Many months ago, on the 22nd of March 2006, I found the Girl-Friend shrug pattern, and searched my only two LYS for suitable yarn. It seemed the perfect thing for my wee girl, given it had no front and all the paint/play dough/ and food spills would in theory miss it. Being the end of summer here and being far from the knitting centers of the world I found nothing suitable. Had I been looking for novelty yarn to knit on size 10 mm pins, made of polyester, polymid or acrylic in bold bright colours I would have been happy. So I window shopped on-line, and after much searching found some Regia cotton/wool/nylon sock yarn at Elann.com. I ordered some, two balls. I paid my mastercard bill, pleased at our strong dollar and the favourable exhange rate. Many months passed by, I started a blog, my local LYS rang me to say the latest Opal was in stock, I remembered GF-Shrug, I called in and bought some, I started the GF-shrug, I set a date to finish for Poppy-girls 4th birthday party, I split my knitting time between Bohus Blue shimmer and GF-shrug, I finished the GF-shrug.
One friday night, in early June, Bear came in to the lounge with a small white box, found at our back-door, we knew it was a small white box, as clearly stated on the top right corner were the were the words 'small packet - petit paquit'. So... cute.
Memory stired, vague memories of choosing yarn, what exitment. Scissors were found, the box opened.
Bold multi coloured sock yarn, but what was I thinking when I ordered it? It was more vibrant than I would usually choose. But it is not for me and will work really well with jeans, and soft preschool knit tops for Poppy-girl. Latter that evening, as I tidied up, I slipped the recipt from the box, and a slim flat white packet fell out. I had also ordered a set of 5dpn's in 1.75mm. I guess I decided as these were hard to find, no nigh impossible to get locally, and since I was paying for international shipping I would also get a size I didn't have already.
And now I have stash, For while I have a good and quality fabric collection to feed my work based hobby of tailoring and sewing, I generally do not have a lot of yarn waiting to be knit. Usually just a few balls of cotton for wash cloths. On Saturday Bear decided that Toby, son number one, aged 6.9 needed socks. Now son number one (there is only one son) will not wear any sweaters, he used to, until he was teased about a spider man sweater one day at school by his 'friends'. Apparently to other 6 year old boys spider man sweaters are babyish and not cool - I think an element of envy came in here given they had only plain polar fleece with nary a spider in sight. Devestating news for a boy of 6 who had helped me plan and chart the spidey bits, and who now avoids all sweater knitting by his mother. He will cuddle up into anything knitted I am wearing, and snuggles on the couch into my discarded sweaters. He will still wear my hand knitted socks, in preference to more commercial ones - so we went sock yarn shopping and got
Bohus, well she grows, well on the way with the lower back section, and no rowing out! That is a problem I have recognised in my flat knitting and one I have worked hard on to solve. So nice to see the solution is working, I needed to knit 'firm' and purl 'firmer' .
After sitting with a calculator last night and working out what the ecommended patterns haping will result in I have decided to use most of the waist shaping given but to customise it a little. I have knit to 6cm past the underarm point, and am in the process of decreasing every 3 cm, which will take me to 20 cm past the underarm, a narrowing in of around 3.5 cm, subtle but there. When I tried this on the dress from this point will sit at my waist.
From then on I will use my own shapping. I will knit plain for 3 cm, then increase 2 stitches every 1.5cm, until 10 cm past the waist when I plan to purl a row and continue knitting to complete a 5-7 cm turned up faced hem to replace the ribbing instructed in the pattern. I know I will have to increse in this facing so it fits neatly inside the garment, so will decrease to match the below waist shaping. I will check this shaping as I knit, but I would like something a little shapped, to wear with fitted firm jeans or casual trousers. I will see what that looks like on the back before I start the front.
I also wasn't happy with the length suggested, nor the lack of shapping after the narrowing in to the waist. But maybe those Swedish girls have no hips, all bust and no hips? The ones who visit here on their OE, are tall, blond, tanned, fit, trim, the bike everywhere and have georgous boyfriends. Of course they can't all be like that but those are the ones I notice.
No comments:
Post a Comment