FO: Gathered Pullover

The nice thing about having a number of ongoing projects is that every so often, you get to indulge in a massive spurt of FO generation. Which means lots of fun, "look what I made!" posts on your blog, thereby boring the bejeezus out of your readers (all 6 of you!). But tough noogies my friends. Here's another one.

Pattern: Gathered Pullover, by Hana Jason, Interweave Knits Winter 2007 (Rav linky)
Yarn: recycled from a sweater I found at Goodwill. Some kind of multi-plied red wool, in copious quantities. Someday I will either purchase or borrow a McMorran yarn balance, and figure out exactly how much yarn this took.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm
Start/finish: I made the 40.5 size, 6/12/08-9/24/08.
Comments: I read the thread about this sweater on Ravelry before I started, so I knew at the beginning I wanted to do a bunch of modifications. My gauge was slightly larger then called for (5 sts/7 rows per inch instead of 4.75 st/6 rows) and picked a slightly larger size to compensate. I added ~2 inches of waist shaping, and left out the increased/decreased stitches in the middle of the cable motif. I also knit a bit longer after finishing the motif before starting the neck.

I was a bit worried that it was going to end up too short, but blocking fixed the hem curl admirably.

For the neck, I knit it in the round with a centered double decrease (slip 2 tog as if to knit, knit 1, pass two slipped stitches over) in the middle of the V. Finally I bailed on knitting the sleeves on their own and messing about with setting in sleeve caps, and knit them from the top down as instructed in this genius tome.

The finished product is nice and light and flowy, thanks to the larger-then-recommended gauge, and fits perfectly (bad Photobooth picture not withstanding). And I will never fit another sleeve cap again in my entire life.

The End.

Oh, right

I've not been feeling the blogging love recently - too much time in front of the computer at work, and lots of projects that are making progress, but aren't getting anywhere close to completion, making for somewhat dull reporting. I'm hoping for a bunch of completed objects soonish, but here's the current state of affairs:

1) Gathered Pullover: one sleeve done, need to pick up stitches for other sleeve and redo the neckline. I love the top-down set in sleeve cap. I think it's going to become a standard technique.

2) Ironman's Christmas socks: should be finished tomorrow, just it time for the August installment of the SAM knitalong. Next month's installment is scheduled to be Azure in StR In the Navy.

3) I finished the last 2 oz of Maldives yesterday, but haven't yet taken pictures to share.

4) My Ravelympics project continues on - it's still a big black blob with beads ever so often, but it's moving along. I'm torn between three or four repeats of Chart B - it may depend on how long the rows take me after 3 repeats.

5) SYB is limping along, but I'm running out of scraps to use. I don't really want to start recycling them yet, so I either have to put it aside and knit socks faster, or start cracking in to unused skeins. Hmmmm...here's where it stands though.

That's about it. Keep your fingers crossed that I get my butt in gear to take some photos so I can post some of these soon to be FOs.

Packing list

We head off for Boston at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow morning, just the girls and me (pray for us! Or for me at least - they'll be fine). Since I haven't even begun to pack yet, I spent some time on the bus this morning making lists of what we need to bring. Here's the first few items I wrote down:

GP (Rav link)

Noro sock yarn for Koi

Brambler

I got tired of spindling at about 10 pm last night and decided to start plying. 80 min and two episodes of Buffy later, I have ~200 yds of gorgeous fingering weight two ply. The pattern calls for ~200 yds fingering weight yarn. I'm golden, and I still have some roving left if needed.

Project Spectrum Air project

Boarding passes/FF#s

Do you think there's something wrong with my priorities?

Ouch

That is what your wrist says after spending most of an entire day in front of the spinning wheel. I did stop while the AC guys was here (you would not believe what was growing in our drain line!), and to go for a run and to the store, but other then that, I was glued to the Lendrum. I managed to spin up a little more then half of the 5 oz of fiber I had by early evening, and plied while watching the Celtics-Lakers game (grumble, grumble). Tonight I'll finish (hot/cold/hot/cold/thwack, thwack, thwack) and maybe be able to start some mittens by Friday. And there's still a couple of ounces left to spin...

But, given that my right wrist is somewhat unhappy with me, yet again, I think tonight is for some swatching. For some reason, June in Houston is making me think I need to knit a sweater. A nice wooly sweater. It must be the heat index driving me nuts, because this is totally stupid. Given the insanity of the idea, I have fixated on the Gathered Pullover (Rav link) from Interweave Knits Winter 2007. The question now is: which yarn?

Some lovely, bluey-purple Silky Wool,

Oh how blurry. And not really accurate as to color...

Or some nice red stuff recycled from a Goodwill find?

Color accurate. Mostly.

Any thoughts? I just did bluey-purple, so I'm leaning towards the red, but I have no idea if the recycled stuff will work well (and there are plenty of examples of Silky Wool Gathered Pullovers on Ravelry). Hmmm...