Robynettely

I was apparently feeling dour this morning. Here I am wearing Ribbed Lace by Norah Gaughan from "Gathering of Lace". I wore it all day. The neckline is an inch lower now. Rib Lace by Norah Gaughan The sleeves are too long, also. If I had thought it through, I should have set them in. But this was meant to be a mindless project (as if!) and I'm relatively satisfied with the garment. Maybe next weekend I'll throw it on again and decide if I need to reinforce certain parts of it (neckline or shoulders). While answering the door for Halloween trick-or-treaters, I worked on Jade. I wonder if I can be back where I was (almost at the armhole) by the end of the weekend?

If you go back a couple of posts to the one with all the pictures in it, you'll see a balled up thing. It's this now. Jade... Why yes, you are correct, it was more before. Off to the side of this picture is a big ball of yarn that is most of what I ripped out. There were three problems with it as I see it: The pink wasn't working on the fair isle band. Maybe I'll switch to one of the three shades of blue I have lying around that would work with the peacock. I'm thinking the Danube from harris tweed, but I haven't even pulled it out yet, and I have weeks to decide. For some reason I had six more stitches on the back than the front. I don't know how that happened. My fair isle band was way too wide for my purposes. At 20 stitches across, it made five repeats across the front, and it looked stupid, for all the three rows I did of it. It was also 63 rows long. I think I need to redesign it to be more like 12 x 40. I got over-excited I think on the part where I g...

If Ribbed Lace was meant to be a pinney, I'd be almost done by now. This picture doesn't share the hell that was doing the three-needle bind off on the second shoulder. For some reason I couldn't get it to work out right, and then I looked down a couple of inches and realized that I had decreased 12 instead of eight stitches on the front neck on one side, which explained everything. So again, I got to rip out a couple of inches. I am getting heartily sick of this sweater. I was considering doing the neck next, but then I decided to go the easy route and start a sleeve. Fortunately I have the first one done, so I really might be done this sucker by Halloween. Rib Lace sleeve Why yes, that is a still inside-out, still incomplete Manhattan this sleeve is reclining on. Don't say a word.

But my camera battery is dead, which isn't an auspicious start. Hopefully the pictures will just fall into place smoothly later on. Yesterday I started the front neck decreases on Ribbed Lace. I finished the decreases on the right (the instructions say to do both sides at once, but I find that to be living hell, so I was doing them one at a time). I held the work up to admire it... And then I ripped out six inches. There was a mistake in a whole row right in the middle of one of the knots. In essence, I had forgotten the "rest row", which meant that my knot was two rows too short, squished in the middle. Now, it may be that no one else would ever notice. But as I figure that row is going to fall right across my chest, I would always be self-conscious about it. That six inches was probably about one ball of yarn. Rib Lace Front But I was watching "A Fish Called Wanda" on Family Channel at the time -- who knew they had no commercials? And I got a bodhran for my bi...

Last night I finished the 12th ball of baby silk on Norah Gaughan's Ribbed Lace pullover. I wish I had a better name for it, because I know I'm going to love this sweater. The pattern has five staggered knots, and then launches into just ribs and lace the rest of the way up. I got to the bit above the knots, and then knitted until the ball was finished, because at midnight there was a "World's Best Helicopters" show on Discovery so it wasn't hard to get Ed to stay up past bedtime. I don't have any pictures. This would all make more sense if I had pictures. And yesterday I got a card in the mail from IK saying they had received my package. I think that's a sweet touch, becuase it gives me the feeling they're considering my designs, rather than just looking at them and saying "There's no way we're printing that!" and shipping it all back immediately. This is just an excuse to have a visual, since I've got no pictures. Your Hair ...

Well, more than a month since my last post, now I owe eight. That would be because I spent most of the rest of September finishing two garments for my IK submission package and doing four swatches. I still haven't finished Manhattan. However, two weekends ago I finished the back of Norah Gaughan's Ribbed Lace pullover from GOL, and I'm half-way up the front. Which reminds me, I should measure and plan for the front neck bind-off, since it's lower than the back. I'm shortening this garment by three or four inches, because I'm 5'3" and don't need another 25-inch-long sweater. Oversized isn't my thing these days. I also started a sleeve on "From Selbu to Sahara" from Norsk Strikkegarn. I'm thinking I'll revise the rules about how many balls a garment knit from a cone counts as, because I just can't imagine only getting nine "points" for this sweater. Maybe if something is knit in fair isle at more than 6 stitches per...