10/19 - I got my second 2 skeins of yarn in the mail today from Theo and was just not feeling any of my current WIPS. I don’t want to sew the last pieces of my bag, I’ve got a cold and don’t want to try to focus on laceweight or start my second mermaid sock…so I decided to cast on for this. The pattern is a little tricksy - I’m not a fan of how it’s written or ordered, and I wish they had clearer instructions for the gauge. I actually didn’t knit up a test swatch because I just couldn’t be shufted to try to figure out how I should do it. I’ll measure it when it’s long enough and see how it is.

I’ve named this cloud cover because to me, it looks like the colour of a heavy storm cloud about to burst. Plus, it’s going to “cover” other shirts - clever, right? Funnily enough, the name of the photo that I’m using for my inspiration picture is Cloud Cover!

I’m doing the medium, which I hope will fit snugly but not too snugly. I measured my red cotton cardigan to try to figure out what size it should be across the chest. I’m going with the medium because it’s a shrug and, therefore, will go over top of other shirts. Plus, there’s no way my chest is 34” around…I haven’t been that size since middle school.

12/9/09 - I frogged this awhile ago. I looked at it and just didn’t like the way that it was working up. The cotton is twisted so tightly that it really didn’t work with the lacey part of this sweater. I’m going to use Blue Sky cotton instead, but this is probably on hold for awhile.

8/24/11 - Wow, did I really start this 2 years ago? How the hell did that happen and I just didn’t ever pick it up again? That’s abSURD. I’ve put it back into play as of tonight. I did a test swatch with size 7s and size 6s, and the 7 swatch was WAY too loose. But I really love the way this cotton feels. I think it’s going to work up beautifully. I’ve cast on and started the ribbing so I can work on it the next time I’m at the movies. I’ve decided that all ribbing should be done at the movies because I hate ribbing.

9/3/11 - I’m well into the eyelet section of this sweater and today I should be able to get to the armholes - woohoo! This was after knitting the ribbing through several movies - “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, “Crazy Stupid Love”, “Fright Night”, and “The Whistleblower”. Now, here comes a fun story to go with that ribbing.

My dear, dear friend Megan who I have a weekly standing date with for beer drinking/ advice nights hates ribbing just as much as I do, if not more. She has been working steadily on the Somewhat Cowl for some time now. She’s at the neckline (which she had to rip back and adjust for because it started out as a boob-framer, instead of a nice cowl-ish neckline) which requires 6 inches of ribbing. Six inches of ribbing is a lot of ribbing for someone who hates ribbing, particularly when you’re working it up with a yarn that, while it claims to be DK weight, is actually pretty thin. For the past 3 weeks or so, Megan’s mantra has been “6 inches of ribbing!” But since she hates ribbing, it doesn’t come out all nice and quiet, it’s more like “6 INCHES OF MOTHERF---ING RIBBING!!!” Her voice even cracks with the emotion of it all sometimes…

So at our weekly advice nights, our knitting group, and every time we see each other in between, we’ve commiserated about how much we despise ribbing. I was simultaneously restarting this project and another sweater that had been abandoned, so I had plenty of ribbing to hate on. I finished restarting the ribbing on the other project then turned my attention to this one. After decided that I didn’t want to do a k2 p2 ribbing, I was able to get started. Reason for not wanting to do a k2p2? Simple - it wouldn’t line up with the ribbing on the eyelet section of the sweater. I think it’s sloppy to have ribbing at the bottom that doesn’t continue and match up with the ribbing on the upper part of the sweater. I mean, if there’s a k2p2 ribbing, it should form one long, unbroken chain, not be staggered once you throw in a 5-stitch eyelet motif. So I adjusted it and instead did a p2, k2, p2, k2, p1, k2. (I know, that looks confusing - the k2 p1 k2 is the 5-stitch eyelet.) Once I had gotten 2 rows under my belt, I set aside the pattern - because after all, it’s just ribbing, right? - and knit my way through the aforementioned movies, hating the ribbing and wishing it would simply END already because it was taking SO long to get through the 6” of ribbing I had to do. This made it easy to empathize with Megan every time she would shout her battle cry of 6” of ribbing!

I finally hit the 6” mark and pulled out the pattern again to figure out what my next step for the eyelets was. I then stared in horror at the pattern instructions. “Repeat last 2 rows until rib measures 3” ending with a WS row complete.” 3 inches. 3 INCHES???? I had done DOUBLE the amount of ribbing I had needed??? Apparently, Megan had said 6 inches so many times, that it just trapped itself in my brain and never climbed back out.

