The sweater it wanted to be

Before I show you how my cardigan turned out, let's review.

This yarn began its life intended for the Origami Cardi from IK Summer '07, but I was having Gauge Issues and decided that I didn't want something that weird and boxy and bobbled after all.

In this post I showed you how the back, which was supposed to be one Liz wide, turned out to be nearly one Liz long. So it got frogged and I started turning it into the Equestrian Blazer. I'm still too traumatized by all the problems I had there, so I won't recap in too much detail, but all the entries are here.

So I started working on a version of Glampyre's Minisweater and modified it almost into oblivion. I didn't post much about the knitting because it wasn't nearly as interesting as the other stuff I've been working on.

I finished knitting it the Monday before Thanksgiving and washed and blocked it right away so that I'd be able to wear it in my future BIL's freezing house in Oklahoma. But when it was time to leave on Tuesday, it still wasn't dry! What to do?

Bring the blocking with you, of course.


The sweater, pinned to the blocking board, resting in the back seat of my car. (I really hate how the picture came out so blurry but you can still see all those dings in my door!)

I'd bought some nice metal buttons but they were too big for the button holes, so Wednesday morning before Dave and I left his apartment for his brother's house I stopped at Hobby Lobby and found some buttons that made my geeky heart sing for joy.


Having done some checking, this turns out to be a pretty inaccurate reproduction of several different German coins, but heck, I'm a historian, not a coin collector. The Vereinsthaler was the coin used by the German trade confederation in the 1850s and 1860s, and after the birth of the German empire in 1871 (see the year on the coin?) it was used to represent three marks, or so Wikipedia tells me. "Ein Pfund Fein" means "one pound exactly."

At FBIL's, when the sweater was finally dry and I sat down to sew on the buttons, I realized that I'd left the yarn at home, so I made due and sewed them on with some of the green sock yarn, which is probably not going to last very long as the knots keep slipping. You can actually see a bit peeking out from behind that button.

With the buttons on and everything finally ready, the yarn had finally become the sweater it wanted to be. I love it so!


The Specs
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Spruce
Pattern: Minisweater/Boobholder
Mods: I think the only thing I didn't change was the cast on numbers and the raglan increases. I changed the rate of neckline increases and made it a full-sized sweater with waist shaping and 3/4 sleeves. Oh, and as a somewhat tall girl, these are my first ever actual 3/4 length sleeves: they actually hit where they're supposed to, instead of right at the elbow! I love knitting.

It may not be too obvious in these pictures, but I knit the garter edging at the hems on sideways rather than normally. I think it's a nice touch.


I heart my new sweater!

Sundries

I find it a little ironic that just after I started acquiring a pretty decent readership to this blog, I suddenly became unable to maintain regular blogging habits. Part of me hopes that you are all reading this through bloglines so you don't waste a lot of time each day clicking through favorites, only to see that once again, Liz has not updated. I used to do that before I found bloglines, and the one that sticks out most is Eunny's blog, which dropped off around the same time that I started reading it. (hope that wasn't my fault!)

Anyway, here is a brief update on where we stand with the wedding plans.
-The cake has been arranged and is going to be delicious
-The rehearsal dinner has nearly been arranged and is going to be delicious
-The flowers have been arranged and are going to be beautiful. We're using blue and white hydrangeas--white for me with a little blue, and blue for the bridesmaids. I showed the florist my veil and he immediately pulled out some Queen Anne's Lace, which will pop out of the hydrangea bouquets in a most attractive way.
-The dress. I am so excited about the dress! When my grandparents got married in 1948 my grandmother wore this dress.


My aunt wore it, then my mother wore it, and then my uncle's wife wore it. And as much as I loved the idea of being the fifth bride in my family to wear such a special dress, I could not get past that shoulder ruffle and the giant butt bow, not shown.

To make a long story short, we're taking apart that enormous skirt and turning it into another dress entirely. I had my second fitting last week and have the third on Thursday, and it's coming together beautifully. I may post pictures later, provided my fiance will agree not to look. It's not the bad luck aspect I'm worried about, it's the ruined surprise.

I have been knitting, too! Those Christmas socks are done.


Yarn: Claudia Handpainted in DF Green
Needles: US 1
Pattern: nothin special in the toe and foot, Baudelaire heel, 3x1 ribbing in the cuff.

I still need to give these a vinegar bath so they don't bleed on the recipient's feet. I think he's going to love them, though.

Much progress has been made on the cardigan front, and I am working on the bottom of the sweater right now. I am making things more complicated than they need to be, but I think the final result will be worthwhile. I couldn't get a good picture, though, so you will have to wait. I haven't knit on the gauntlets at all, but anticipate picking those up as soon as the cardi sleeves get boring.

Something for me

My Christmas knitting list is very ambitious this year, but it is on hold for now because dangit, I want a cardigan!

The Equestrian Blazer has been frogged once and for all and is now on its way to becoming something else entirely:



A top-down, raglan sleeve cardigan that may slightly resemble the Glampyre Minisweater, but without the ruffled edge or the puffed sleeves and regular-cardigan length. Basically the only resemblance will be in the cast-on numbers, the garter edges, and the neckline (but that's got mods of its own). So far I'm a lot happier with this than I was with the first two renditions of this yarn. Will the third time be the charm?

I should also say that Ravelry was a huge help here. I would not make a sweater like the one in the Glampyre pattern. But if you look up the dozens of Minisweaters on Ravelry, many people have omitted the puffed sleeves and the edging doesn't appear at all. I certainly won't be the first one to make it full length, either. And I noticed that the less busty girls wound up having to put two buttons on (think double-breasted jackets) because the increases were too much, so I modified the neckline increases for a sweater more suited to my smaller chest.

Tom's gauntlets are looking more awesome, but are slightly stalled because he wants the arms two inches longer than they came out, so I'll need to modify the pattern some to add two inches worth of swirly comet tail.