Wednesday 11 June 2014

WIP Wednesday - the first one here!!



My first WIP Wednesday post on the new blog! Very exciting!! :D

My currently-being-worked-on WIP is Sweet Jane by AmyMiller.  It’s a mostly plain top-down set-in-sleeve sweater, but the bottom hem is assymetric and angled down the hips.  I saw it pop up in the recently added patterns on ravelry, and immediately had to make it :)
There have been a couple of snafus with this WIP so far.  The pattern suggested about 2” of positive ease on the bust, so I cast on the appropriate size and went for it.  All was fine till after the shoulders, where it said to cast on a massive amount of stitches, compared to any other sweater I’ve made.  But I cast them all on, and went ahead and knitted a few inches.  Then I tried it on and it was MASSIVE.  So, rip rip rip back to the armholes and I cast on 6 sts instead of the large amount it said.

After that, the knitting was plain and smooth sailing and fun.  Then I got to the bottom bit where you pick up short rows.  I’d apparently done all my purl short rows wrong, and my stitches were completely strangled.  There was no way to pick them up without having massive holes in the fabric.  I didn’t want to, but I had to rip back 9” of work because I had been too lazy to look up how to do short rows properly.

I re-knit the short row section, but I think I did something wrong actually picking up the stitches.  The side where I had purled the short rows just doesn’t look as smooth as the knit side.  But I figured that it’s on the hem – noone will notice, and in 6 months I’ll have completely forgotten (unless I look back here lol).  So I just went with it.

I changed the actual hem as well because I’m using acrylic yarn (stylecraft special 4-ply) and with a small rib section, it would just flip over and annoy me (I have a sweater that does this already).  So I went down 1.5mm in needle size and did a few rows of garter stitch.  I like how it looks!

Sweet Jane WIP

Now I’m at the stage of picking up for the arms, then knitting down.  But I’m having another problem.  The pattern says to pick up a teeny amount of stitches (especially considering how many I was supposed to cast on at the armpit).  I tried, but it was less than one stitch for every two rows – it just didn’t look good.  The way the pattern is written, you need to pick up that specific amount of stitches and work short rows because that will influence the circumference of the sleeves.  With the amount of stitches I can comfortably pick up, I’ll have 15” circumference sleeves.  About 3” larger than the pattern says, and it would probably be far too baggy.  So I’m going to have to think about where to incorporate a lot of decreases.  I’m wondering if I can fit them in the actual short rows, but that will require some focused attention and maths.

Apart from the problems I’ve had, I’m really looking forward to having this sweater, I think it’s going to look really cute! :D

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