Monday, September 24, 2007

Avast, at last!


Pattern: Avast from Knitty
Yarn: SWTC Karaoke in Black Sheep Colorway (50-50 wool & soysilk)
Needles: US 5 and US7 - managed to hit gauge perfectly :D
Size: Medium
Modifications: Slightly longer torso (I think) longer sleeves, and I opted to knit the sleeves in the round and kitchner the underarm seam rather than seam it. Essentially the sweater is seamless :)

Comments: I honestly don't recall if I washed the swatch before carrying on with this sweater - though it is fair to say that even if I had, I'm not sure I would have captured the increase in length of the finished object or not - after all, a full size sweater has quite a bit more material and weight to it than a tiny little 4x4 swatch. That said, the sweater fits great through the torso, though both the arms and the body are a touch on the long side...some of this may also be simply due to the ease that is allowed - when I took the measurements to knit to, I took exact measurements from the underarm to determine sleeve length and body length on the sweater - it should be obvious that the sweater does have some ease to it, and does not fit tightly into the underarm of the wearer (thank goodness) :)

The zipper (hard to see) actually goes all the way from the waist to the top of the collar - so in cooler weather, it can be zipped completely to form a mock turtleneck. I opted to take the sweater in to my local tailor to have the zipper installed - at 31.5-inches, I wasn't about to hand sew it in, and I certainly wasn't about to trust it to my sewing machine.

Classic in design, and easy to knit (oy, the miles of stockinette!) - I wound up knitting from a couple balls of yarn at a time in an attempt to reduce the broad striping that Karaoke tends to do. This is actually the first sweater I've knit for my Dear Husband, and he seems to like it well enough - we'll see once the weather cools down since he wasn't thrilled to be modeling it with the temps still over 100F down here!

Monday, September 17, 2007

Wabenschal Scarf


Pattern: Wabenschal
Needles: US8
Yarn: Spritely Goods Sylph Superwash Merino Yarn in Limited Edition Spring Chaparral colorway (less than one skein)
Finished Dimensions: (approximate) 10 inches by 7 feet

Comments: Quick to knit, this lace scarf is knit on the bias and is shaped like a long thin parallelogram. I found the pattern simple and easy to follow, with clear charts. For those just learning how to read charts, this may be an easy pattern to learn on - unfortunately for those that don't read charts, the instructions are not knit line by line. I always find it a bit of a challenge to figure out when a rectangular lace piece is "long enough" because they do stretch quite a bit in the blocking - in this case, I blocked this piece twice - the first time, it was more narrow and over 8 feet in length! Since it is intended to be used as a scarf (though I'm sure it can also be used as a table runner), I figured I should reblock it to get it down to a more manageable length. By stretching it a bit wider than it was originally when first blocked, I managed to "shrink" it by about a foot.