Shaggy Thinking

Shaggy sleeves are finished and I am working on the body.

The picture shows almost six pattern repeats and two button holes. I cast on using a provisional cast on and a crocheted base. That is the green yarn at the bottom. The edge is a bit curly so it will need a few rows of something to stabilize.

My scanner is not co-operating. If it was I would scan the pattern I wrote to document how my mind works. Instead, here is a description of what I plan:

My gauge is 5 stitches/inch and one ten-row pattern repeat per inch. The stitch pattern is from the "Furrow" pattern in the Jamieson's Shetland Knitting Book 2.

After the sleeves were finished, I have better than 65% of all my yarn with the exception of the milk chocolate. That makes sort of makes sense because the  chocolate was used a bit more since it was used for the edging of the sleeve.

I will want to weigh the yarn again when I get to the armhole. I'm pretty sure I have enough to finish. The point was to take a pile of leftovers and make something wonderful, not something unfinished an useless. I find that the 1/3 sleeves, 1/3 front, 1/3 back rule works pretty well. Thus, I should have just enough for the sweater. A cropped length and the "V" neck should help. It will be close.

My initial thought was to use the chocolate to edge the body in garter stitch with mitered corners at the bottom openings. This plan needs to change because it now is unlikely there will be enough of the chocolate. I think either a striped garter edge or a crocheted edge will work. I will have to wait and see what I have left when the body is done.

I want a somewhat cropped jacket with a V neck and three buttons. I want the waist to be smaller than the bust.

Cast on 212 stitches using a provisional method
. 55 for left front/1/100 for the back/1/55 for right front. The single stitches are to be knit stitches all the way up to define the side seam.

Increase on stitch on each side of the seam stitches on row 1 of the pattern on repeat 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 for a total of 20 stitches.

Make a button hole on the second row of the pattern on repeats 2, 6, and 10.

Begin armhole decreases and "V" neck decreases on row 6 of repeat 10.  Use armhole directions from the "Grand Plan" pullover by Ann Budd. V neck decreases 1 stitch each side every row 1 and 6 until the armhole measures 9.5". There should be 24 stitches left for the shoulder.

Just now Finished

The brocade sweater is finished and is taking a bath.

I did pull apart the collar and redo it and I am happy with that. I then stared at it for a week because I did not feel like setting in the sleeves. Today, I had to wait for the pest control service to come by, so I sat down and did the final finishing.

I love the way the set in sleeves fit.

I still have just over two skeins of this color left, so the project did not demolish the difficult to deal with coral yarn.

In the mean time, I had a blinding flash of the obvious regarding the Shaggy project. Since I am only working one color at at time, there is no reason to break the yarns that end on the wrong side of the work. Since I use double ended needles, I can just slide the work and work on the wrong side. So this Shaggy sleeve is considerable less shaggy.

Almost finished.

Well, the brocade knitting is complete. I admit that the back and forth for the front and back were tedious, but that is over now.  I like to add the collar before sewing on the arms because there is less to throw around as I knit around the neck. I tend to pick up too many stitches so right now the collar stands up like a mock turtleneck.

I'm not sure I like that. I'll sew the arms on and if I decide to change those arms will swing around as the new collar goes on.

So it goes...

When the tedium became too much I continued on with the new slip stitch project. The garter ridges and nubs work well for this combination of yarns. The first sleeve went fast and I was enchanted with the resulting fabric.



So enchanted that I did not fully realize the number of ends involved. I truly considered pulling this apart and throwing it all away. Shame on the professional designer and shame on me for not figuring out a better solution to this.

Still, it's awfully nice is a woodsy sort of way. It is much nicer looking in person.

Brocade Continues

Well, the brocade flowers pullover continues. I cast off for the armhole openings and am  now back to back and forth fair isle. Not my idea of a good time but the result is generally worth the effort. I considered doing a steek but with the shaping involved I decided that route was about as troublesome and added more effort when finishing.

This is the point of the project where my mind wanders. My goal this year is to work through as much of my worsted stash as possible and I have made a considerable dent. While working on the front of this project I began thinking of my single and partial skeins. I've been putting them into bags according to color family. My neutral/brown sack had almost enough for a sweater. The skeins are interesting. Some very vintage Harris tweed and Lambs Pride. Also, some no-name knitting worsted bits.


I'm using weight to estimate what I need for a project. Most of the stash is vintage worsted and the labels do not show yardage as a rule. I  weighed them and found that the collection was a bit light for an entire sweater. I find that 26-28 ounces or more than 6 and less than 7 four-ounce skeins is enough for a medium/large pullover.

I had another vintage Harris skein and another vintage Lambs Pride in colors that seemed like they could work in. The Harris is a bit cranberry and the Lambs Pride is sort of pistachio.This got me to 27 ounces so critical mass is attained.

I've been browsing some slip-stitch patterns and Furrow caught my eye as a potential choice. The pattern uses four colors but looking at how the colors are used, I found that it was a ten row repeat using three colors. Then, one color is removed, the two remaining shift and the fourth color is added. It seemed that this could be used for more than four colors, so I tried seven.

I'm pretty pleased with the result with respect to the color. The repeat is fifty rows, but because it is about half garter the fabric is pretty dense. So, it is asking to be more of a casual jacket rather than a pullover.


I'm thinking of V-neck cardigan with sleeves that sit just below the elbow. The fabric is busy and there is enough garter that it does not curl much so a narrow-ish garter stitch on the edge for the cuffs and waist and button band will be nice.

Brocade Progress

The body is coming along. Some car knitting over the weekend.

Not too many rows before the armhole decreases and I will be knitting back and forth again.

Brocade Leaves Sleeves

We have sleeves. The kitchen scale says they weigh just shy of 8 ounces so one skein of each color was used.
That suggests that I will need two more skeins of each color, leaving me with an extra of the multi-color Cascade and two skeins of the coral.  I would like to have gone through more of the coral but it is more important to me to make something that pleases me.

Often, once I start working with a color I find troublesome I begin to like it and then miss it when it is gone.

I think this looks great and I especially like the linen stitch edging. I'm not sure why we don't see it more often in hand knitting designs.  Perhaps because it is less elastic than ribbing, but hemmed edges are also not elastic.

Coral Development

This stash yarn has been eating into my brain. I probably acquired it during an eBay yarn binge.

I don't do that anymore.

It is not quite orange, not quite pink, not quite coral and very very bright. I have about five four-ounce skeins, so not quite enough for a sweater.

 I tried it with turquoise, but that did not make me happy. The idea was to make it the main color for a Catherine Parr, but it was clear part-way up the sleeve that there was not enough of the coral for the project..

Then, I tried with white and Barbara Walker. French weave. French weave, colors reversed, Florentine.  Good exercise, but still not happy.

I cruised by a local yarn shop, and found this lovely and coordinating  beauty in the 50% off bin. Enough for 1/2 of a sweater.
I tried some slip stitch patterns first. I liked the cuff, but the rest did not interest me.  Several others were tried and ripped. ...

Time for a time out while I browsed Ravelry projects for a while.

Well, Hello, beautiful: