The Sweater, She is Knit
And I am shaking with exhaustion. The shawl collar (all 260 odd stitches of it) was so wide I had to use 2 circular needles stopped with corks at the end, which had to support nearly 2 pounds of wool, flopping all over and stitches falling out, etc. Then had to do something called "short rows," for which there were only vague instructions and a blurry picture, to shape the collar.

Since I realized I turned the collar at the wrong marker about 2 1/2 rows (over 600 stitches done) into it, had to rip it back, then knit forward again, then started to bind off too soon, had to rip that out, then finally said **** it, this is what it's going to look like. And so it does. I still don't know whether I did the short rows right. Spent hours and hours and hours cruising the knitting sites online looking for similar sweater instructions, and finally did, buried in knitty.com, a wonderful site.

And realized what I was really looking for wasn't "short rows" but "short-rows-that-get-longer rows", unlike as described in the pile of books I'd taken out of the library. Added to the complication, was that I was trying to do it in knit-one, purl-one ribbing, and all the instructions assumed plain stockinette stitch. My brain got so twisted around, you can't believe. And since it was on the collar, right in front, it had to look right.

Still think it looks a little funky, but I think I can place a judicious button to hide a little of the mess.

And I wanted to blog about politics, and Rice, and gun control, and all sorts of other things, too!

Am now trying to get my second wind before I dive back in and sew the arms in, do the side seams, the weave all the junky yarn ends in somewhere.

And oh, yes, it's big. Either it has been growing in the night, crawling over the floor, feeding on crumbs and McDonalds crusts, or I've been shrinking. Yeah, right.


- posted by Cynthia @ 8:23 PM | | | Link |