Back so soon?

It was really heartening to get comments on my last blog entry...very reassuring to know that my readership (such as it is) didn't give up on me entirely. :) Thanks, guys!

Moon Torbett had some great suggestions. I don't know how practical it is to keep the camera in my knitting bag, but then again, I'm the only one in my house who ever uses it, so maybe doing that is not such a big deal. Also, this would provide an actual spot for the camera to live in, which would certainly help me to find it when I need it. :) An even better suggestion, though, was her routine of doing a major progress summary on weekends so that any posts during the week can be "free form sans guilt". Brilliant! That totally sounds like it would work for me. Thank you!

Thanks also to the ever-lovely Carrie K, who complimented my daughter's shrug and my modifications to it. And speaking of which...

Modifications I made to the "I Do" shrug pattern to fit my six-year-old

Measurements of said six-year-old:

• upper arm width: 6 5/8”
• wrist to wrist, arms extended: 32”
• shoulder to shoulder: 11.5”
• arm length to wrist from top of shoulder: 14”
• arm length to wrist from armpit: 11.75”

Substitutions:

• Yarn weight: laceweight instead of worsted/aran
• Needle size: 3mm instead of 4.5mm

With these substitutions, gauge should be: one repeat of the pattern is 2" wide and 2 5/16" tall (after blocking).

Pattern modifications:

Right Side

Sleeve: Wrist to Elbow

*CO 60 sts instead of the number which the pattern calls for, but placing markers and joining in the round as the pattern instructs (unless you are crazy like me and don't usually bother with marking for repeats).

Beg with row 10, work in Circular Pattern, decreasing 1 st in last repeat on 2 out of every 3 rounds (i.e. no decrease in row 1, decrease in row 2, decrease in row 3, no decrease in row 4, decrease in row 5, decrease in row 6...and so on) until 36 sts rem. 36 rounds have been worked.

Work 9 more rounds in Circular Pattern without further shaping. 2.5 full 18-row repeats have been worked.

Sleeve: Elbow to Shoulder

Round 1: Work Row 1 of Circular Pattern. Place a new marker on right needle, m1.
Rounds 2-49: Continue working in Circular Pattern, increasing 1 st between final set of markers every 16 rounds (i.e. Rounds 17, 33 and 49).
Round 50: Work next row of Circular Pattern without shaping.
Rounds 51-52: Continue working in Circular Pattern as set, increasing 1 st between final set of markers each round. 42 sts.
Round 53: Work next row of Circular Pattern. Place a new marker on right needle, m1.
Round 54: Work next row of Circular Pattern, increasing 1 st between final set of markers.
Rounds 55-59: Continue working in Circular Pattern as set, increasing 2 sts between final set of markers. 54 sts.*

Shoulder and Back

Round 60: Work row 6 of Circular Pattern as set throughout the round until 6 sts rem, then work last 6 sts in pattern as closely as possible without reducing the total number of sts on the needle, m1, turn. 55 sts.
Piece will now be worked back and forth (Flat Pattern).
Next row (WS): K1, work 6 sts in pattern as closely as possible without reducing the total number of sts on the needle, then repeat row 7 of Flat Pattern to end, m1. 56 sts.
Keeping edge sts in garter st, and working the "orphan" 6 sts (at end on RS rows, at beginning on WS rows) in pattern as closely as possible without reducing the total number of sts on the needle, repeat Flat Pattern as needed until back measures 5.75", ending with a Row 2 or 11 of Flat Pattern. Place all sts on a holder.

Left Side

Sleeve

Work from * to * as for right sleeve, EXCEPT work increase and decrease sections at beg of round instead of end of round.

Round 60: P6, [P3tog, p4, YO, P1, YO, P4] until end of row, m1, turn. Piece will now be worked back and forth (Flat Pattern). 55 sts.
Next row (WS): K1, work Row 7 of Flat Pattern until 6 sts rem, then work last 6 sts in pattern as closely as possible without reducing the total number of sts on the needle, m1. 56 sts.
Keeping edge sts in garter st, and working the "orphan" 6 sts (at beginning on RS rows, at end on WS rows) in pattern as closely as possible without reducing the total number of sts on the needle, repeat Flat Pattern as needed until back measures 5.75", ending with a Row 2 or 11 of Flat Pattern. Place all sts on a holder.

Finishing

Follow pattern instructions. (Be sure to block well for the width of the sleeves - total circumference around the elbow should be about 6".) Once done, thread a ribbon through the outside of the opening for the body as a drawstring - this can be pulled snugly when worn to ensure a good fit and that the shrug stays on. (And also so that it looks pretty darn fancy!)

I think that's all correct. Warning, though: I'm just copying from the modification notes I made, I haven't tested them or anything to double-check that it will all work properly. I can tell you, though, that following my own instructions gave me a shrug that was a little too wide across her shoulders (thank heavens for the ribbon; having a drawstring saved everything), so perhaps working each back to about 5.25" instead of 5.75" might be a better idea? YMMV.

And now, more updates...

Fjalar for moi

When last we saw this project, I was close to finishing the body and starting the sewing up. That all went well...until it was together enough to try on and I discovered that certain parts of the sweater were waaaay too big. The sleeves extended past the tips of my fingers, and the body was way too long.

