slight line where the kitchnering took place. You might also notice that my nice line of marching "V"s along side of the V-neck are slightly interrupted. This is due to the fact that knitted increases do not make the same detailing as knitted decreases (at least not the kind of increases I was using (M1 inc)). To get the marching V's back, I played around with a crochet slip stitch applied to the border. While not perfect, it's good enough for me, and can be redone if at some point I decide it needs to be better matched to the opposite side of the neckline.