Really, the back of the sweater

Oh, joy supreme!

This morning I looked at my sweater back, measured, and did a little dance, because I could just shape the shoulders and I was done!

I still have the two front pieces to do, and so should not celebrate too much, but it is so nice to cast something off and start something new, even if it is another piece of the same garment!

I still have one more day of NaKniSweMo, so I'll certainly try to get started on a front!

The back of the sweater

First, this morning, I wrote the title of this post. Yessirree, I thought, I will finish the back today! Only 2 weeks behind schedule!

I knit a row and measured and something else came up. I found myself walking Elaine to a friend's house, down near Romni Wools. Aha, said I, I can drop in and get the last skein of cotton for Ribwarmer II. But alas, Romni is closed on Sundays! At least I got my walk!

So I came home, got ready for tonight's street dinner party, knit a row, measured.... Elaine had another playdate, I took the girl home at 5 pm, jumped in the shower -- we're going out at 6 pm. It's 5:57.

Tomorrow, I will finish the last inch of the back, and show it to you! Really!

That will cover November 29, and November 30 will deal with the end results of NaBloPoMo and NaKniSweMo!

A new ball of Noro

I like to rewind the Noro from the store-bought balls into my own centre-pull balls, so that I can find any knots. In the first two balls, I had one or two knots in each, but this last one had none.

I was also really pleased to come across that turquoise again, and can't wait to knit with it!

The twilight zone, right in my own house

Here's what I did:

Cast on, knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit cast off at underarm. Count.

What?

Count again, add on fingers, look carefully, count again.

There are two mistakes so far. Neither seems fatal, though neither can be explained by reason alone. Cue scary music.

Firstly, one of the columns of lace is two stitches closer to the edge than the other at the underarm, but not at the bottom. Did I really miss those final k2togs in the lace?

Hmm, it looks like I might have done that once.

The other problem is that I have 4 more stitches than I should have. Cue really scary music. Four stitches!? Four!!??

Lucky for me they are tiny and I can't see them looking obtrusive anywhere. I did all the proper cast-offs and decs at the underarm and don't want to go mucking about with that, because I have to set in the sleeves. I have to fiddle with the top of the back and shoulders anyway, because I added stitches to the width, so I will just have to fiddle a bit differently now.

Four stitches?? How did that happen?

Back to NaKniSweMo

Progress thus far:


I think if I continue in a slightly obsessive way, this will be complete at the end of the month. The "want to knit" pile is getting huge, but I think monomania is the only way to go now.

This is hard to photograph

The light these days is wintry and grey, and it's always hard to get good pictures of laciness, I find. Next weekend we turn back the clocks, and then it's really winter and the darkness will really close in. But still, we carry on!

This is inside with a flash. What it is meant to show is the plain knitting in the middle of the back, and the two columns of lace on either side.


That didn't inspire me with confidence, so I held the piece up to the window and took this:


See, lace and plain... Okay, still not great... Let's go outside:



I really like this piece, but can't seem to show you how great it is! There are a couple of inches of the sleeve lace pattern all round the bottom, and then the main part of the body will be like this, plain bits and lace columns. The stocking stitch looks great, if I do say so! The colours are perfect and although it seems a bit rough for such delicate stuff, I'm told it will soften up with a wash.

Now my equilibrium is about to be messed with again, because I just got a new Vogue Knitting in the mail. The cover promises lace scarves... oh, no!

Plans for the sweater

Here we are again! This might get boring!

I have started the body of my sweater. After making two sleeves in this lace pattern, 2.5 inches more of it is about 2.5 inches too much! But, I will only need to do a couple of rows of that pattern today, and that'll be done.

I am making one or two big changes to the pattern. (Look, it's on You Tube!) The pattern calls for bands of a slightly different lace pattern straight across the back, and then tilty and short-rowed across the front. I don't want the short rows on the front, because, especially with the colour changes of the Noro, I think it would look .... terrible.

I could just do the horizontal rows of lace on both the back and front, or I could change it all up, and make the lace pattern vertical. The Noro stripes will be very thin, since they are designed to be on a sock and I am using them on my body, and I don't think the horizontal lace would add any excitement, but put the lace vertical and I think that would add pizzazz and zing and "it."

Now, since I so far only have about 2.3 inches of lace on the bottom of my back piece, I will get to work on that and I hope to get enough done to make an interesting picture for tomorrow!

Starting this November regime

This month I have 2 goals: blog every day, and finish my Noro sock yarn sweater! I'm happy to see many of my fave bloggers going for the NaBloPoMo, too!

The sleeves of the sweater are done, so my 50,000 stitches will be all in the body.

As you can see, the sleeves started out to be identical! This was not on purpose! One of the things we have to accept about this yarn is that the stripes will be different widths on sleeves, back, cardi fronts. There is no way to make the back stripes and the front stripes match, because the fronts are half the width of the body, so the stripes are over twice as many rows. And that is that.

So, one expects unevenness, disjointedness and general mayhem, colourwise.

You can imagine my shock when the sleeves just happened to turn out the same! How did that happen!?

You can also see where I had to change balls in this first sleeve. (Hint: tiny little row of turquoise.) Since I was embracing the mayhem, I just continued with the logical bit of yarn without trying to match anything up. And used just enough so that the second sleeve started at the same point in the sequence! Argh. Should I have found a new ball? We'll see when we get to the fronts.

I think enough mayhem may have been introduced with the second sleeve cap:


Now, since I mean to blog every day, I think this is enough for day one!