arwen: November 2006 Archives

I'll do just about anything I can do lessen the amount of finishing on a sweater. So I knew I'd be doing the hem a bit differently. The pattern instructs you to sew the hem to the inside of the sweater when you're done.

Instead, I cast on provisionally...

knit the hem, the purl turning row, and enough rows to match up with the hem.

To make it easier to knit the hem, I pin it together so I'm not fighting the curl of the stockinette, and thread a smaller needle through the yarn holding the provisional stitches.

Then, I knit together one stitch from the front with one stitch from the bottom of the hem, as if I was doing a k2tog*.

A pic of the front and back...

It doesn't look any different, but I've skipped a couple hours of finishing. That sure feels different.

*edited - originally i wrote ssk but that's not what I do...I was writing this post a little too late at night!

The saga of this yarn continues, but I'm getting closer people!

I love working out sizing issues, but these are the most problems I've dealt with all at once.

• Finished Sizes are calculated with the center cable band overlapping. I'm planning to insert a zipper, so I have to account for that.
• Yarn Bloom is the most drastic I've ever experienced. hate the bloom But it's the bloom that gives the yarn its incredible loft. love the bloom
• Yarn Resilliency or lack thereof. Take a look at this example

pre-stretching	post-stretching

That was after stretching it a half dozen times, and not abusively.

Again, you readers bailed me out. Bigtime.

So here's the plan.

• Knit the fronts, taking into account the lack of cable overlap, yarn bloom and yarn stretch.
• Wash both fronts and see how much they actually grow.
• Stretch them a little.
• Decide how wide to make the back.
• Insert periodic self-doubt and profanity.

The things we do for pretty yarn.

I swatched and washed the Kathmandu yesterday. It took several tries before I got the gauge right.

This stuff blooms *a lot*. The recommended needles are 5 mm / US 8. After washing the swatch on those needles, I got 3.75 stitches per inch. Uhm, not even close to the 4.5 listed on the ball band.

I went down to a 4.25 mm / US 6 to get that gauge post-washing. I really didn't mind though -- I prefer the feeling of smaller needles in my hands anyway.

Several of you commented that the yarn bloomed when washing and stretched when wearing.

Since I was between sizes, I went with the smaller size. It should be about 1.5-2 inches smaller than the cardi I'm measuring against (a favorite from Banana Republic -- no I didn't knit this one!) when it's washed, so if it stretches a bit I should be OK.

Do you see what I see?

Here, take a closer look.

And no, it hasn't even been washed yet.

What gives? Well, it took me a while to piece it all together. I think I knitted my swatch tightly when trying to get the gauge to go down to 4.5 stitches per inch. But when I'm just casually sitting and knitting, I'm knitting at my more normal tension. The yarn is just about 4 stitches per inch.

This just isn't going to cut it.

Since both Jacqueline and Julia mentioned that the yarn stretches out with time, I don't want to knit it so loosely. I'm going to have to experiment a bit more and see what I can come up with.

For those of you who have used this yarn -- what gauge (post-washing) did you get? What kind of needles did you use?

I changed my mind on the yarn I'm using for Arwen. The Aurora 8 was stuck in customs so I went down to Rosie's yesterday where Carol helped me pick out a great replacement -- Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran.

Replacement is really the wrong word, because I'm *much* happier with this yarn than my original choice. I think the less vibrant color suits the design better, and I've been wanting to try this yarn (or the Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran that preceeded it) for a few years now.

The color is a beautiful, shadowy shade of blue and green. I'll be swatching and casting on today. This rainy weather is a perfect stay-in-the-house-and-knit kinda day.

No matter how great a design is, I always need to make some mods to make it fit my body and style preferences.

The biggest mod I'm planning is to change the sleeve type. Arwen's sleeve is knit together with the body. Something like this.

At first I was excited to try out a new sleeve type, but after thinking about it, this sleeve will not work well for me.

Let's take a look at a traditional set-in sleeve.

On the left, a pretty standard armhole for a set-in sleeve. On the right, what my armhole looks like.

When you're busty, you have more stitches to decrease before you get to the shoulder width. See the difference in the widths of the pink shading?

So, let's go back to the Arwen sleeve.

At first I thought I'd add a dart between the arm and the body, to ease in the additional fabric under the arm. Like this:

I think it will work, but I'd have to play around with the numbers, and possibly buy some cheap knit fabric and cut it up as a sample first.

I've been doing a lot of futzing around with design elements lately. So I'm feeling lazy.

Instead, I'm going with my tried and true raglan sleeve. I know I can make it work, and it gives me an excuse to write up a tutorial on how to create the right raglan for your body.

There are 2 or 3 other mods that I'm planning:

• Lengthen the body.
• Add a closure -- probably a zipper .
• Add in some body shaping. I'm not sure if I'll do short rows at the bust, or waist shaping, or a little of both. But just like I would need to add in some shaping to bridge the size differences between my body circumference at the armhole and shoulders, I need to bridge the difference between my hips, waist and bust.

I want to stress though, there is no problem with the pattern as written. These are mods for my body, so it will fit my proportions and style preferences.

In fact, a really nice feature about this sweater is that modifying its width or length is super-simple. It's a great sweater if you want to ease yourself into modifying a pattern to fit your body.

If you're between sizes and want a more custom fit, you can cast on a few less or more stitches and get just the width you want. Since you don't have to worry about armhole sizing, you don't need to plan for how to deal with those extra stitches when you get to that point.

Who's in with me?

There are no rules to this KAL, just a bunch of knitters enjoying a great pattern. I created a Yahoo Group so we have a place to talk, ask questions, and share advice.

I've already ordered my yarn -- Aurora 8 in a dark, bright blue. It should be here next weekend.

If you're interested in joining the KAL leave a comment here (to get in the list on the sidebar) and then go to the Yahoo! Group to become a member of the list.

Oooh, I can't wait to get started!