sweetgeorgia

End of Electra

What can I say? This vest was fun, fast and easy to knit. I’m wearing it today and just love it. Here are my finishing photos:

This is the top edge of the vest — I didn’t bind off just yet. I just strung the stitches onto some waste yarn so that I could sew and cut the steeks first. You can see the stitch markers indicating where the steek stitches start and end.

Yeah, there were a ton of ends to weave in, even with knitting in the round. But maybe a quarter of the number of ends compared to knitting flat and then seaming. Whoohoo.

Just like with the baby norgi, I machine stitched down between steek stitches 1 & 2 and 3 & 4. Then again down the middle of stitch 2 and 3…

Then I cut straight down the middle between stitches 2 and 3… Easy peasy.

I couldn’t resist the lovely window light coming through the sheers in our bedroom. The vest is kind of cropped, so there’s a bit more shirt sticking out than I’m used to. But I love it!

Electra Vest from Rowan 38

• Pattern: Rowan 38
• Yarn: Rowan Kid Silk Haze, Felted Tweed and Yorkshire Tweed in the specified colours
• Needles: US 7 / 4.5mm and US 3 / 3.25mm Addi Turbos
• Changes: Rather than knitting flat pieces, I knit this in the round and steeked the neckline and armholes. I added 4 stitches for each steek. The shoulders were joined with a 3-needle bindoff. Yippee, no sewing!
• Finished Measurements: 34″ size

Exclusive.

It should be obvious to me that knitting a single project, to the exclusion of all other projects, allows you to finish faster. Funny that I “discovered” this while knitting Birch. I have about ten projects on the go, but for the past few weeks, I’ve been ignoring them all to work on Birch… Birch for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Birch is now off the needles, just in time for me to start the Rowan 38 River stole on September 1st!

Birch still needs to be blocked, but I won’t be able to use the top of the bed to block until Saturday morning. I’m trying to decide if I should go off to Home Depot and find some wire that I can use as make-shift blocking wires, or if I should try the Harlot’s lace blocking technique. There are of course packs of blocking wires that you can buy for $35 CDN but, again, my wallet is currently unavailable.

What’s on deck next? Finish off my KOTR Friday Harbour socks and Knitty’s Trellis baby aran cardigan… those should be quick. Maybe I should think about trimming my “current projects” list so there’s no more than three or four projects at a time… Otherwise, how do you divide your time and attention?

And oh yeah, I’m so not ready for September.

Starting with Meg

After a bit of swatching (in the round, well, flat with long loops), I finally decided on a colourway for Meg’s Fair Isle Cardigan. Instead of the warmer browns/heathers in the original cardigan, I chose cooler greys and plums for my version. I’m using Jamieson’s Spindrift in Black, Granite, Oxford, White, Loganberry, and Raspberry. See, I’ve started the body:

There’s my first 6 rows of corrugated ribbing in black and raspberry. I learned the German Twisted Cast On to prevent the ribbing from curling and love this method of cast on now. It’s more elastic and so I’ve used it for a pair of socks now too.

Rather than knit at Meg’s gauge of 6.75 spi for a 48″ circumference cardi, I’m using smaller needles to knit at 7.75 to 8 spi for something closer to a 40″ circumference. Besides, I think the recommended gauge for Spindrift is 7.5 spi… I figure I have some wiggle room here. The good thing about knitting at a slightly tighter gauge is that I don’t have to resize the cardi or cut out repeats, etc. I can just (hopefully) follow Meg’s instructions as is.

Highgate Complete!

Dashed were my initial plans to Kitchener the collar together… I think I just got lazy and was in a rush to finish, so I used the three-needle bind off instead. The join of the centre back of the collar to the back piece is a little off centre, but I just left it rather than ripping and re-sewing. I’m surprising myself with how laid back I’m getting about finishing — perfectionism doesn’t live here anymore.

But I love how it fits! It’s soft and fuzzy — mmm, just in time for springtime. Here it is!