Fortunately, there were long stretches of straight stocking stitch without any shaping on both sleeves and body, so the fix was really simple - just annoying to do. I figured out how much reduction I wanted to do, and placed stitches on holders at both the top of the section I was going to get rid of, and the bottom. I then snipped and frogged in between these two spots, then grafted the two sections back together again. Obviously this had to be done three times - once for each sleeve, and then for the body.

Unfortunately, I think I ripped back a little too far for the sleeves. When the cold weather comes round again I might add a half-inch or an inch back to each sleeve to make it perfect, but for now, I'm ignoring it. The sweater turned out pretty well, I think:


front


back


'in action'

I completed it at the beginning of April juuust as the weather started to get warm (of course, thank you ever so much, Murphy, you prick). I think my MIL would have been pleased.

What is it?

I've been trying to figure out for a while now what has been preventing me from blogging regularly over the past rather-long-while. I used to blog every day; there couldn't have been a person in the world more eager than I to fire up the Internet and tell the world exactly how my knitting had progressed in the past 24 hours. But life (in the form of a full-time job, a three-hour daily commute, two children, and an increasingly improved ability to get around to doing my household chores) appears to have encroached on this part of my life almost completely. There may be a few other factors at work:

• Ravelry. I do keep track of my projects very faithfully here, which makes it tougher to find the motivation to blog about them since it's faster and easier to do it over there.
  
  
• Pictures. Feeling like I have to present pictures on the blog is problematic for a number of reasons. First, "lens cap" of my digital camera is actually a sliding door kind of contraption - when you slide it open, the camera turns on. And it's busted. It has a not-so-charming habit of being very temperamental about turning on in the first place (you have to open it with a really vigorous snap). Once you finally manage to get it open and on, it's also very good at doing what I can only call "relaxing" out of the open position by about a millimetre, and suddenly the camera turns off on you. This makes taking pictures rather a chore, which is compounded by then needing to go and find (in my mess of a house) the cable that will connect the camera to the computer. Then I need to edit the pictures for size and clarity because I'm just that much of a perfectionist; and then upload them and tag them appropriately and on and on and on...it's not much, really, but it does take time, and so I keep putting it all off. Especially when I've mislaid the camera itself.
  
  
• Perfectionism. The longer I take to post, the more knitting there is to write about. And the more knitting there is to write about, the longer the writing will take, and the more time I have to try to find to do it in.

So I have decided, for the first little while of catch-up posts, at least, to do the following:

• Screw photos if I don't have 'em.
• Catch you up bit-by-bit.
• Stop worrying about simultaneous updates of the blog detailing each project individually.

Hopefully this will work.

The first project I want to tell you about is something I just finished this past weekend.

I Do shrug for DD1

I have two cousins on my mother's side, both boys (now men). One of them got engaged last summer, and subsequently (at the beginning of this year) asked my oldest daughter to be the flower girl. Of course, this was very thrilling!

They chose a gorgeous creamy white silk dress for her, sleeveless, with an accompanying powder blue sash. My aunt (mother of the groom) pointed out that May weather is always iffy, and perhaps having a shrug at the ready might be a good idea so that DD1 wouldn't be too cold.

Well.

I've been wanting to make I Do since it came out - I thought I would be making it for me, and I was considering some midnight blue silk yarn I got off of eBay a few years ago. However, to heck with that - this flower girl thing was an excellent opportunity to try out the pattern, and it hopefully wouldn't take too much tweaking to get it down to six-year-old size. The pattern calls for worsted/aran weight yarn and 4.5mm needles, so I was actually thinking most of the sizing-down could be accomplished by using laceweight and smaller needles.

The bride asked that the shrug be done in white to match the dress. This was great, as I had some creamy laceweight in my stash (another eBay purchase from years gone by): a 90/10 silk/cashmere blend, "Dynasty", from Knit Knack, later known as YarnSmiths, now apparently known as Carriage House Woollens.



DD1's measurements were as follows:

• upper arm width: 6 5/8”
• wrist to wrist, arms extended: 32”
• shoulder to shoulder: 11.5”
• arm length to wrist from top of shoulder: 14”
• arm length to wrist from armpit: 11.75”

I did a swatch on 3mm needles, which measured out really well compared to how much smaller the shrug needed to be, so there really wasn't a whole lot of conversion to do.



I did want to make the cuffs less wide than called for, since children are just so good at getting sleeves into everything even when they're not long and flowy (the sleeves, that is, not the children). This meant reducing the number of stitches in the cast-on, and messing a bit with the rate of decreases towards the elbow. I also had to fiddle with the rate of increases towards the shoulder. I think I did end up ripping most of the first sleeve back at one point when I realised I needed to make some sizing improvements, but eventually I got it.

It was unfortunately too cream-coloured when compared against the actual dress, but once the whole thing was done and blocked, DH helped me put it out in direct sunlight for a day, which seemed to make an improvement. My aunt also suggested threading blue ribbon around the shrug opening to make a visual border between shrug and dress, and thus hopefully fool the eye into not realising the colour difference too much. So I got some blue ribbon from Michaels which was a pretty good match to the sash. The other thing that really helped was that the bride's dress was a touch creamier than the flower girl dress.

The day of the wedding, in the bride's suite at the hotel, when everyone was getting hair and makeup done, I put in the ribbon and thus completed the shrug. I had hoped that the overall effect would be nice, but I had no idea that it would turn out so well:



I was beyond pleased. Ecstatic, even.

I'll try to get the precise details of the modifications I made posted at some point (hopefully soon).

Stay tuned for further updates!