Jane of All Trades

Simple enough question, but…

A few weeks ago I was on a self-imposed march to finish my many UFO’s.  That lasted for a little while, and I did make some progress…  And then I got the itch.  Several. 

My latest newly-started project Is the Norah Gaughan’s Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature.  Like manyall of projects in the book, it is equal parts genius (Oooh–interlocking spirals!  How did she think of that?) and perplexity (What woman (other than the fetching young model) really wants her nipple poking through the eyelet yoke?).

So there will be modifications.  The first is I am knitting everything in the round, and starting with the sleeves so I would have a small area to try out my gauge and the stitch pattern.  I’m taking the motif from the yoke and incorporating it around the hem and cuffs, because I’m not a big fan of the rolled hem on this design.  It took me awhile to get the pattern to work on the cuff, which I am attributing mainly to the late hour.  I knit and frogged this 3 or 4 times:

But I am happy with it now.  Once I had mastered it, I put it on waste yarn, knit the other cuff, and then put them both on a large circular to knit them together so that they would be unavoidably identical.

The cuffs are belled, seriously belled, and I sized them down a bit.  Then I knit them fairly closely through the forearm and started working increases around the elbow.  Which was great.  Smooth sailing.  I got all the way up to the bicep before realizing that perhaps I had worked too many increases, and the sleeves were a tad bit too big, and then I pressed on, knitting almost up to the armpit before admitting that I really needed to frog back to the forearm and re-knit.  I hate that.  I especially hate it when I am working two-at-a-time, because all of my care in having identical items is sure to go awry when figuring out exactly how far to frog back.

Aurgh. 

But I did, and re-loaded them on the needle, and it’s back to the races. 

Other changes:  I’m using Misti Pima Silk in olive khaki, knit at a gauge of 19 sts X 23 r to 4 inches.  This is a larger gauge than called for (21 sts) and so the requisite math ensued.  Plus, the overall look is a little more rustic. 

Plus, I will probably hold off on any eyelets until I am above the nipple level.

Tags: circular, gaughan, knit, Knitting, knitting in the round, misti, norah, phyllo, pima, pullover, silk, yoked

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.