.
.
.
.
.
I haven't done a work-in-progress Wednesday in a coon's age. The time has come. Nothing you have not seen here before, but this IS purportedly a knitting blog...
Starting with the oldest, the Tappan Zee cardigan:
Only a little progress made on this since you last saw it. I have divided for the armholes and knit one front nearly to the bottom of the arm scythe but had to put this aside for the 3 projects below, most of which have a due date.
Next, the And So Are You scarf, aka The Kill Bill for BGFE.
See what a tight crescent shape it is making? That is the result of the edge shaping -- a 2-stitch garter edge followed immediately on both RS and WS by a double increase. The pattern cautions against knitting the edge stitches too tightly but doesn't bother to explain why. Now I know: imagine a crescent-shaped scarf with one edge so tight the entire thing looks like a ram's horn that has curved around so far it has endangered the ram's brain. I fear I shall need to frog this and reknit with much looser edge stitches. Just glad I figured that out when I had only knit about 4 inches.
Next, the sweater for Ser Percival The Energetic:
Nearly the same progress on this one as the Tappan Zee; I am at the point where I need to divide for the arm leg holes. I have done the necessary math for the placement of the holes (no pattern for this one, just winging it) but haven't actually done the dividing. Given that Ser Percival has a very narrow waist that swells quickly to his impressively massive rib cage, I decided to do the increasing exactly like a top-down raglan seam, i.e., all in one place rather than evenly around the sweater.
You cannot tell from the photo, but the increases in the first couple stripes were done with lifted increases, and that caused the fabric to pucker slightly along the "seam". Then I switched to doing a YO in the non-increase rows and twisting that YO when I came to increase into it in the next row. This resulted in a much smoother fabric. (Duh. Of course it did; a lifted increase gives you no extra yarn for that increase, thus, it pulls in the stitch on either side and causes puckering. (I may have just discovered how to make this long-neglected WIP/UFO hang properly instead of drooping on either side of the line of increases at center front and back.) Percy's sweater is superwash so I was not sure if I could count on blocking to rectify the pucker; in a regular wool yarn it might not have been a problem in the end.)
Last is this little baby sweater for a co-worker's baby shower at the end of the month:
I am using the same pattern as I used for this baby sweater last year but rejiggered for DK weight. The yarn is Valley Superwash DK that I had left over from my own sweater plus the other colors in the same yarn that I bought and rejected. I love the Valley yarn; it is soft and squishy and sproingy and comes out of the washer and dryer looking exactly as it did going in (except, you know, clean). Machine launder-able is important to a new mom, imnsho...
The photo in the photo is the highly adorable Tulip sweater, much beloved of La Harlot; I am doing a similar stripe pattern but without the jigged edge between the stripes. The Tulip is a kit put together by Lettuce Knit in Toronto using Dream in Color worsted weight, a kit not available to me unless I drive to Toronto. (Hint: not gonna happen.) (Oops. I just checked Rav. The pattern is available.) I think my DK superwash sweater will be adorable, too. The stripe in progress is actually a dusty rose almost the same as the color in the rayon scarf visible at the left edge of the photo. My camera was not cooperating as well as I thought it should; it absolutely refused to flash for this one, and iPhoto could not correct the color well enough to make it accurate. Use your imagination, please.
btw, if you thought this post was actually a way for me to show off my knitting bags, you are absolutely right :-)
