So, the other day I was sitting at my desk, when I heard a strange noise by the kitchen window.
When I went to check it out, I saw that it was again a visitor, one who had Ziti somewhat interested, but not quite enough interested to jump up and scare him away.
See?
Yes, he's got a piece of pizza crust, and yes, he's sitting between my window and the screen. Indeed I should probably shut the storm window to stop that from happening, but, honestly, I think the kitchen would get too hot too often if I did that.
Anyway. In knitting news, I revisited an old project this winter. This comes from the long saga of this sweater. If you'll remember, this was yarn I bought ages ago that I initially meant to be a sort of cabled sweater, then the Jolie cardigan, and then made into a very different sort of mock-cabled, shawl collared thing last winter. I finished it mostly then, and wore it a few times last year. But it was never quite right. I never put buttons on it for the simple reason that the shawl collar part hadn't been done right.
You can see the problem here, in a picture from last year. I made the ribbed part a bit too generous (i.e., I picked up too many stitches) with the end result that the fronts sag too much. Every time I tried to line up the fronts with buttons, there was inequality and ickiness.
That might have been OK, given that it made for a sort of dramatic front closing when done like this, with a pin rather than with buttons.
But on top of that were other issues with the collar. I made it flare out by placing increases in the ribbing more or less at the four points where the (in this picture invisible) raglan sleeve shaping happened. Except in this iteration, they were placed a bit less than more, which means that the collar doesn't quite work, and flops unequally (this is more visible in the other picture from my last post on this sweater).
Because of these two problems, I decided last fall that the thing to do was to re-do the collar. And so first I pulled it all out. That proved to be a bit tricky, given that I'd washed the sweater a couple of times, and even though I treated it gently, the yarn had gotten a little pilly and felted. Still, it came out reasonably well.
Then I had this.
You can see the construction of the main body better here. The mock cable rib, the switch to stockinette as the neckline decreases begin, the raglan sleeve shaping. This time I carefully noted where I'd placed the increases on the side of the neck that I liked better, and mirrored them on the other side (I'd just been off by a few stitches, but a few was enough to throw the whole thing off).
Then I picked up stitches all around the front and neck. This time I picked up significantly fewer stitches, to the point that as I was knitting the ribbing I worried that it was going to ride up too much, rather than sag down too much. However, I trusted that I could block out the ribbing enough that that wouldn't matter, and indeed that seems to have worked. I again did increases into the ribbing pattern at four points around the neck in order to give the collar a bit of give. And I placed four buttonholes such as to make the final sweater double breasted.
The result?
Pretty much exactly what I wanted. The buttons, by the way, are ones I bought in Paris last February. I intended them for this sweater back then, and only now have finally put them into place. The collar's a little less dramatic than in the last version--it's possible I should have picked up a few more stitches around the neck itself in order to give it more sweep. However, in the end, I think I'm happy with how it came out, and happier with this iteration than with the first.
My only concern? You can see even in this picture how pilly and fuzzy the yarn has become. That's... not so cool. It just makes it look old really quickly, which given that this ended up being a slightly formally styled sweater is not quite right. On a cushy knock-around hoodie? No problem. On this? Eh.