Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fo, for me, Mrs. Darcy, pullover, Salina II, tweed
Mrs. Darcy:
and Salina:
Both were very easy knits, and any mistakes I made were purely my own fault and usually resulted from my laziness rather than any kind of, you know, devilry with the patterns.
Mrs. Darcy was knit from Rowan’s Yorkshire Tweed. I love the look of the yarn knit up; very timeless and cozy. The pattern is written for one size only, and Mary must be a really tall, skinny beanpole of a thing- the armholes are a bit of a squeeze for me and the sleeves turned out to be about four inches too long for me to wear without folding the cuffs over. It’s not a great sweater for cold weather, obviously, unless you can wear it over a turtleneck. It’ll look great over a pair of jeans, though, maybe with a white shirt, and I’ll save it for when the weather gets a little warmer later in February.
Likewise Salina’s a very simple, timeless sort of sweater, although she’s simple almost to the point of austerity. I like the moss-stitch on the collar, cuffs, and hem; it’s subtle, but keeps the sweater from being boring. The shell buttons called for are luminous, and treasures in their own right. This is the sort of sweater I could imagine wearing on a crisp Autumn night, or after dark in Seattle, and something I could conceivably wear for the next twenty years if it holds up well enough and I don’t gain a significant amount of weight. There’s a little bit of a hole on the cuff of the right sleeve which I still need to darn, and will do . . . eventually.
This weekend I received the Cascade Eco Wool I need for the Hemlock Ring blanket, and I’m still chugging away on the High Neck Pullover. I’m trying very hard to be good and not buy one of those drop spindle kits from Hello Yarn so I can justify buying a Kromski wheel a few years down the road. *headdesk*
Filed under: pullover, Salina II, wip | Tags: grey, lessons learned, pullover, Rowan, Salina II, tweed
Lesson #1- Don’t get lazy, get smart
Laziness in knitting or anywhere else is no good. While I try to demolish my laziness, I must tell myself I am capable of finding smart, time-saving techniques without compromising my results. For F’s sake, I spend far too much time knitting my garments to skimp on finishing them.
I set out on my second Salina intending to achieve a professional looking garment as opposed to my usual rustic, home-made look. I’d heard about this method of using k2tog to attach sleeves and decided to try it out. On Salina, it resulted in this nastiness:
Yuck. Not that bad, but not professional or polished either. This is what she looks like now:
Time and denial made me forget the second glaring mistake (other than my awful photography skills). Do you see it?
If you guessed that one sleeve is at least an inch longer than the other, you’d be correct. Last night I made the decision to rip back a few rows in the longer sleeve instead of adding some to the shorter; I’m not certain I have enough yarn to knit few more rows and attach both sleeves. I probably do, but if I have to tear out a chunk of this sweater again I think I might, you know, tear out my hair or something.
Long story short: Cutting corners doesn’t cut it. Take the extra few minutes- you’ll thank yourself later. (Boy oh boy, now I’m starting to sound like Monk)
Scoreboard for today:
Me: 0
Mediocrity: 2
