Category: project – Passel

Poor Passel.  Abandoned.  Sleeves Pinned to the blocking board.  What is a sweater to do?

The knitter on the other hand, has fallen head over heels in love with another, simpler, less complicated project. 

Truthfully, knitting time has consisted of car time and TV time, and seaming and embroidery do not fall into either category.  I am glued to my chair in front of the television watching Ken Burns’ The War, and as I watch I knit the brightly colored bird of paradise sock.  It is moving ahead at great speed and it is nice to have something that just works without my having to think about it much.

In fact the sock is so easy and so bright and cheerful, I almost feel guilty knitting it while I watch this intensely emotional series.

And I got my invitation to Ravelry today.  More distractions await.

In fact practically no knitting occurred during the entire week.  There was even a dearth of airplane knitting.

Somehow, once I left Dutchess County behind, I found that I had left my knitting spirit as well.  Not that this was a bad thing.  I was desperate to sew, desperate to reflect and reconnect with some part of myself that I thought I had lost, desperate to talk and sleep, eat and drink, spend time with friends and indulge in other creative outlets of the non-yarn variety.  All of those goals were met.  I sewed, often late into the night. 

I read more than I have for some time, mostly authors I had never read before with two exceptions (one book a pure pleasure reread), some good books, so fun entertaining books, at least one awful book, but I enjoyed the pure indulgent pleasure of curling up late at night, alone, or even isolating myself on the airplane, with only the words on the page to keep my company and my own ruminations.

In fact I only resumed knitting when I ran out of books on the flight
home.  After a delayed landing in Atlanta, and only 20 minutes between
when flight one arrived at the gate and flight two was scheduled to
depart, there was no time to seek out further reading matter.  I was
forced to knit.  By then I was ready.

   

The final sleeve has barely been begun, but now that I am more settled in myself, it shall not take long. In fact it is time to settle in my comfy chair with Passel and a glass of wine:  whether this is the most productive way to spend knitting time is yet to be determined, but all the ingredients for a pleasant evening are at hand.

Well, my haphazard approach to knitting this sweater has not changed. 

I rushed off to knitting group without doing the math and without measuring the row gauge on the pieces of the sweater I have already knitted.  So I had to do it all at group with the aid of a cell phone and quick call home to get DH to tell me the total length of the sweater on the board.  I knew the total number of rows in the sweater, so I could calculate from there.

I worked out that my row gauge is about 8.3 versus the 10 specified in the pattern.

Now I like the length of the sleeve as shown, and I had someone do a rough measurement of that sleeve  on me, and think it was ok, or barely a half an inch longer than I would like.   

I figured out I need to drop about 14 rows from the sweater.  The next decision was how to do that without altering the layout of the stripes so that they match up properly with the sweater.  I eventually decided to take it off the length of the body of the sleeve, dropping the lowest pink embroidered stripe. 

It was suggested that I could also shorten the length by removing one of the rows of ruffles, and that three ruffles is a bit excessive.  I agree that it is excessive, but I think I like the three ruffles, so they stayed in. 

We will see how it works out, but I think this will be quite nice.  The sleeve on me will be about the same length as the sleeve shown relative to my arm length, but the bottom of the sleeve will not line up so nicely with the bottom of the sweater since my torso is longer and my arms shorter than average.  I am not quite sure how that will affect the appearance of the sweater when it is being worn, another good reason to think things out before starting.

Of course, I spent more time talking than knitting, so I have no idea how it will actually work out yet.

Note to self:  write.it.down!

The body of Passel is on the blocking board and I have started the first sleeve. 

The entire process of getting this sweater pinned might have been easier, taken less time, and caused far less anxiety in the knitter if a few notes had been taken at the beginning of the project. 

I know I knitted a gauge swatch.  I know that my stitch gauge was correct.  Apparently my row gauge was not as the sweater I ended up with is longer than the one described in the pattern.  Since I have no idea what I did with that swatch, and I neglected to make any notes, there was a moment of profound frustration where I was ready to just slap the sweater down, let it dry, unravel it all, and put it aside until next spring.  Luckily I regained my senses and calmly figured things out.

As I said, apparently my row gauge was off, I am getting fewer rows per inch than the pattern.  This is not unusual for me.  I knit loosely and tend to get long skinny stitches. As I pinned the sweater I vaguely began to recall that I thought that my gauge was off just enough so that if I knit the pattern as written, I would end up with a length that would be better for my tall frame, i.e. 24 inches instead of 21 inches.  Apparently that was the case as the sweater pinned out to 24 inches and all the pieces line up and match (one point for the knitter).  I would have been happier if I had written this down though, and perhaps even done a few calculations (my actual gauge times number of rows in the sweater to confirm that I would get the desired length).  If I did do any math I don’t remember it and I certainly didn’t write it down. 

And I had been so much better about these little details up until this point.

Of course now I have to figure out how many rows per inch I am getting because I will have to alter the sleeve pattern.  I may be tall, but I am not blessed with long arms and legs and I often have to shorten sweater sleeves.  Well I don’t often have to shorten Anny Blatt patterns, but I don’t have to lengthen them either, and if I knit the sleeves as written but I am getting fewer than the 10 rows/inch stated in the pattern, I will have sleeves that are much too long.

Now I have to spend time doing math.  It’s not that the math is difficult, it’s just that I hate to have to do it in the middle of a project.  My own fault for not doing the prep work.

Well, with knitting group tonight, a bunch of waiting-room time scheduled tomorrow, and the US Open to watch, there appears to be ample knitting time on the horizon.  Hopefully I will make short work of those sleeves once I get the math done because although I might have knitted the body with a "by guess and by golly" plan, I don’t intend to use that technique for the sleeves.

Despite all my complex plans, multiple sweaters were not begun. 

My transient life was just too complicated, and I was too tired to knit, or too hot to knit, or too something anyway.  I did get all the yarn wound for the Kaffe Fassett Summer Tweed sweater and then did nothing except rearrange yarn storage facilities, moving the pending project pile to the hassock which used to contain the various odd balls and leftovers, and making a new bag for odd-balls.  Anything to actually avoid knitting I suppose.

There was no translation from the French. 

I did spend some time reading, often arriving at the hotel too tired to knit, especially to knit fine cotton in a dark room with uncomfortable chairs.  Instead I read.

Christian Jungersen’s The Exception was a good, gripping story, something to look forward to and wrap myself up in, and it completely took me by surprise.  It was farm more interesting than gauge swatches and knitting translations, and I found myself going back over sections and passages, trying to determine if I had missed something along the way.

But of course I did start some knitting, I just didn’t get very far with it.  It took me a few tries to get gauge, but I did start the Anny Blatt sweater, Passel.

This seemed like the easiest sweater with which to begin.  I don’t believe it needs much alteration in the shaping.  I like the length of the sweater, but 22" is shorter on me than on the model, ending up about hip bone height.  I needed to alter the waist shaping accordingly.  Even so I only got about 20 rows knitted during the two weeks the air-conditioning was out at the house and we were commuting from hotel to house daily.  I knitted more last Thursday at knitting class/group than in the entire previous two week period.  Still, I do need to check the armhole, shoulder and neckline shaping before I progress too far, lest I regret not having done so.

I am enjoying knitting the sweater, it is not that I don’t enjoy actually knitting it, more that life has been full and busy and I just haven’t found the time to sit down and relish the process.  Mango is really a lovely yarn to knit, and the intermittent rows of Muguet occur just frequently enough to keep the rows and rows of stockinette from becoming tedious.