Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Wow, it's grey!

I realize that the photo is uninspiring. It's a grey rectangle (err, trapezoid). Stockinette with some seed stitch at the bottom. Grey. But I assure you that it's a pleasure to knit.

Bristow back


I have indeed swatched and cast on for Bristow. I'm using Naturally Merino et Soie, which used to look like this, after it looked something like this (but way too big). As the name suggests, it's merino and silk (70/30). It held up very well to being knit up (quite tightly), stored in a musty basement for months, frogged, balled, hanked, washed, and balled again. In fact, it pretty much feels like new. As there is no sign of wear on the yarn after those ordeals, I'm hoping that it will forget its merino content, and that it won't pill with wear. I have a vague memory of hearing that superwash wool resists pilling better than non-superwash, and this stuff is superwash. Of course, I could have planted that memory in my own head, out of hope. It's also from New Zealand, and all the Kiwis I've known (all one of him) have been practical and reasonable people. I expect the same of the yarn.

I love knitting this sweater. While the back is all stockinette (except for the seed stitch hem), the shaping helps keep it from being completely tedious. Plus, it's still a novelty to be working with HYUUGE (size 6!) needles, at the ghastly large gauge of 19 stitches per 4 inches. Also, the yarn feels like butter. Stuff like that never hurts. When I tire of sailing the stockinette seas, I'll have the front panels and sleeves to work on, which all have cables and other fun stuff.

I'm about 1/12 (or more, since my yarn has slightly more yardage per ball than Andean Silk) through the sweater, if measuring in balls. So far I haven't made any mods to the pattern. I was thinking of doing less waist shaping, but after re-measuring myself, I think the sweater will work as-is. If I find the waist is a bit too nipped in, it will be easy to block it out a bit. I am thinking of changing the set in sleeve shaping a bit. I think the armhole depth might be a bit more than I need, and I may also want the sleeves to be a bit narrower at the top. So in the next day or so, I'll need to sit down with this Knitty article and figure things out. I see that there's a new episode of Math 4 Knitters out. Listening to that will surely put me in the mood for some sleeve cap math!

I'm not abandoning Vertical Stripes or the socks, but I really needed a change of pace. Especially from the colorwork.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I clicked on your blog and saw a (mostly) plain expanse of stockinette, I wondered if I'd somehow woken up in some kind of bizarro world this morning.

You'll do a great job with that sweater, though, and I think the gray is a really good choice for it.

6/07/2006 6:50 AM  

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