Making Repairs

 

This week has been full of knitting.  I've worked a lot more than I thought I would be, so knitting filled in the time between nicely.  

A few years ago, I made the gray boyfriend sweater, and I followed the directions faithfully, even though I noticed the model had her sleeves rolled up very thickly.  I've worn the sweater the last two winters, but really hated the sleeves.  They were way too long and way too wide.  I felt like I had a muffler pushed up on my arms!  And they never wanted to stay rolled up.  I want to wear this sweater this winter, so I decided to see about fixing the sleeves.  I couldn't remember if they were knitted in the round, which would have been easier to fix, or flat, which would mean unsewing them completely and re-knitting them.  Naturally, it was the latter.  I started taking the seams apart yesterday, and have one most of the way unsewn from the armscye.  I'll work on it some more this afternoon.  Once I have them both apart, I'll wind the yarn into balls and re-knit the sleeves, with a more reasonably sized cuff and a narrower lower arm.  

I keep having a lot of trouble keeping the narrow band of honeycomb on the Oban straight, and only on the right side of the cables!  I don't know why, but I keep getting it out of sequence, and have spent a lot of time pulling down columns of stitches to get it right again.  I did it three times yesterday before I got it right, and even now, it doesn't look right.  Of all the twists and turns in this sweater, that one little column is giving me a very hard time, while the rest is just fine.  Even looking at this picture makes me see the wonkiness, but I am forging on.  If someone else sees the imperfections, well, good for them!  It will be on the back while I'm wearing it, and I won't see it.  I am, though, being extra careful going forward.  I do love the way this sweater is coming along otherwise.

My other WIP is a pair of socks, with a pattern I made up from two stitches from The New Knitting Stitch Dictionary, by Lesley Stanfield.  It's super fun to browse through, and I was looking for some lace to go with this pretty striped yarn.  It's hard to see, and I should probably have flipped the picture the other way, but there's a daisy and a rosebud going up the foot.  It's fussy, though, and I did spend quite a long time ripping out the lace and starting over from the toe yesterday.  I'm knitting two on a magic loop, so I can make stuff up as I go along, but the mistake was glaring.  I'm past the first pattern repeat, and am getting it memorized, so I should have the heel turned soon.  

It's almost October, which means Christmas knitting is in full swing, so these might be for someone out there.  Pretend to be surprised!

I did make some progress on the Grandmother's Flower Garden last weekend, and put some together with the green to see how it looked.  I really like it, but I'm going to need a lot more green fabric before I can start to put it all together.  At last count, I have 26 flowers, enough cut out for 32, and I need 68.  That's 4 1/2 more yards of fabric for the flowers, and  heck of a lot more green.  I think I need 600 or so green hexagons, maybe 12 yards?  

Even with all that work staring at me, I'm still planning the next, maybe pastels?  The bread timer is beeping, so I've go to go make the loaves.  Happy fiber-y pursuits!