A WordPress Site

Category: project – Boatneck Pullover

Look! I finished something.

The Brilla pullover is finished. It certainly took me long enough to sew it up, not the least because my work table in the sewing room, and I prefer to stand at a table while sewing up sweaters, has become a battleground in the war between two male cats to determine who is going to be sewing room cat. I don't care, I just want to declare my room a demilitarized zone.

Moisés wanted so badly to be included in the pictures. I however was less eager to have a kitten bitting and clawing my new sweater, creating snags before I even wore it out of the house. G. snapped a picture while I attempted to disconnect one growing squirming kitten from my sleeve.

Of course he did succeed in creating a small snag. Neither one of us noticed it until after the pictures were taken. Rest assured it has been corrected now.

Pattern: Boat Neck Pullover with Ruffle by Jean Hurwitz in the Filatura di Crosa Spring Summer 2009 Collection.

Yarn: Filatura di Crosa Brilla a fingering weight rayon/cotton blend.

My sleeves ended up a bit longer than the patten, and they are a little fuller as well.

The sleeve length issue is purely knitter error; there seem to be some lessons that I learn very slowly. I knew that my pre-blocking gauge was spot-on, and I also knew that post-blocking my gauge was ending up a little longer than the pattern specified. This was fine for the body of the sweater as I wanted it to be longer than the 23 maximum length specified in the pattern.

When I knitted the sleeves I didn't think about the length. Mistake.

First, my arms are short and most sweater patterns are too long. With the extra length that my sweater gained post blocking, I should have shortened the sleeve as I knitted.

On the other hand, these sleeves are wider than they appear on the model in the pattern, something I did not really expect, as I tend to think of my arms as being rather thick. Once again, if I had actually thought about the sleeve dimensions, I would have realized the sleeves were too wide. For this width of sleeve, I like the extra length, so I am happy with the result.

I really love the ruffled hem at the bottom of the sweater and the sleeves.

I would judge this sweater a success. I will have to be careful wearing it though; at least until Moisés has learned a few manners.

July 19, 2009
Knitting Update

I'm back!

I never went anywhere, I was just suffering from a major slowdown in motivation. You haven't missed much; pretty much every project I mentioned before is exactly where I left it.

The Blue Sky Cropped Turtleneck is patiently waiting for me to pick it up and knit the ribbed bottom.

Mine is waiting to be blocked. I did order the beads however, and they are also waiting for Mine to be blocked.

I started, and finished knitting, the Green Filatura di Crosa boatneck pullover. But it sat around for two or three weeks while I went on a major elimination round, tackling a bunch of unfinished projects around the house. It has been on the blocking board since Thursday, and it finally dried yesterday; before that the air was too damp and it was too cool for the air-conditioning to come on and suck that moisture out of the air.

I don't think I will get to it today. I am working on sorting through years of accumulated clothing in my closets, and I will not finish today but I have made a big start. And I really want to think not just about what I want to knit, but what I will wear, and what I need to go with other things in the closet.

Knitting has also been slow because we have a kitten in the house, Moisés. He is about 3 months old and doesn't really bother the knitting if I am not working on it; there are far to many other attractive things to get into, as well as two other cats to terrorize, but if I am sitting down and actually attempting to knit he wants to be right there in the middle of it all, as if he assumes that there is nothing I would be doing that is not meant to be for him.

I have managed to train 5 previous cats to leave the knitting alone and to come to terms with the idea that they can sit in my lap and not play with the knitting, or they can go elsewhere. I am confident that Moisés too will learn in time.

I finished the back of this summer top, from Gedifra Highlights 091, this morning during the telecast of the men's finals at Wimbledon. It is a fast and easy project, although it has taken me two weeks, mostly due to interference as discussed above.

Here is a picture of the sweater from the book. I am using the same yarn, in a different color obviously, and am really enjoying knitting it. It feels like it will be light and cool and lovely to wear.

I am not sure at this point if I will have anything to wear with it, although that was not my intention. The closet clean-out process has been brutal. All of the projects listed above look safe; I believe I have things to go with each of them, but quite a few things have been tossed and the carnage goes on.

It looks like I will be very busy finishing up UFO's and filling in gaps when the whole process is finished.

July 5, 2009
Travel Projects

Tuesday morning we leave for Knoxville.

I decided not to take the blue sky alpaca pullover on the trip, mostly because it is at a stage where it is large and cumbersome and because I had hoped to finish it first, but that is not likely to happen. Even so, I am thinking spring knitting for this trip and alpaca thing will not take that long to finish when I do get home.

Saturday was packing day. I am one of those weird people who, in ideal circumstances, likes to have everything packed and ready to go well in advance. I don't forget things that way, and I am not running around like a maniac tearing the house apart. I really do not like returning to a house that looks like a cyclone-ravaged disaster area, which is the likely result if I put things off until the last minute. I also planned to pick my knitting projects and knit swatches, but I actually didn't finish the swatches for the second project until today.

I am taking two projects with me. This may be too much, especially considering that the last couple of trips I have not gotten much knitting while I was in Knoxville, and I did most of the driving. I am hoping that G and I will share the driving this trip and that will, of course, add to my knitting time.

The first project on my list is the boatneck pullover with ruffle from the new Spring/Summer 2009 Filatura di Crosa book.

I will be knitting it of Brilla in this lovely deep green color:

It seems that my gauge is getting tighter or perhaps just more consistent because I automatically cast on with smaller needles for the swatch, which is usual for me, only to have the swatch turn out too small. The pattern calls for 7 skeins and I have 8. I hope that is enough to lengthen the sweater by about 2 inches. The instructions say the longest size is 23" but that the sweater is about 2 inches shorter when worn because of the width-wise stretch.

I am also taking along some Rowan Bamboo Tape in a lovely gray color in order to knit Mine from last summer's Rowan book (#43).

I could have sworn I had a photo of the yarn as well, but can't locate it now. It is dark gray, similar to the color in the photo; it might even be the same color.

This swatch was easier since I knit Granite last fall with the same yarn at the same gauge. I did make a new swatch just to be sure.

I sat and made the swatch this morning while I was reformatting my old Ipod and downloading some audiobooks onto it since G has decided he wants to try listening to books on tape and learn to use the Ipod so he can listen to music while he walks It was a rather pleasant way to sit and do that kind of otherwise boring task. And it looks like our "computer" classes will be expanded to cover computer, Ipod, and Kindle, as he is also having trouble seeing the typeface on most books and finds the large print on the kindle much easier to use, even though he doesn't like holding the device as much as reading from a regular book with pages.

I don't really intend to start either of these projects until we are actually on the road. Any knitting tonight or tomorrow will be on the bulky alpaca. When I return I will have these projects to finish up and it will also be time to finally face the UFO corner.

March 8, 2009