Amaryllis, all done

Ooph...  It took me a while to knit and even longer to photograph and present, but my aran Amaryllis pullover is finally, gloriously finished.  I confess to feeling some relief here, I was bored out of my wits with this longish knit, even though the design itself is anything but boring. 

I find most traditional aran sweaters, with their boxy shape and crew- or turtlenecks, rather unflattering (unless you are a stick figure of a person, which I am not).  Therefore, I reached for the big guns and went for rather drastic waist shaping.  If you don't have much of a waist, you need clothes that create an illusion of one!  Additionally, Amaryllis has enough positive ease in all the areas that shouldn't really be highlighted (belly, in my case), while keeping an overall 'fitted' appearance. 

To tell you the truth, I am very, very happy with how it turned out (and that it's finally done...).  The armholes are slightly bigger than I would want them to be but I don't think that's a problem.  The sweater is super warm, wonderfully comfortable and since its premiere, I wore it for an embarrassingly long time before finally throwing it into a washing machine.  Oh yes, it's made of acrylic/superwash wool blend so I can machine wash it as much as I please. 

Much of Amaryllis was improvised on the go and I tried a few techniques that were new for me, e.g. saddle shoulder and short row sleeves knitted up the armholes once the front and back were joined.  Getting the whole thing right was a bit tricky, but tell me, wasn't it worth the effort?

The pullover was worked in the round up until the armscye, then divided into front and back and worked flat, leaving stitches in the last row live.  These I used to 'anchor' the cable that joins front and back.  Once all live stitches were used up, I knit up a round along the armhole, shaped the sleeve cap with short rows and worked in the round decreasing in more or less regular manner until the sleeve reached desired length. 

Knitting arans in the round is universally considered a bad idea, but I took my chances.  I used around 650g of aran weight yarn, so I hope the pullover is light enough to hold its shape without any additional structural strengthening.  If, however, I notice any stretching, I'm going to implement plan B: reinforcing crochet chains on the wrong side in all the crucial areas.  Hopefully I won't need to, because I really want to focus on other projects now. 

Socks coming up next!

Aran Red update

It seems that talking about a problem might be the first step towards a solution.  After pouring my heart out yesterday, I remembered a piece of equipment which I don't own, but have access to and after figuring out various boring technical details, I am reluctantly back in the photographic saddle.

This does not mean that I have learned to take good pictures or that I suddenly started to enjoy the process, but I can at least show you my progress on the red aran pullover.

It is currently growing at a supersonic rate of 2-3 rounds a day, which may be due to some or all of the following:

a) I'm still recovering from the recent bout of knitting block.  I don't get queasy at the very thought of knitting anymore, but the idea of spending a couple of hours with yarn still lacks the usual appeal.  Feels weird but there you go.

b) While I'm usually fairly confident in my designing abilities, I'm little uneasy about this whole 'I'll figure out details when I get there' attitude.  I'm getting dangerously close to the armholes, where I will have to start counting again and I'm not in much hurry to get there.  Hey, it's the dark time of the year, I am not at my sharpest and brightest. 

c) At this stage, the pullover starts looking dangerously short-ish.  I did swatch and measure etc., but swatches are notoriously fickle.  I have a bit over 30 cm now and only a few rows to go before dividing for armholes if I were to proceed as planned, but I'm more and more convinced that the plan will need serious adjustments.  It is remotely possible that a couple of extra rows will fix the problem (do you think I can count on my luck here?), but I rather suspect it's more complex than that.  You see, the design includes some significant waist shaping and I fear the stubborn shortness may mean that the skinniest part is not where it should be.  I sense some ripping in the air...  We'll see.  I'm not that eager to find out.  Maybe, if I give it enough time, it will fix itself?

I know I had one more excellent reason to take things slowly but for the life of me, I cannot remember what it was.  Obviously, it was extremely important and not a lie at all. 

The yarn is still gloriously red though, and even at my current astonishing speed I should finish the sweater before the winter ends, so all is good, right? 

One more pic for you, this one more truthful about the colour:

Sorry about the weird angle.  I'm only beginning to crack this photography thing. 

How are your Christmas preparations going?  Will I be the object of your envy if I tell you that mine are non-existent, because I cancelled Christmas this year? 

I'll tell you more tomorrow.

Oh, and I just remembered reason d) for knitting in bite size chunks.  Here it comes:

d) I lack any ambition whatsoever.  This, if you were wondering, is a 100% truth. 

