Behind the Scenes
Wow--two weeks has gone by without a post!
What have I been doing? Well, first off--I've been knitting. If June and July were rather fallow knitting months for me, I am making up for it in August...
First off, this little beauty just fell off the needles:
This is Cosima, a Berroco design that I first saw featured in the fall or winter WEBS catalog (I forget which). I bought the yarn, Berroco Cuzco in this gorgeous chocolate brown, during the WEBS anniversary sale. It sat in my stashette for a few months while I worked on other projects, and then I finally decided to cast on for it.
Thank goodness for Ravelry, because without it I would never have been able to anticipate some of the issues? challenges? weirdnesses? of this pattern, and I ended up making many modifications to mine as I went through others' comments. The pattern as written yields a very wide sweater with a really deep scoop neck. Every single size (XS to XL) uses the same number of stitches around the neck (I want to say 162? In a bulky-weight yarn?) and the descriptor "Flashdance-esque" was used more than once. I decided to err on the side of caution and picked up only about half that number, and the sweater sits really nicely on my shoulders. It doesn't have quite the same dramatic scoop as I liked in the photo, but I'd rather have it be wearable. My job is so active (I rarely sit down during my teaching periods) that I just can't have anything non-functional in the wardrobe.
Listy list about Cosima:
- My favorite part of this pattern was the lace. There is something really fun about lace in a bulky yarn.
- This was my very first sweater knit in pieces and seamed! (Not counting the little seams in baby kimonos.)
- I stayed up FAR TOO LATE last Saturday (um...3:30 am) seaming, watching Buffy, weaving in ends...and it was totally worth it.
- I'm calling it Chocolatl because of the color.
- The fronts and back are size S (the 36") and the sleeves are M.
- I added about .5"-1" to the length because of my longwaistedness.
- A full-on Eucalan-enhanced wet blocking did wonders for it. I don't have a "real" blocking board or mats so I couldn't pin it out, but I used my rotary cutting mat to facilitate stretching the pieces by hand...and, again, the extra time was totally worth it.
So: what's next on the needles? Well, take a gander at these:
What are they? Well, if you've gone through the recent Twist Collective you may recognize this baby. She deserves a whole post of her own....and with any luck, it won't take me 2 weeks to write it.
And I bought Jared Flood's Classic Elite booklet, Made in Brooklyn...and I still have Norah Gaughan 3...and it's M's turn for a sweater...
And school starts in two weeks.
