Wearable Lace $14.95

Over the last few months I have started to see certain trends in what I’m knitting.  Because of that it made sense to put several related patterns together in a booklet.  Some of these pattern have already been published but a couple of them are new.  All patterns can still be bought individually if you only want one of the patterns.  I’m afraid that I won’t be able to offer a discount if you have already bought one of the patterns individually, as you can see the booklet is already heavily discounted.  Buying the booklet you get a whopping discount of $14.70 on the 5 patterns.

In this booklet as well as having these 5 patterns I will have a brief introduction to lace, reading lace charts and working increases in lace.  There will be instructions on how to do several techniques uses in the patterns (provisional cast-on, grafting and short rows).

The full booklet will be released at the beginning of December.  You can however buy the booklet immediately and download the individual pdfs for the 3 patterns available now (Summer Affair, Laced Leaves and Centrique).  Fritillary and Midnight Shrug will both be released in November and you will be sent these patterns if you have bought the complete booklet.  If you buy the ebooket immediately you will automatically be sent the pdf upon release in December.

The 5 patterns available in the ebooklet are:

Summer Affair $5.95

Laced Leaves $5.95

Fritillary $5.95

Centrique $5.95

Midnight Shrug $5.95

Last Year I got a copy of Elisabeth Zimmerman’s Knitters’ Almanac and have been waiting until now to knit this up.  I had some lovely soft cotton from my aunt that was great for it – super soft.  Now I need to block, weave and darn ends in and we’ll be set.  It will have to sit and wait for the baby for a few months yet thought!
I hadn’t used the M1 method that she suggested in the book before (basically just twisting a loop around the needle) so i thought I’d give it a go. Not too happy with the effect it creates, it seems like too noticeable an increase. On the wrong side of the fabric it looks like a series of loops.  I don’t think I’ll be using it again.
Other that that I love the cardigan pattern- so simple and effective. If I were to do it again I think that I’d use a different increase method and perhaps decrease the sleeves a little (not sure about this in terms of the lace).

Thanks to the kind help of a fellow knitter on Ravelry I think that I may have figured out how to do those sleeves.  Now the fun part – I need to actually make them!

My problem had been that in order to get the armhole large enough on the body I needed a 18 inch opening.  I had assumed (always a bad idea) that I had to pick up the correct number of stitches for this opening so that I would be at the correct stitch gauge.  This would mean that I needed to pick up 90 stitches.

However – and this is where I started having issues – with the lovely short row shoulder shaping you end up at the bottom of your sleeve cap with the same number of stitches as you started (90) but at that point the width of the arm needed to be 14.5 inches (68 stitches).

What I have been told – and I think that it should work, is that you only pick up the number of stitches that you need for the sleeve width at the end of the cap.  So… it is 68 stitches not 90 stitches that need to be picked up.  A real Eureka moment!  Now my last concern is how picking up that many stitches will look, will the spaces between them be too obvious?  Will keep you posted on progress!

I have used Barbara Walker’s ‘Knitting from the Top’ for top down raglan shaped tops and cardigans before and it works beautifully.

I have been fascinated by the idea of knitting set-in cap sleeves from the top down with short row shaping and in theory it seems like a great idea. I’m working on a cardigan that is knitted from the bottom up and will have cap sleeves. I thought that I’d see if I could design myself some top down sleeves to make sure that the cap sleeve fits nicely.

However I’ve hit a stumbling block with the maths.. unless I misunderstand I can’t make the numbers work.

If I measure around the top of the shoulder to the underarm area I would need 90 stitches, which includes picking up the bound off stitches at the underarm. So far so good – now if I follow the Barbara Walker method you take 1/3 of the stitches centered at the sleeve top and work short row shaping back and forth picking up one stitch each side until you reach the picked up underarm stitches and magic you have your nicely fitted sleeve cap.

Sounds perfect doesn’t it?? Here is my problem … I don’t want 90 stitches at the top of the arm, I want 68. If I have 90 stitches the sleeve would fit a gorilla.

Maybe I need to work a combination of the methods – short row shaping but at the same time decreasing the stitches so that the upper arm diameter will be the size I want it to be by the time the short row shaping is finished and you reach the end of the sleeve cap.

After the last several weeks spent knitting for Christmas presents I’ve had a chance to get started on a project for myself this week. I got some Rowan Chunky print yarn in a lovely dark chocolate and have started on the Blackberry shrug from Knitty.

I am knitting it from the top though with a few more changes. Having recently gotten a copy of Barbara Walkers ‘Knitting From the Top’ I am finding as many excuses in my knitting to work from the top down. Especially when it is for yourself it means that you get a great fit. (Not so important if you don’t have the person around who will be wearing it …or if that person doesn’t want to try it on daily for fitting!)

I have put in a slightly different cable on the arm and left out the bobbles. Also I am tapering the arms a little more and increasing the length of the arms and body. I think I’ll probably do some short rows at the back of the next, I like cosy necks. Will post some photos as I start making a bit more progress.