Friday, January 29, 2010

Almost.......

Greetings and Dear Laura:

Oh, I love your Two Hearts sweater! The cables are beautiful. And you're rolling right along on those socks. For someone who has had all your time sucked into a vacuum, you're getting an amazing amount of knitting done!

Me? Not so much. January is always when I have to 'catch up' and finalize the financial stuff for my parents business. This year I was pretty up-to-date, but there is always a lot of reviewing and reconciling. At this time last year, I decided that it was definitely time to migrate them to a business software, and so I bought the Mac version and then spent 2 months unsuccessfully trying to move the old data into the new software. Long story short, I ended up using the old system for another year, and this year I've given up on having the history in the new software, and I'm just starting the year fresh. I'll finalize all the stuff this weekend and then we can ship it off to the accountant, and I'll be back to my usual schedule.

So, I have done SOME knitting, but not nearly as much as I would like. Cassidy?? It is ALMOST done. Truly. ALMOST!




(Sorry the picture is sideways - I thought I had that fixed!)

First of all, I should clear up the issue of the row count on that wonky neckline. I shared your surprise about the difference in the length with the same row-count. The answer is that it turns out my GOAL was to have the same row count. Seems there was a variance in the execution! ;) There WERE more rows on one side. In the end, I took my mom and the sweater in to Knitting Today, and Lea-Ann went over it with me. When my mom had the sweater on, it hung just fine and you really couldn't see a problem. Lea-Ann advised me to make the second button band the same length as the first and reblock a few areas. The other issue I had when she had the assembled sweater on was that the sleeves were about 2" too long. (And I made them 1" shorter than the pattern!)

Last weekend, I intended to do those finishing details, but, well, refer to paragraph 2. I did get the second button band done, and the collar, and then on Wednesday night I sewed the buttons in place and started shortening a sleeve. I did this several years ago for a friend who bought a sweater with sleeves that were way too long, and it's kind of a cool process.

The first time I tried to shorten sleeves, I found out that you really can't easily unravel from the cast-on edge. I ended up picking out the seams to the point I wanted and then cutting the sleeve off and only having to unravel one row. I picked up the stitches and worked a row, then bound off. I had in my head that I would do the same thing here, except that I had to cut in between cables, and knit down a 2" cuff. I vaguely considered the issue of the stitches being upside down, but didn't worry.

It has worked out pretty well. If you've never picked up stitches at the bottom and worked in the opposite direction, I will let you know that it shifts everything over by 1/2 a stitch. Therefore, I can see the line exactly where I did it, but it's where the cuff and cables meet, so I don't mind the effect. If I had messed up in any way, and cut too high into the cables, I would have been well and truly messed up. The thought of how casually I did this, waving my scissors around without a care still makes me break out in a cold sweat, but all's well that ends well.




I finished one sleeve and put it on a yarn holder so that I could try it on her to be sure of the length. It is spot-on perfect, and so I just need to do the knitting on the second sleeve, bind them off and ta-da! She will be wearing that sweater tomorrow! It looked really great on her last night, even with one short sleeve on DPNs. I almost took a picture, but I decided to wait until it is well and truly complete. Watch this space!

Keep knitting!

Cynthia (aka DesignatedKnitter)


-- Post From My iPhone

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