Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

6 Comments:

Oh that looks beautiful! I am so impressed! Good job! It's been a lot of fun watching you make progress on this project.

By Blogger Heidi, at 11:08 AM  

Thankee thankee! I'm just tickled pink with it. As the day goes on I just get more excited about it.

By Blogger Bess, at 11:37 AM  

So impressive! Thanks for the pictures! :-)

By Blogger Mary, at 1:28 PM  

Simply spectacular. I want to be you when I grow up.

By Blogger Unknown, at 6:25 PM  

Bravo! (insert applause track here). Beautifully done, Bess. You're much braver than I!

Hugs,

By Blogger Margaret, at 8:52 AM  

Bess, congratulations! I'm so impressed. Isn't it fun when our own knitting impresses us, I think that's what makes it so fun that with yarn and two/three/four needles we can make something that still makes us say, "Wow, I did that!"

Can't wait to see the finished sweater, it will be a beauty. I think we need a true fashion show on the blog.

By Blogger erica, at 10:22 AM  

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Tuesday, February 06, 2007  

Eureka!

Even for TheQueen of Loquacity, there are times when pictures are worth so much more. Today I give you:




Two shoulder views - the first one is an enhanced photo that has slightly more true colors. The second one shows the little blips where I did short rows wrap&turns. They are not wanted, and will not show up when worn and besides, I think they'll also block out completely. I just wanted them visible for the record.


Here you can also see where the short rows occured and the consequences of doing short rows as well. You see how the sweater widens on both sides of the seam. This will make it conform to the slope of the shoulder from neck towards arm.


Here you see the last front and back stitch on the body eating up the sleeve. Notice the slope in the lavender and yellow areas. Those end stitches stop angling and lie flat as they consume sleeve stitches when the colorways turn to the plain buff, striped tiger brown and gold and plain buff color again (Twig,Fawn, Yellow and Twig).


Here they are meeting in the middle.

Another shot.

Can you imagine how pleased I am with this? This is the point in my knitting where a sweater often defeats me and retires to glorious and triumphant misery as future nourishment for guilt and moths in the UFO bin. I knew the knitting should turn out this way, but after Sunday's mind loss and the subsequent discovery of a Math Error I could feel the insidious creep of doubt and fear pushing up tendrils of defeat into my normal confident frontal lobe.

Happily TheQueen was triumphant instead and The KipFee will be all the better for it.

Two tips though, for anyone wanting to try this method.

First off – don’t be lazy and leave any dormant stitches on loose circular needles. The wise thing to do is to thread a long piece of yarn through all those loose stitches and tie it into a circle. I seldom do this because I resent having to pick stitches off of yarn and back onto a needle. It’s a tedious process that you can by-pass if you leave your dormant knitting on needles. The down side is that all those wretched needle tips flop around and catch in your knitting, tangle in the working yarn, tangle in any loose ends that you haven’t woven in. Leaving your dormant stitches on needles is the lazy man’s way and it’s always more work in the end than doing it the wise, but slow, tortoise way.

Second tip – do the 3-needle bind off with a separate fairly short double point needle. 8 inches long would be good. My other lazy man’s trick is to use the dangling end of one of the circular needles in the stitches being bound off. With worsted weight at 4 or 5 stitches to the inch you probably only have 15 or so stitches to do and the thicker yarn is less prone to slide off a needle when you’re manipulating the other end. At 8 stitches to the inch I had durn near 40 stitches and they were as recalcitrant as naughty 2 year olds. Again, I was too lazy to stop and go hunt down another needle. Especially when I already had a lap full of them!

Left shoulder front to knit and attach to left shoulder back and I am done with all but the bands; a little behind schedule, but not unnervingly so. This is a happy day.

posted by Bess | 10:10 AM
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