frilly, feminine sweater in a cool island color



Chaise sweater from Jo Sharp's The Holiday Island, in Classic Elite Spotlight cotton

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I took my mom to the yarn store during her visit and we went a little crazy.

Apparently my mother has VERY good taste in yarns. When I'm browsing in the store, I always manage to fall for the luxury, designer yarns that go for $12 a ball (see below). It's a curse! Well, mom saw some yarn that she absolutely loved (all knit up in a baby sweater) and just had to have it. Colinette Fandango, thank you very much.

Ahh, like daughter, like mother. Now we needed a pattern. I remembered flipping through Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch once and seeing a lot of stylish, loose fitting sweaters that I thought my mother would like. We settled on the asymmetrical vest (less yarn!!), which she wants done in stockinette. So I'll be redoing the pattern. If she'll love it, I'll do it. (It'll be a breeze compared to native, which by the way will be appearing as an f.o. this week!).

And then we picked up a little something for me. I've been dreaming of making something in pink. I've had a pattern in mind for a few weeks and have been poking around for the right yarn. And I still have that pale blue cotton that I won at the Granite State Knit In, which I wanted to turn into something oh so lovely with 3/4 sleeves. So, I just happen to see the Chaise pattern in Jo Sharp's new book, The Holiday Island, show it to mom and she says I have to make it. Any idea what yarn I want to use? I didn't remember the Granite State yarn right away and so we picked out some of the Noro Cash Iroha. In the prettiest pink.

*Light bulb moment.* Use the Cash Iroha in the winter sweater and the pale blue yarn for Chaise. Three new projects in one trip. I'm one happy knitter!

So, I took a little break last week from my sewing updates (and my sewing!), as I was completely focused on finishing up native for my mom's birthday (stay tuned, this week). Last week, I promised a picture of my stripey skirt and I wouldn't want it to get around that I don't keep my promises. So here it is, still without the drawstring ties.

Elsewhere in the land of project overload, I cast on for my holiday island sweater (aka, Chaise). I love the name of that Jo Sharp book and the soft, cool blue cotton that I'm using seems to fit the island theme so nicely. I'm most curious to see how I'll feel about the 3/4 length sleeves. I have two other 3/4 length sleeve projects planned for fall, so I hope I still love the idea when I'm done.

Finished the FRONT of the Jo Sharp holiday island sweater. Yes, you heard right, the front.

For some reason they have you do the front first, with the whole complicated neckline and everything. I would just like to go on record as being con this idea. I like knitting the back (or the simplest piece) first so I can get a sense of the overall shape that the other piece should have before I tackle its additional shaping/patterning.

Another issue, there is a pretty blatant error in the pattern. They messed up the instructions for the armhole decreases and wrote all the WS decreases as if they were at the neck edge, which you can tell from the picture is not what's going on. Jo, jo, jo....

And another issue. All the patterns in this book seem to be the kind where neck shaping calls for plain-old K2tog and then "reverse shaping for other side". Using the K2tog on the first side creates a little border at the neck edge (you can see it happening here in this pattern pic). And if you don't know how to reverse the decreases, you don't even get that same border on the other side. In fact, you can tell in this version of the Chaise shell that the two edges of the neck are different. I wish patterns would help a bit more with these sorts of things (for example, the ChicKnits Ribby Cardie pattern gives suggestions for paired decreases that will form neat raglan lines. Thanks, Bonne Marie!). It looks like even the knitters making the samples for the Jo Sharp book did different things, since some of the sweaters have these borders at the neck and some don't, yet all of the instructions either say "K2tog...reverse shaping" or simply "decrease at neck edge". Hmmm.... For the record, I went with a left-slanting decrease on the first side and K2tog on the other. No two-stitch wide borders at the curve of the neckline for me and I'm happy.

I really do like this pattern and the book, but after finding little annoyances and errors together, I worry that the average knitter may have problems with the pattern (like we all did with smooch) or not be satisfied with the resulting sweater. Which would really be a shame.

At least I now have the luxury of looking forward to the back. After this, it should be smooth sailing!

Finished the back (the oh-so easy back) of the holiday island sweater. For fun, I thought I'd sew it up and see how it looked. Then, I thought, well, if I'm going to sew up the body, I might as well finish off that fabulously frilly neck. An hour of seaming and no less than three hours knitting, reknitting and reknitting the ruffle, and...

Essentially I've finished the shell version of the sweater. Not bad as a shell, but it is September already and I do so love the frilly sleeves on this sweater. So sleeves it is.

I've collected enough shells this summer.

Sleeve caps, that is.

Totally made up some sleeve caps for the holiday island sweater this weekend. I'd been redoing all the numbers in the pattern for my gauge and size but the sleeve cap seemed way weird when I just converted mathematically, so I ripped and reshaped. And ripped and reshaped. I think I've got it how I want it now. I've pinned it in the armhole and started seaming a little to see how it will fit. So, look for this sweater to be finished this week. (I'm frenzying, Sandy!)

Here's a peek at the frilly sleeve edging. It's purty.

And the finishing fiesta continues:

The holiday island sweater is finally finished. Whew, there were a lot of ends to weave in on this sweater! But luckily my redesigned sleeve caps fit in the armholes just right. I guess I'm still learning something with every project. I really like the frills and the neckline, but my favorite thing has to be the 3/4 length sleeves. Now I just want to knit 3/4 sleeves all the time! I loved the Spotlight yarn from Classic Elite: 100% cotton, but oh so soft. And despite the error in the pattern (the company confirmed the error), I still really enjoyed knitting this sweater. And wearing it? Well, it's absolutely perfect for the early fall weather we're having today. And it makes me feel purty. Aw shucks, I'm pretty proud of it.