Shaggy Shaping Up

Well, Shaggy has made it to the armhole decreases and the left front is finished.

Here is a view of the finished side and a sleeve:












The pile of yarn is much smaller, but I feel that I ought to have enough to finish. Even better, the chocolate color that I used for the sleeve edges may have enough yardage for the body edging.

Hard to tell at this point. Here's to finishing the rest of the body.

We've taken some hill country road trips recently and I did not want to herd seven balls of yarn while in the car. So, the next worsted project is on the needle. Here is a peek:

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.