So basically, it’s all Megan’s fault. I’ve decided to keep the 6” of ribbing…I like a long ribbing, personally, and I was planning to make this sweater longer than pictured any way because I’ll get much more use out of it as a full length cardigan than I would as a cropped one. But still…double the length? Unreal. Absolutely unreal.

As for changes that I’ve made elsewhere, I’m working the body all in one piece. I hate finishing and seaming, so I’m doing it this way to save myself time and frustration. This took a little bit of figuring out on the set-up of it, just to make sure the motif would flow nicely, but I think the results will be wonderful. I’ve realized the one flaw in this is that it really screws with the ribbing motif at the parts where i need to do increases, since those can’t be nicely hidden at the side seams. However, I solved this dilemma by just adding a stitch at the end of an eyelet when I needed to increase and tucking that stitch into the purl part of the ribbing motif so that it’s not really noticeable.

10/3/11 - Where to even begin with this project…I feel like SO much has happened since that last post…
Okay, to start with, I foolishly decided to work this sweater up in the size small, even though I had initially planned on doing the medium. I just thought that with the measurements and how stretchy ribbing is, that would be the better choice. I made it so close to finishing before I came to the screaming realization that not only was the small way TOO small - as in, it looks like I shrunk my sweater in the wash too-small - but also, I had totally fouled up doing the bust increases. I had somehow completely misread the pattern, in part because I had decided to do the body as all one piece and it just junked up in my brain where the increases should take place. I’m still not 100% how I became so puzzled and confused and remained this way for so long, but that’s what happened. I realized these two gigantically glaringly obvious even if you don’t KNOW how to knit mistakes pretty late in the game. How late, you ask?

I was on the button band.

….yeah….that one hurt. I mean, the sleeves were done, attached, I had done the neckline…it was THERE, I tell you…but it was all wrong. I had done increases on the front panel so that it looked like there were triangles growing over top of my boobs, magnified by the fact that the sweater would have fit Twiggy’s frame far better than mine. I pondered this dilemma for several days before finally deciding what to do. There was no WAY I wanted to do all of that ribbing over again - 6”, let’s remember. So I took apart the sweater and set the sleeves aside, still intact. Then, I ripped back to the ribbing and put the ribbing on the needles. After all, I only needed another 20 stitches to bump up from the size small to the size medium. I tried a few different things and eventually, I decided to just cast on a section of 20 stitches of ribbing, make it 6” long, and sew it on to the sweater, joining all of the ribbing for one final round before beginning the eyelet pattern. I’m very very pleased to say that it took me less than 3 hours to pull this off and it melts in so flawlessly that unless I’m physically touching the sweater, I have trouble finding the place where the join occurs.

This time, I placed the increases perfectly, AWAY from the front neckline where I had made it such a mess before. For those of you that are wondering, I placed the increases into the purls in the ribbing. I hate it when ribbing suddenly begins to balloon outwards and makes bizarro diagonals where before there were lovely verticals. This was part of the problem with the increases I had done before…to be fair, I really did think I was following along with the instructions and truly noticed nothing amiss until the button band when my eyes zoomed in on that part. Really, I think that until the whole thing was sewn together and had started to tighten up with the neck and button bands, it fit well enough that it escaped my notice it was too small.

Anyway, the increases - I figured that if I just created an extra stitch within the purls of the ribbing, it would be unnoticeable by and large, and I think I’m right. It’s very difficult to tell where it jumps from 2 purl stitches to 3. It blends in perfectly, and it keeps the whole flow of the ribbing going smoothly.

When it came time to use the sleeves, I just ripped back on the sleeve cap, added 2 more stitches on the last increase round, and then finished and attached them. This is how you MacGyver a sweater.

Now, I had loved the way the neckline hit me on the small size - that was the one part that really fit beautifully. This size was just a little loose around that area, so this is where I dropped down and used a size 5 needle. I only used it for that neckband ribbing, and it did the trick perfectly - the fit was amazing.

The button band, however, I had problems with. I kept picking up what I thought were an evenly spaced amount of stitches, and the whole front would shrink on me, losing a good 4 inches. I couldn’t have that, not after I’d worked so hard to make this darn thing fit once before! I went up to the size 7 needles and after trying a few different things, I decided to just pick up some extra stitches. I had read in other peoples’ notes that they weren’t a fan of the button band instructions, and I’ll definitely corroborate that opinion. I picked up 66 stitches, and I’m definitely happy with the result. I’m actually writing this a few days after finishing, and this sweater has been worn at least every other day since it was completed. It was definitely worth the effort and time - although I would love it if I could manage to make the next sweater I start and finish work out for me the FIRST time, rather than the second time I’m working it out.