To be announced

i keep telling myself that i should be learning how to spin, but i am intimidated by it, so i've taken a bit of a break to moonlight on a freestyle sweater project with the Noro Yarn of Drama.

the project i take my inspiration from is called Klaralund (that's a ravelry project page, and i suspect you need to be a member to see it)

basically it's an incredibly simple sweater pattern. You knit up four rectanagles. two of them form the sleeves and the shoulder saddle/yoke and the v-neckline, and then the other two rectangles are the body. the self striping yarn makes for colour interest, and this is a project thati think is as suited to noro as things made from squares.

but I didn't dig where the yoke fell on most of the women. it worked best on ladies without a prominent bust - and while I cannot claim any sort of abundance in the bosoms department, i felt i could do better for my figure if i just... messed with it a bit.

and now it's not simple. :)

I came to knitting construction from sewing construction. so i address the challenge of wrapping a three dimensional figure with a 2-d surface in knitting in the ways that I would do with flat fabric. so I wind up creating things with very obvious visual shaping - but because I prefer to work in the round, on the fly and seamless, i find some crazed ways to create this shaping. ihave a lot of fun doing this, i and i think it lends a distinctive air to things that i make. ( here's an example of what I mean: )


now i'm going to talk about knitting in my own personal kniting jargon. i'm sorry, non-knitters. :) i'm sorry, knitters who aren't me. :) this is me recording an overview of my project notes, and i just decided to share it for no real reason other than whim.

i hate seams, so i decided to avoid back and forth knitting and seaming wherever i could. So i cast on 60 stitches on my wee 16" 6mm circ, knit a few rounds garter, and then 60 rows of stockinette - and decided that i much preferred the reverse stockinette side and the way it treated the colour changes of noro kureyon.

this sleeve length is just a wee bit past my elbows. i decided that with that amount of sleeve fullness i'd find the sleeves much less cumbersome if they were draping elegantly off my elbows rather than dragging in my meal at my wrists.

When i got to the shoulder saddle/yoke, i decided that I wanted it to be the bodice as well. so i crocheted a chain of waste yarn, picked up 15 stitches to make a provisional cast on, and started gartering back and forth. I wound up with a bit of a stockinette ditch at my cast-on points, decided that i didn't mind it, and then discovered that it was vital to my shaping.

i proceeded from that ditch for 13 ridges of garter, trying the sleeve on as i went, and then short rowed the front for bodice shaping - vertical bust darts. i wrapped the first 2 rows as every stitch, and then wrapped back every other stitch for four more. I don't need a lot of front on my front, and then symmetrically wrapped back to create the dart. (if you've done horizontal front row shaping on a sweater at the bust, or perhaps for a sock heel, that's what i've done here, except vertically, and only on one end..)

i gartered plain a bit - only three ridges, and realized that my center back was in the right spot, but I still needed some coverage in the front - so I short rowed the front in order to slant the neckline and get more yarn in the front where i needed it. when I'd gotten the coverage i wanted i just knitted along the whole row, past my wraps, because the short rowing was to create a \ shape and not a 3d shaping as for the bust, and bound off.

my right hand sleeve is the same, except mirrored at the bust shaping to be the right hand sleeve. once it's don, i will seam up a couple stiches at the center back and do a fitting to decide if i've got it right for the bust, right for the shoulder drape, how far to seam up the center back and the center front. when i'm happy with the bodice fit, i will pick up stiches along the bottom edge for the bodice, garter in the round for five ridges, and then mindless stockinette (to show reverse as the right side) while fitting to adjust for waist shaping... and then hem the bottom in the round in garter at a length suitable for wear with low rise jeans.

i prefer making sweaters top down in this way because I *can* fit them to me as I go. Which means that I'm a good craftsman, but i'm not who you want writing knitting patterns!

this isn't a pattern so much as it is a method that each knitter would have to adjust for themselves. when i say that I knit for 13 rides of garter, that is an incredibly personal measurement, meant to fit me. if you were to try the same sweater, even if you used the same yarn and got the same gauge, 13 ridges might not be enough. or too much. doing a provisional cast on at the underarm for 15 stitches to make the bodice might be too short, or too long. i'm going to shape the body as an hourglass to fit my figure, and because I can do a bit of fit and flare with this yarn - but i can see how a drapier yarn could be much better suited to an a-line drop from the underbust band. I can see a way to do this so the body stripes run vertically, and wouldn't that be fun? but i think if i tired to explain how to do that i would fail miserably.

