Only a matter of time

... before I would join the throng of those who knit the Sherry's Easy Shrug from UNWIND.

This pattern is hardly even a pattern - if you can do a K2 P2 rib you are already done. It's all done in one piece and then seamed together. Right now I've cast on the extra stitches at either end and am doing the part that contains the sleeves (why it's wider now).

Clever!

I'm finding that the rib is slowing me down, but still after just two nights this is what I have:



I'm using a lovely almost nubby gray ROYAL TWEED and am into my third 50g ball of it now. I hope to finish this shrug for our weekend away in Carmel, where it's chilly.

More to come, as usual.

For now here's what the cats think of it -

Peggy Rules - AGAIN

(this post too lazy to include handy links to the subject matter. Feel free to scroll as needed.)

Yes I am still gloating over the successful completion of the Picovolo.

I am completely satisfied with it and in fact I wore it to a lovely birthday brunch today, hosted by Jenny, and Jeanette actually said she thought the top was Store Bought -- What higher compliment?

But I digress.

This post is about QUEEN PEGGY, masterful brave Super Knitter!

After visiting here not long ago and learning to knit at the feet of the master (Jenny), Peggy took to it like a pro and immediately went home and started making all kinds of super-sassy scarves, teaching herself the stiches with only a copy of Debbie Bliss's HOW TO KNIT.

Many delightful scarves later, she of course arrived at the age-old Question: How many scarves can a person make?

Okay, what then to move on to that's not too scary but that's more gratifying than a scarf?

After having such success with the Ballet Top (Loop d Loop), I knew Peggy could make one too. She was a bit intimidated about knitting in the round AND knitting with two strands because she'd never done either, but we went to UNWIND, got some yarn, and she was off and running in moments.

Double stranded? No Problem.

Joining and knitting in the round to make stockinette? Ditto.

Knit into the front and back to increase at the markers? Child's play for Super Peggy!

We started the Ballet Top when she was here, and look how far she is now:



I am bursting with pride!

More pics as she sends them to me - but let's all give Peggy a big hand for getting this far!

And Finally -

Satisfaction!

I did have to add a few stitches at intervals all the way around in order to get it to be the right size, and altough I know no one else will see, I do notice the increases. I also added a few rows in the boobs before starting the decreases and that worked well. It put my just into a 5th skein, though, which probably could be avoided next time.

I’m hoping blocking will make the added stitches a bit less noticeable, but even if it doesn’t I’m still very happy with the way this top turned out.

The tailoring at the sides looks pretty good – different from the tops that have increases and decreases on either side of the center stitch. I especially like the darts under the bust. It fits really well!

If I could pay attention and count I’m sure this would have come out perfect, but this is close enough for me. I’ll definitely try again with the same kind of yarn and the same needles.

Oh and note the YO, K 2 tog border at the bottom – Cute!

Oh, Picovolo....

This is Picovolo at the point where I was going to rip it out:

Maybe I don't suck?

You will laugh but I am making the second stab at the
Magknits Picolvolo Top, and I think it's going well in spite of my - um - talents. The pattern calls for 5.5 sts/in which is just too fine and blindness-causing for me, so I'm doing it at 4.5 per inch and following the pattern as if I were making the smaller size.

I was just about to rip out the whole thing - again - when I discovered I had nowhere near the number of stitches the pattern said (although I did all the increases right) but thought I'd try it on and see how bad it was before unraveling it. I threaded it all onto my favorite "scrap yarn" -- Dental Floss - and tried it on.

I was at the point where it just about covered my boobs, and what do you know, it pretty much fits! So no unraveling, and now I'm just at the end of all the waist decreases, which are a lot of work but do look nice. I'm out of yarn, though, because the yarn I'm using (a lovely mid-to-light pink mercerized cotton) was purchased for a different project and I only got three skeins. I figure I will need two more to finish - but that's a good lesson for me too because I never know how much yarn I will need for a project and end up with way too much if I follow what the patterns say.

Humbling

Well things were going along fine and dandy with that yoke vest, and I think you know what happened: I got cocky.

I got to the point where I started the bust increases and my brain fell out - I read the pattern several times, and even brought the thing to UNWIND for hand-holding, and yet I still managed to get the increases to veer off to the right instead of stay smack in the center of the vest.

CRAP!

Here's a picture of just how far I got - did the sleeves and everything. Cord binding around the middle is how far I determined I would need to rip out (grrrrrrrrr).



You can sort of see here that I've lost control of the center stitch, and the thing just runs off to the right:


The good news, if you can call it that, is that I panicked and sent email to the Loop-d-Loop site, and first thing in the morning I had a response email from Teva! Email was great and really wanted to help me solve this, but Teva stuck to the pattern (I was insisting that you need to do an increase on either side of the center stitch (a K1) and the book says no). We exchanged a couple of emails and then I think Teva gave up on me.

Where I'm at now? I decided to try it my way - add a K1 at the center stitch and do my increases on either side of it. But now I've started another project and am pretty deep into it.

But that's another post -

So for right now this vest is stalled.

This is the first time I've ever worked on more than one thing at once. Not sure I like it....