I’ve been meaning to pile up all my works in progress and blog about them here to guilt myself into action, but I have been completely unmotivated to do so. So much for finishing most of them before the end of summer. But, summer doesn’t really end in Texas until some time in November, so I guess I’ve got a few months to actually finish something.

Before:

Petal used to look like an almost-complete sweater. I even seamed everything except for one sleeve, and all the ends were woven in.

Now:

The fit was bad enough to frog pretty much the whole sweater. The worst offender was completely my fault - I went up a size for the hip measurement, because I thought that my hips Are Not Shaped Like That. But as it turns out? They are! You knit the bottom band sideways, and then pick up stitches for the body. The picked-up-stitches measurement seemed pretty small, so I went up a size. However, that bottom band is a few inches wide, so the picked-up-stitches location was a few inches up from the bottom of the sweater, and going up a size made the sweater seem baggy and kind of frumpy.

I’d rather rip and redo this sweater than create yet another sweater that I never wear. I’ve already reknit the front, and the crumply yarn above is the back, waiting its turn. I did salvage the bottom band - it has less stretch (because it’s knit sideways) than the body of the sweater, so the size larger band feels like it fits perfectly.

In addition to knitting the right freaking size, I added about an inch of short row bust shaping (and could have done more), and fixed the top triangles. The sweater as knit is not going to cover my bra straps - they stick out where the top of the front piece meets the bottom of the triangles. I decided to work the triangles attached to the front piece, and they are 8 stitches wider at their base than the pattern calls for.

This is my main project right now, so hopefully I can finish it before the theoretical winter comes to this state.

Cambridge Jacket for Rob. Meh. I have a sleeve and a back and a half knit. I think my gauge was off, hence the back reknitting, but it’s been so long that I really don’t remember. I think this is going to get frogged in favor of a seamless hybrid. Those always turn out nice. The cool thing about digging this out is that I found my size 8 knitpicks tips and two 24 inch cords. I thought I had a monster in my closet eating all my 24″ cords, but here they were the whole time.

The new kid on the block: the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I’ll be using Rowan Cashcotton DK for this - from the stash! Boo yah, no yarn buying for me! I was thisclose to buying some of the big Webs Jaeger closeout, but I recently reorganized my stash and remembered how many sweater amounts of yarn I have. I think I’m going to provisionally cast on the yoke stitches and knit the yoke first because it’s the fun part!

Questions for y’all (see, I’m texan, right?):

1. How much ease do you put into cardigans? I’m between two sizes of the Tangled Yoke, and I’m wondering how little ease I can go before the buttonband is going to gape. I’ll likely be wearing this with a very light layer underneath, so I’m not too worried about it being a layering piece over something bulky.

2. Have you submitted your goods to Yarnival! yet?

Oh, and I’ve also suddenly stopped receiving my wordpress comment emails. Wah! So if you don’t hear from me (like I’m ever on top of my email in the first place), now you know why. !@#$!

I’m back! I effectively hid away from the internets and email for a couple of weeks, getting my ass whomped at work and unpacking like a fiend. Rob did most of the heavy packing for us, so I’ve been in charge of unloading everything into the house. We also hit Ikea, and bought an awesome rug, I can’t wait to set it up. It’s so easy to spend lots of money there in very small increments - ooh, a cheap photo frame! And a garlic press! And a shower curtain! And a hamper! So much fun!

There has been some knitting:

A full sleeve of the Cambridge Jacket, doubling as my gauge swatch. Swatches lie, people, and that sucks. I also have the back knit up to the arm shaping, but I may have to reknit it due to the horrid lies that my gauge swatch was telling.

But mostly, we’ve been spending a lot of time out here:

Our front porch, completely worth the many zeros that it cost. So awesome. The weather has been in the high 70’s here, and we’ve been putting lots of quality porch time in before the weather turns to humid hell and the mosquitoes show up.

I have lots to post about, like a proper FO post for the Asymmetrical Cardigan and for Sarcelle (it’s finally complete and blocked, horray!). And of course some house photos, once all the boxes are long gone!

Seaming the Asymmetrical Jacket. We’ve got one buttonband and the collar down, all that remains is the second buttonband and sleeve cuffs. The second buttonband gets the buttonholes, and I’m changing the buttonhole placement from the pattern, so it requires some serious procrastination.

I tried on the sweater yesterday, and holy crap, it fits! This is somewhat shocking, because things didn’t look so hot fit-wise before the buttonband and collar were seamed on.

There have been some excellent yarn store sales in Houston this month. Last weekend I bought some Blue Sky Cotton from Twisted Yarns at a discount, and started this brioche stitch number. I’m feeling a bit Eh about the result - it’s pretty, but I’m not wild about it in this yarn. I think the yarn wants to be mistake rib. Or a Squarey - I’ve made two Squareys for friends, and I want one for me! Another LYS is having a winter sale this weekend, and I bought a bunch of the sportweight Louet merino for 35% off!

I (cough!) took a sick day from work today, which gave me plenty of time to work on the Cambridge Jacket and photograph it on a mildly pissed Silver. The progress photos for this sweater are going to be bo-ring - how many photos of a straight, semi-ribbed sweater back can one take, really?

Rowanspun Aran. Delicious, no? Webs was pretty much giving this stuff away a couple of summers ago, so I snatched up enough for a sweater for Rob (and I may have purchased enough of the 4 ply in Blood for a cardigan for myself). The yarn has some lovely flecks of blue, green, and purple, but we’re hoping that Rob won’t really notice the purple bits. I just broke open the bag a couple of days ago, and realized that it’s an odd yarn - it is felted, and pretty rough to knit with. Dunking my swatch briefly in water softened it up a ton, so hopefully Rob will be happy with the end result.

The Cambridge Jacket, from Interweave Knits Summer 2006. Rob hates cables and other floofy details, so ribs it is. I’m planning on knitting the sweater on the sly, which shouldn’t be too tough because Rob is seriously oblivious to anything that doesn’t involve numbers, the working condition of his vehicle, or ATHF. Perfect! Since I’m keeping this on the lowdown, I measured a bunch of Rob’s sweaters to figure out what size to make. They all have a 44 inch chest measurement, even the closest fitting sweaters he owns. Rob is a tall, slim man, and it seems totally crazy that his clothing is all this big. Maybe I’m just used to the ease that I put in my own sweaters (zero to negative), but that amount of ease seems like a lot…

I’m planning on knitting this pretty much to-pattern, except one detail - the bottom of the center front and back is stockinette, which rolls. It’s not rolling in the photo, but it really wants to. Bad! I know you can block it out, but why not toss in an inch of ribbing, especially for a sweater that has other rib details? So, more ribbing it will be. My gauge is off from the pattern, so I’ll be doing some math, but that should be no biggie.

All this blue is part of Project Spectrum. I had joined PS as an attempt to reach beyond my comfort zone, colorwise, but I already see that I’m unlikely to make much of a stretch - blue, green, red/black, and purple are all definitely kelly colors and are well represented in the stash. You won’t be seeing any orange sweaters around these parts!

Silver is ready to step up and be the feline representation for Project Spectrum. You go, girl!