It's been a while...

Oh my goodness, I hadn't realised how long this project had been sitting around! 4 years!!! At least I haven't been totally idle in the meantime. We moved 6,000 miles to So Cal (fantastic weather - no need for wool sweater) and I have almost entirely re-made a sweater that my husband's aunt made for him. She is a fantastic knitter and her finishing is immaculate but she had a bit of a lapse (she's in her 80s) and forgot to do the full length of rib on the sleeves and hem. That, coupled with a small mistake in the front neck shaping and the sleeves being slightly short even with the ribbing reinstalled, meant that the sweater was unwearable.

The good news was that she had a fair amount of yarn remaining so I was able to use 'new' yarn rather than trying to undo the sweater and get the kinks out.

I took everything back to its constituent parts. Undid the bottom of the sweater sleeves and picked up the stitches to knit the rib from the top down. That worked! Then, miraculously, I managed to match her gauge on the body so I could undo the front from the top and re-do the neck shaping. Did the same on the back to add some extra length (to account for slightly round shouldered husband) and the tops of the sleeves to add length there.

Finally sewed it all together again and re-did the neck ribbing. Voila, a wearable sweater!

Did it take me 4 years? No, although I couldn't do any of the finishing at night because it's dark grey.

So, on to Mermaid. First I read every blog that has ever been written, twice. My main dilemma was the sizing. I don't like long cardigans and I am small across the back so I did my best to try and work out the actual size using the row count from amy's spreadsheet. It looked like the small would yield a 35.5" chest, 32" waist and huge hips (? 52" but I didn't even make a note on my working out sheet). The medium looked to be 37.5" chest, 34" waist and huge hips. Then I did a lot more thinking about it! Finally, since I am long-waisted and there seemed to be plenty of excess in the hips (the pattern, not mine!) I decided to make the small but to make the hem gussets one ridge shorter on each side of the gusset but taking out the first and last rows. This would make the whole hem gusset shorter to make sure it didn't start flaring out before my waistline. I also figured that, with 100% wool I could block it bigger but I didn't fancy trying to felt it smaller. I also embarked on modifying amy's spreadsheet for the small size.

Also, for any who are interested, here are the yarn amts I received: Colour A - 310g, Colour B 108g, Colour C 96g. The pattern states that there are about 225m/50g.

I embarked on the sweater with trepidation! A certain nervousness such as one gets when cutting out a pattern in really expensive fabric.

Going with the majority I decided not to do the initial icord and pick up stitches from that although I didn't gather that what I should have done (for the neatest result) was cast on at the point where the pattern calls you to cast off 21/23/25 sts along the collar. Now that I can see how it is constructed I can tell that if you start at this point (with a provisional cast on) you can knit round to the opposite side of the jacket then sew up the shoulder seams and pick up sts across the back neck to form the collar. Then you get the collar without the centre back join. Next time!

I used a chain stitch provisional cast on (Lucy Neatby on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3J-sUx_whE)

This was so easy and gave me a nice firm edge. I have previously tried a different provisional cast on where you hold a spare piece of yarn next to your needle while casting on normally and I found it really tricky not to get my cast on edge twisted with the spare yarn twirling around the left needle. This method was a piece of cake.

It took me a while to 'get into' the edge stitch and for a moment I wondered whether I had started each RS row at the shoulder instead of the hem and was, effectively, knitting the whole jacket back to front. It got much clearer when I got to the stripes which look distinctly different on the RS (clear stripes, one colour to each ridge) to the WS.

Since so many people had commented on the boredom of garter stitch I thought this might be ideal 'TV knitting'. (I always like to have one thing 'on the go' that I can knit without much thought - in company, watching TV, on the beach, with frequent interruption.) My initial impression was that it would require every brain cell for the entire jacket! I was following my revamped spreadsheet to the line. However I am now at the side seam having completed 2 hem gussets and the underarm gusset and, although I went wrong with the underarm gusset and had to rip it last night, I have not been referring to the spreadsheet that often. (The underarm gusset is tricky because you are doing short rows and, at the same time, decreasing on some of the edges. Worth having a pencil and paper handy for this moment!)

For the short-row shaping I have been using the Japanese method from http://nonaknits.typepad.com/nonaknits/2005/04/japanese_short_.html. The safety pins make it easy to see where the wrapped stitches are and also make it easy to count the number of rows worked, at least on the first half of the gusset.

So, that is where I'm at! Camera is due back from repair today so hopefully pics will appear soon.

14 August 2006

My 1st post!

Just received Hanne Falkenberg Mermaid kit in colourway 2 and answered amys question to get a copy of her fantastic spreadsheet. Still daunted! Now looking through previous blogs to find out which size to attempt. I think it's going to be the Small judging by what others are saying.