09-13-2021

Attempt one of my swatch needed to be scrapped. My tension was everywhere and it was looking lumpy and bad. Attempt number two is going MUCH better! For the three strands, I am holding the CC1 (green) continental and MC(oatmeal)/CC2(natural) English style.

For color dominance the CC1 carries are held the lowest. On the English side, I have the carry for CC2 in the middle so that yarn hangs down where as the MC’s carry is on top so I have that yarn set over the needle. I just pick up whichever yarn I’m going to throw as I’m moving my hand to throw anyway and am not switching frequently.

I tried knitting the stockinette in us6.5 and the colorwork on a us6. My colorwork stitches are still clearly larger than my stockinette stitches so after the color section I’ll try knitting the top stockinette with a us7 to see if that makes my stitches look more even.

I’ve decided to use us4 for ribbing, us6 for 3 sttanded colorwork, us6.5 for 2 stranded colorwork and us7 for stockinette

09-18-2021

I’m still having difficulty choosing the contrast colors for my sweater. Today I’m casting on swatch #5 this time with Malabrigo Arroyo in Vaa colorway. I’m really liking how these look next to each other so I’m hopeful that 5th try will be the charm!

On the bright side this is giving me lots of practice with three stranded colorwork

10-04-2021

I decided to add an extra row of main color above and below the words to make them more distinct.

I chose the words “spells”, “potions”, “charms”, “curses” & “voodoo” laid out so that spells potions and charms were on the front and back and curses and voodoo would be on the sleevea/shoulders. After I finished the words I second guessed myself and dropped down one of the “curses voodoo” sections and replaced it with “hocus pocus”. I would have changed both arms, but it was extremely putsy and I got lazy.

I ended up separating my sleeves after row 50 for size 3/M. My yoke was measuring at about 9.5” and having worked in this yarn before, I know it will grow with blocking aswell

For my books I made a bunch of mistakes, but my 3 stranded knitting is so slow that I decided to run with the mistakes rather than correct them. I accidentally swapped with page of the book had writing and which had a symbols and for one of the books I ended up doing words on both sides. Oh well. I still think it looks good.

10-07-2021

I decided to add a little waist shaping to my project. I wish I would have made this decision earlier but that takes forethought and planning.

I decreased 4 stitches on row 41. I centered the decreases under the armpits and did ssk, k1, then k2tog.
K5 rows
I decreased 4 stitches again on row 46.
K10 rows
I increased 4 stitches on row 56. M1l,k1,m1r

10-12-2021

Sleeves: after the elbow I want to start increasing every other row at 5 points with three central stitches between each area of increases. Goal is to have 28st between each point so I can knit a bat motif at the cuffs

I picked up 4 stitches between the held stitches and the cast on stitches on both sides. I wanted to make sure there would be enough room for my picc line to clear. I decided to k10 rows, decrease 2 stitches over 1 row.