Friday, January 20, 2006

Ingeborg progress (steeks and surgery)

1. Sweaters From Camp knitalong stuff is all updated. The sidebar contains all of the participants who have notified me of their participation (24 people!), and I've edited the original information post with links to other posts with KAL information. If you see anything missing, please let me know, but I'm pretty sure it's all up to snuff. (And if you want to join, you're always welcome!)

2. Ingeborg is now at exactly 1.5 pattern repeats. I didn't think I'd get that far by today, but I was amazingly productive at the knitting group. I must be getting more comfortable with the pattern, because I think I knit about 1.5 more rows than I did at the group last week. Here she is:

Ingeborg - January 20


I might be having a change of heart on the steeking issues. This is because C. offered to help me with the sewing. She's quite an accomplished seamstress (used to make clothing for herself and her husband), and I would trust her with my Ingeborg. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm actually leaning that way. The thing is, I won't have to knit the Ingeborg sleeves until I'm done with my sweater for the SFCKAL. That sweater will give me a very good idea of what sleeve length works for me for drop sleeve sweaters. If I had a better idea of sleeve length, I could knit Ingeborg as designed - no steek stitches for the armholes, but just a sew and cut when the sleeves are done, separately from the body. Should I go for it?

Another thing that I've been thinking about in regard to Ingeborg is colorfastness. I woke up in a sweat, worrying about what will happen the first time I wash her. Will the black bleed all over the white? I didn't have any visible color bleeding in my Nordic Mittens, which use the same yarn (Brown Sheep Naturespun sport), but I didn't have anything near the black and white contrast I have here. I might investigate instructions on using vinegar to keep colors from running, as a treatment before I block Ingeborg. I don't want it to end up light grey on black.

3. I did my first minor Ingeborg surgery at the knitting group last night. Somehow, I messed up just one of the pattern repeats in one of the rows, so I knit an extra stitch in black near the beginning of the repeat, and knit one fewer stitch in white later on in the repeat. When I found the weird error (how did I do that without noticing?) on the next round, I dropped stitches and picked up floats where necessary. You wouldn't be able to see it, though. I'm very proud of the surgery. I'd have taken pictures, but I was without a camera at the time.

4. Sorry for the infrequent posts this week. Ingeborg is not a fast project, and I didn't want to post unless I had something to actually show off or say. I think I'm going to start on the Komi socks next week, after I finish the second pattern repeat on Ingeborg. But in general, most of the next several months will be dedicated to Ingeborg and Sweaters From Camp. This might mean updates only a couple of times a week. I'd rather have less frequent blog posts than really boring blog posts.

4 Comments:

Blogger Not An Artist said...

What a beauty!

And congrats on the successful surgery - can't even spot a single error. Minor repairs is a skill every knitter should have, even those of us who aren't as advanced.

1/20/2006 1:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do you have enough of the yarn to do a test wash? You could probably just twist a few strands of each into a mini-hank to get a fair idea of bleediness.

The one time I used Naturespun it bled some into the water, but I washed it in pretty warm water and it was off of a cone (I read somewhere that they wash skeined yarn). I bet so long as everything was kept cold it'd be all right.

1/20/2006 2:00 PM  
Blogger Becki said...

Ingeborg is incredibly gorgeous. The black and white is just so striking. Sorry, no ideas about your sleeves!

1/20/2006 9:31 PM  
Blogger Ashley said...

Vinegar should help, but there are also specific products on the market that prevent any bleed from the black from re-depositing onto the white. Synthrapol is the "professional" one, but Cheer (I think) and RIT both make versions that you can just pick up at the grocery.

Good luck--Ingeborg is beautiful!

1/22/2006 11:52 AM  

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