Anyway, I'll post pictures of this sweater when i'm done, and show you what happens when I decide to modify an existing pattern.

and then take another crack at explaining it again. :)

on the needles

alpaca yarn anklet - 50%.
Garnstudio 100% alpaca, fingering/lace weight. one sock finished, and successfully bound off. new techniques leraned - Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn bind off (fast, easy, stretchy. I'm sold.)

cabled coif - 100%.
Cascade 220 100% wool, worsted/double knitting weight. blocked yesterday, now off the board and ready to give.

wrap dress - about 40%.
Bernat Harmony 100% arcylic, aran wieght. front right panel, half the back, and one sleeve knitted. added a ribbing detail at the back for some extra shaping.

danica entrelac scarf 40% (?)

Cascade 220 100% wool, stash 100% wool. I've been weaving the ends as I go. I think I'm going to need to buy two more balls of the cascade 220, but I'll knit till I run out and see if that's long enough.

because I like LONG scarves. I'll take a picture of my not-a-doctor-who scarf and you'll see what I mean.

lace alpaca scarf 0%

the drop stitch lace is a disaster. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this stuff. other than hate it with all the hate. perhaps I'll double the strands and make a halfdome out of it. (obviously Jesse Loesberg is my fave designer of the moment - he designed Danica, as well.)

yarn I'm lusting over - Lorna's Laces Lion and Lamb. it's very expensive (at 40 bucks for a 220 yd skein,) so I'll probably do a small project with it.

projects I want to do next

- Luna Lovegood's Gryffindor Scarf (my own design)
- Entrelac Argyle vest (my own design - dunno if it'll work, but if it does it'll be cool)
- a bulky sweater with a horribly complicated cabling detail. check that out. I'll probably go spare, doing that.

This Time I bought a lace weight 100% alpaca in this most gorgeous teal blue. I bought 2 180M balls.

I'm knitting a lace stole on 7mm needles, so it's really cobwebby.

and so soft. I can't believe it. It's just SO SOFT.

I need more of this yarn. more, more.

oh, and Lewiscraft went out of business. I was originally going to buy some of the mohair they keep in stock, and wal-mart didn't have anything remotely close to what i wanted (not to mention their yarn stock is mostly pretty excreable.) so it was back to the specialty yarn shop for me...

I went to the house of Evil Yarn Enabling and bought a set of short 2.5mm DPN (Bryspun flex, my favorite brand of DPNS) and two 50g balls of Pingouin Laine Nylon in this Most Lovely Blue.

I decided I wanted to do a toe-up sock, so I taught myself the figure 8 cast on. OMG tiny needles! but I've increased the toe and I'm working on the instep now. I decided that I was going to do a varied width bamboo rib, and I've just gotten far enough to do the first set of ribs.

I really wanted some fine cashmere for stupid amounts of luxury socks, but imported italion wool from a french yarn company should be snotty enough, right?

I'm worried about figuring how to turn the heel with short-row knitting, but I can figure it out when the time comes. blue! socks!

after I discovered (much to my horror) that someone had thrown away the envelope containing my simplicity 9769 pattern, I had a mad idea to draft a pattern myelf. I bought some cheap canvas from fabricland, and put together a very makeshift mockup. I'm pleased with how it worked out in general, but I think that I should have been more careful in placing my busk and my lacing holes to get a better idea of how it works.

and I think I might need to take the top in a wee little bit.

( Pictures back here )

I think I understand why so many of the corsets I see have the bone casings on top of the seams - what a NIGHTMARE trying to sew them in the back!

crossposted to corsetmakers

flossing mockups for bone casings soon, I promise.

I'm gonna use this:

-----BEGIN KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

KCR+ Exp SPM++ Pl Steel Bam- Wool++ Lux<++ Syn Stash-<++ Scale<+++ Fin- Ent? FI? Int? Tex+<+++ Lace<++ Felt DPN+ Flat- Circ++ SNB<+ KIP++ EZ? FO+ WIP+ GaugeW+ ALTCr++SW++

------END KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Because really, bios suck. they're either pretentious or silly. and why not stick with silly?

( treasure! )

they're going to decorate teakwood hair sticks. never fear, you'll get to see those too.

( the cyborg meme and the swearword meme. )

	August 19, 2005 #4 columbines
	August 19, 2005 #5 copper Dragonfly

I have completed my daft deep space scarf, and a black bumpy wool scarf that visually reminds me of persian lamb. i am now at loose ends. I could try more of my laughable knitting. if i don't practice, I'll never get good at it, right?