blocking and digesting

Endless stockinette has ended! The fields of purple are blocking, and I'm very happy. I really can't believe I knit all of that without a break in the form of a more interesting project.

So it turns out that the Peruvian Highland Wool expands a bit more with washing than my swatch led me to believe. Either my swatch wasn't big enough, I didn't measure accurately, or (most likely, I think) the swatch wasn't thoroughly soaked. It only got a soaking under a faucet, while the sweater soaked for a couple of hours (I almost forgot about it) in the washing machine. This expansion isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. The sweater would have fit me to the size I knit it, but it would have been on the smaller side of my preferred sizing. It should still fit just fine at this slightly larger size. And heck, winter is coming, which means I'm likely to expand a little bit from my preferred size. (One must prepare for hibernation with lots of Halloween chocolate and cookie dough from a tube!)

(EDIT: I just looked at my Flickr photo page, and realized that this photo is almost the same as the one I posted on friday. The only difference is that I happen to know this is post-washing, and that it's pinned out more carefully. Sorry for the boringness.)


Here's the sleeve. You don't get a picture of the rest because it was more than a bit unwieldy to try to get a photo of it all. After I saw the expansion, I didn't bother to think of it as blocking for size. I just pinned out the pieces to the size they wanted to be, so I can seam curl-free.

So the plan is to seam tonight (if stuff is dry), do 87 miles of icord edging tomorrow, and install the zipper on Wednesday. In the meantime, I have a fairly simple hat to design for A. That won't be an exciting knit, either, but I know he wants the hat, and I'm very happy to knit it for him. Plus, the yarn will match Rhapsody in Brown, so he can be all cool and coordinated.

After the hat, I'll probably try to finish up the lace scarf. I can't wait to get back to it, even if I'm sick of blues and purples. I don't think I'm going to order the rest of the Ingeborg yarn for a couple of weeks (when I get my next paycheck), but maybe I'll also swatch for that soonish, so I have something more challenging to work on. I'm really itching to do some fair isle again. I think I actually have enough sock yarn to make the Mamluke socks from the Folk Socks book, so I may work on those, too, to keep me sane during the next couple of weeks.

Of course, I may throw all future knitting plans out the window so I can knit myself my very own digestive system. I seriously want to make one, and hang it from the living room wall as modern art.