Is that a new project in your pocket or are you just happy to be free?

Rowan Summer Tweed, knitting chart and a reserve seat on the Acela bound for NYC - what more could I ask for? My little daytrip to New York for a tiny knitting adventure was the perfect excuse to pick out a new project. As soon as I saw this sweater from the spring Verena magazine, I knew it had to be next on my list. The front, back and sleeves are each knit in three separate strips that fit together like a puzzle. They are sewn together with a crochet seam (alternating chain stitches and single crochets). So it makes a solid sweater with just a touch of openness across those seams. The way that it's constructed seemed so ingenious that I decided I had to put my newly learned crochet skills to use to do this sweater. I was already swatching the summer tweed yarn looking for the perfect springy project for it, so the hardest thing was waiting until the trip to get started! Check out this crazy first piece.

This is the middle piece of the front, going from the lower left side to the top right shoulder. It's so cool I can barely stand it! The chart is really neat with all its little decreases and increases and the back is done the same way but BACKWARDS. I am going to have so much fun on this sweater.

Speaking of fun, I had a wonderful time at the knit shops in town. Pics coming tomorrow! And all that fun has caused me to fall pathetically behind with all my emails and knit-alongs. So fill me in on what I missed!

What'cha knittin?

Hey, check out what Cathy's been knittin' - a spring fling tank. I love it!

(and we were yesterday, weren't we?) I came down with a little tummyache that knocked me out for a day. So I'll just leave you with this, the finished front pieces to my new Verena sweater. Neato, huh?

Now back to the sofa.

Some front and back pieces of my Verena sweater mocking me. Until yesterday.

After a dozen tries at producing an even crochet seam that didn't look like a right knotted mess, I finally got it. I'm not even sure what I did differently this time. Perhaps my tension with the hook was better or my sense of where to make the next stitch had improved. Maybe it was sheer desperation. It doesn't matter. It worked. Something worked!

Presenting Frankenfront.

In order to prepare for the big trip (and all the knitting I'm imagining I'll get done on it), I bought myself a ball winder.

finally!

So what projects am I bringing? The vintage knits' wavy line sweater for sure, and... what's that blue yarn in front there... hey, that's not the frankensweater is it? Oh yeah! I actually brought the frankensweater with me on our NYC trip this weekend thinking I'd try to figure out where I'd left off in April. I had anticipated a nice, sunny ride home, but we ended up coming home much later than I'd planned and so I knit from the crazy chart with just the light from the headlights behind us. Do you know how silly it feels to be using a row counter in the dark? And I'll be sticking some long neglected stash yarn in my suitcase in hopes of getting my hands on some new catalogs while abroad. Always come prepared, right? Hee, hee.

all packed up and ready to go

I brought the frankensweater with me to Germany, but didn't do any knitting on it. I looked at it many times, trying to figure out why I was not inspired to knit further. I had stopped while working on the sleeve pieces. If you recall, each piece of the sweater is made up of several smaller pieces which are crocheted together. Here's the original pattern pic. With my yarn and my gauge (I've gotten a little off gauge over four months of neglecting this project) I'm not really conviced that the sleeves are going to work as well as the front does. I'm also not convinced that the sleeve shape and length are going to work for me. And I know that I'll never finish this sweater if I knit all the pieces, seam them, see that they look awful and then have to rip and reknit. So I've come to a difficult decision. I'm going to rip out the back pieces and all the sleeve pieces that I've knit so far. Then I'll reknit them as single units with no inside seams, leaving the cool crochet seams just on the front piece. I really think it looks cool and suspect that having it on the front will be enough. This way I can adjust the pattern to suit me better and end up with a result that I still like.

So now it's time to rip!