Major Modifications

Despite the fact that it seems I've been posting a lot of them lately, it's not all finished objects chez Emily. As you might remember, I started a new sweater not long ago, the Dollar and a Half Cardigan (now to be called the $1.50 cardigan) from the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits. I've made quite a bit of progress, especially considering I completely abandoned this for awhile to work on the baby blanket and the Endpaper Mitts (glad you all liked them, thanks!). Here we go:

I've done three full pattern repeats (lace panel + reverse stockinette panel) so far. I discovered the knitalong for this sweater yesterday and noticed that all of the finished sweaters seemed really long, and many had an undesirable puffiness in the reverse stockinette panels. Thankfully I don't have that particular problem, so far. However, the length thing is a real issue. The pattern calls for 18.5" before the armhole shaping begins, which to me seems like an awful lot. The sweater in the magazine is quite long, and hits the model at mid/low hip, which on her looks fine, but on me is likely to be a no-go length, since I actually have hips. So, I thought I'd lay my sweater on top of a sweater that I like the length of, for comparison, and this is what I saw: To be fair, the model sweater is a raglan, so I'm thinking the armholes are likely larger than they'll be on the $1.50 cardigan, which has set-in sleeves. But, do you see how close I am to where the armholes start? My sweater is currently 12" long - I'm thinking of doing one more repeat (about 3") and then doing the decreases. 3.5" shorter should work, I think. I've considered doing just a lace panel, and then starting the decreases in the stockinette portion, which would surely be easier, but I think I'd rather stick with the pattern as much as possible since I'm going to need to get two fronts and two sleeves to line up with the stripes on the back. Then I worried that because I'm making this in the 36.25" size, which is going to be a bit large on me, maybe it would be better if I made it longer, so it didn't look boxy. Thoughts? I also plan to shorten the sleeves, but I think I'll do that by making less ribbing. Could I knit the sleeves from the top down and then stop early? Is it harder to decrease on sleeves than increase? That would be ideal I think, for matching and length purposes...Here's a close-up of the lace pattern, which is quite simple to work and looks really nice:

Sorry it's a bit blurry - the red yarn isn't the easiest thing to photograph. I haven't just been working on this (of course). I'm still plugging away on some simple stockinette socks, following Wendy's new toe-up pattern (It's the toe-up gusset heel pattern.):

The yarn is Monarch, colorway Purdy Plum. I'm getting to the point where I want to weigh the sock and the yarn to see how far up I can go. I accidently made these a tad too big (the heel was longer than anticipated) so I might be gifting them to someone with slightly larger feet. One Christmas gift in progress already! Wendy's pattern is great - simple and easy to follow. I believe Daisy is making some socks with this pattern as well, so I wanted to post these so she could see how the heel came out...

I went to my first Seattle Stitch & Bitch gathering in over a year tonight, and it was really fun! There were 10 of us I think, coming and going, and everyone was really nice. I hope to start going more often, since it's fairly close to my house and it's nice to get together to knit with other people, instead of on the couch with Dave and Oliver (Not that there's anything wrong with them, of course, but it's good to get out a bit.). Anyway, it was nice to meet all of you!