Finished! - Mayabee, or Once More With Feeling

Just one last toddler knit and I'm done for a while.  That is, the string of July birthdays is over, but it looks like there are a few commissions headed my way so I'd better not call it a day before the sun sets... 

Anyway, here's my toddler pullover no. 2, Mayabee.

I'm quite proud of it, you know?  It turned out even prettier than I ever thought it would.  Textured fabric is quite decorative in itself, braids on sleeves and all, but it's the hood that really makes the piece this time. 

It was my first time knitting a hood and I was a little anxious.  No need - hoods are easy!  I loosely followed an excellent tutorial found here, improvised a little and voila!  My hood even has a pompom...

...and a tiny lacy pattern where I had to increase for depth. 

The best news of all, Mayabee fits its owner almost perfectly (sleeves could be a little wider towards the shoulder, but I'll correct for this if/when I publish the pattern).  It looks adorable on the little girl it went to;  I might convince the parents to lend me a shot or two for the blog.  Check back in a while :)

PATTERN:

My own. 

It is sized for a one year old, but one of the commissions mentioned above is for a two year old version.  I'm not confident enough of my pattern-writing skills just yet, but please let me know if you would like to see instructions for Mayabee released into the world :).

Finished! - Carefree Blue

I'm proud to announce that I perservered and finished my Carefree Blue pullover.

It turned out pretty neat, so much so that now I'm not quite sure why I wanted to destroy it in the first place.  Must've been a case of almostdoneitis.

Let me explain.  Very often (about 95% of the time), when I'm about three quarters through a knit, I suddenly get a feeling that whatever I'm working on at the moment is awful, is not going to fit and generally sucks on all fronts.  It's a very strong feeling too, a source of genuine frustration and unhappiness.  I always knit on, if only because it would be a shame to just rip all this work and in the end everything turns out to be just fine.  The garment fits and is just what I had planned it to be, frustration becomes satisfaction.

Do you ever get that, or is it just me?

Anyway, Carefree Blue survived almostdoneitis intact.  What do you think?

It's very warm (not necessarily an advantage now in June but I'll sure as hell appreciate it in November) and comfy, with really nice balance between attractive waist shaping and diplomatic positive ease.  I can already tell that it's gonna be one of my favourites for a while :)

It's almost all twisted stockinette, with matching accents in garter stitch on sleeves and hem.  I prefer continental knitting and my favourite technique automatically twists stitches when working in the round.  I can correct this if I want to, but in the case of Carefree Blue I kind of liked the effect, so twisted the stitches remained.

PATTERN:

My own improvisation :)

Bonus:  one of my chickens, Hades, watching the photo shoot.  Despite masculine name, it's a girl and it is a special day in her life:  today she laid her first egg ever!

More finished objects coming soon.

Twins - empire waist pullover in red or blue

If these are twins then they are definitely not identical.  They were knitted from the same pattern though, so family resemblance is surely there.

Red pullover was born first, a good while ago - in fact, this is one of my very first knitted garments (hence minor snags here and there and rather untidy seams).  I still love it to bits and wear it as often as I can.

It doesn't look like much on a hanger, so I decided to overlook my hatred for camera and snap a few pictures on Yours Truly. 

Did you spot my dog lurking helping in the photo shoot?

Blue pullover is destined for my sister.  I promised to make this for her over a year ago and it doesn't really matter that it took me forever, what counts is that I'm finally delivering, right?  Right?  Lucky creature, she's two sizes smaller than me and I wanted her version to be a bit fancier, so I improvised with crocheted flowers. 

This particular picture lies terribly about colour, others are more accurate.

Flowers can be moved around, or even removed.

I wasn't sure if crocheted flowers are exactly my sister's thing, so just in case I stitched pieces of velcro to the back rather than stitching flowers on permanently.  It may not be a durable solution, but for now I'm very happy with the result.

A closer look at stitches used:

PATTERN:

Pattern comes from a Polish knitting magazine, Dama w Swetrze from April 2006.  I have no idea if the pattern is available in English anywhere - sorry. 

Original instructions specify chunkier yarn but my pullovers are knitted from DK.  I had to recalculate pretty much everything, but well, little counting never killed anybody.

Crochet flower pattern comes from here.   It's free and really worth checking out - flowers are sweet and extra easy to make.