Category: Cotton Sandrine

Finally, progress! After a topsy turvy of a week, some personal knitting gets done. I am itching to wear this and am tempted to just finish off that little short sleeve on the left and call it a “design feature”.

HEE! But really, it does show how the piece would look with cap or short sleeves (I like). I get email all the time asking if it’s OK to do this type of thing and I say, Boldly Go! Just because the pattern doesn’t specifically say to, doesn’t mean it might just make the piece of your dreams.

BTW, has anyone seen the new Star Trek movie? Now I’m not going to admit to being a Trekkie, snort, but, after seeing the trailer, the younger Capt. Kirk (um, corn-fed Iowa farm boy!) and especially, the younger Spock: ROCK!

Back to this century: since patterns can’t contain all the possible permutations of possibilities in some easily changed areas, it is totally up to the fancy of the knitter to decide how long sleeves (and bodies and collars, etc) should be according to their style wishes and body measurements.

                    

I try things on constantly. Because I’ve made a Template of all of my preferred basic sizes in Shell, Pullover & Cardigan styles (see how here), I have a reference to go by. But nothing really beats pinning the thing together, if necessary, and putting it on one’s self. Even better than a mannequin, because even though my measurements are equal to mine, my body shape is slightly different. NOBODY is really alike and it’s up to us to find the sweet spots: the right ratios and measurements and then apply them to our stitching.

That is the Number One reason I love to make my own clothes! If I had the time, I would probably try and sew everything I wear (not jeans). But I love all the cotton dresses and skirts I’ve been seeing around and am green with envy…

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Hope is wonderful thing and I’d hoped to be done with at least this sleeve by today. Hopefully, by next week this week’s chaos will seem as benign as fog swirling around a high rise and I’ll have both of them done!!

Quick, raise your hand if you haven’t heard of swine flu! Ye Olde H1N1 has been leading Chicagoans (and the rest of the country) around by the nose for over a week now. In my alternate life as Intrepid Girl Photog, I’ve visited clinics, the Stock Exchange (with 80 International Mayors, Paris, Bangkok, Moscow, Bogata, !), and yes, a pig farm, to record the progress of the beast.

This has left little time for knitting; you get up early and go to bed late and hope for the best. These pictures were taken at 5 am and dawn is just beginning to smile.

All of this hoopla will hopefully result in a Maximum Knitting Weekend~! I truly wish I was one of the lucky ones going to the MDSW fest this year (say hello to everybody for me!) I need a Festival of hundreds of kindred souls to recharge and refresh! It’s always a lot warmer down there than in Chicago as well — we’re still waking to 40ish temps (!) and I am writing this in my flannel jammies…

Part of the equation has radically changed for me this last year. After my day job moved downtown, I had to switch commute routes and have been taking the Blue Line El (or elevated train) which actually on my route is a Subway! After years of knitting on the bus (miss you #66), I’ve found out the hard way there is no knitting on the subway, at least at this hour. It is SRO and you will usually find me with my blackberry in hand holding a pole in the other hand, smushed up between hundreds of other travelers, but I’m playing Scrabble! I LOVE THE MODERN AGE! But I miss my knitting and the obvious production kick it gave my schedule.

Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovley month when ev’ryone goes
Blissfully astray.

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If I had to pick a prevailing fascination in my projects, ribbing would probably be my defining detail, one I come back to over and over.

Ribbing? you say? That plain ubiquitous border; that ever present first chapter of most any sweater and you are thrilled with it?

Yes!

Even in one of my first (published) designs, the 3XChic, I was busy playing with rib, but uncommon rib. This pullover had columns in a 7×2 ratio and as I worked it, something became apparent that had not occurred in the visualizing stage. Sometimes, you just don’t know how it’s going to *look* until you actually are making it and it presents itself to you.

One version (and the way it was offered) had wide columns of knitting, punctuated by narrow lines of purl. The other, had fields of purl stitches, bisected by narrow columns of knit stitches and this was only in my musings as I never made one, but looked at the other from the inside out, fascinated.

Such is Sandrine. I am knitting the first sleeve of the sweater now and have regressed into one of my favorite ploys to get it done fast. Since I think (but have never really timed myself) that I am faster knitting than purling and the stitch pattern has more knit sts on the wrong side of the work, I’m going to knit it from the Wrong Side. (Quick! Call the Knitting Police!)

To begin, I’ve picked up all the sleeve stitches as the pattern indicates, then I flip the garment inside out. The working yarn is in an awkward place, a few stitches from the underarm marker. However, this is NOT a big deal. The gauge of most sweaters is small enough to stand an extra row worked in there somewhere; you see it all the time in shoulders, underarms, necklines and you’ve probably done it yourself if you’ve knit a sweater. Anywhere there are mirrored segments, most likely one will have an extra row lurking and I’ll bet you’ve never noticed it in the final product.

Here I’ll work the few stitches once to have the working yarn going in the right direction at the real beginning of the round. To avoid a little hole, I will wrap the last sleeve cap stitch with one of the new underam sleeve stitches. Then I just work away as usual, remembering to transpose the decrease type as necessary.

But back to the uncommon rib…

Here is my sleeve (and my Sandrine) shown wrong side facing, as I’m ready to start the sleeve. I really like the way it looks from the wrong side! The wider columns of ribbing are a completely different take on the effect of the stitch pattern, here presenting almost as Stockinette Stitch, but gracefully broken up by the narrow columns. You can see it in contrast here in the original sample sweater, with the right side to the Left of the picture, and the wrong side to the Right-Middle of the picture:

And on a larger scale, here in the sweater I’m working on, shown from the WS:

One of these days, I’m going to make one, wrong-side out, maybe out of denim yarn, with the wide rib pattern going all the way to the hem.

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