I've been working on some very mindless knitting these days, in the shape of this origami pullover by Frog Tree Designs. When these kits came in at the yarn shop, I was intrigued, and after trying on the shop sample, I had to have one. With about 60 colors of alpaca sport weight to choose from, I decided on black :o) Well, I wanted it to be a really basic thing that I could just throw on whenever. And although I wear a good bit of black, I rarely ever knit anything in black.
What I like about this garment is that it's just two rectangles knit in k1, p1 rib all the way. They are sewn together in a clever way to make the sleeves and the front bit. The alpaca drapes really nicely and the resulting sweater seems to look good on a variety of body types. That said, the picture above does not do it justice; it looks kind of lumpy there, and it's actually much more drapey.
Even though it's just two rectangles, I wanted to make it really nice with a tubular cast on, and then I remembered there is a tubular cast off, too. After consulting some of my knitting books, I didn't come away with anything that made sense to me. Montse Stanley didn't have enough details and seemed even to be wrong in places (or it was how I interpreted the instructions). Then I found this tutorial over at So Much Yarn, So Little Time that solved my problem. Lots of pictures at all the critical junctures and a straightforward way of doing things won me over. I made a swatch-sized one first to make sure I knew what I was doing before launching into it in my hard-to-see black yarn. See what you think--one end is the cast on, and the other cast off, and I can't remember which is which:
Sometimes I'm resistant to learning new techniques because I have my own way of doing things that I'm comfortable with. But I'm glad I learned this one. I'm a big fan of k1, p1 rib for sweaters and this technique will give it a less homemade look.
I've also been working on a sewing project, a blouse in some linen I've had in my stash. It's an "easy" pattern from one of the spring Burda magazines. Kinda hard to see what's going on with that wild print, so I've included the schematic, too.
I have no good pictures of it because the light wasn't good. But here's the interesting bit on the sleeves (that needs a better pressing). I'm taking my time making it, doing a lot of basting and hand sewing to make it nice. I even hand finished the seams, in spite of the fact that I have a serger to do that job. Just thought it would be nicer with less weight in the seams, and I like the slowness of it. It's true that sewing often has nothing to do with using the sewing machine. It's all the prep work and pressing that take up most of one's time.
Anyway, having fun here at project central! Hope to post again soon.
