Safely across the finish line (and with time to spare)

I finished Coraline last night and I have to say that I am really pleased with the result. I've been wearing it around all day - the DH and I even took it to go see the Modern Wing at the Art Institute this afternoon as a bit of a "coming out" party - and I absolutely love it.

Pattern: Coraline by Ysolda Teague

Yarn: my handspun! A 2-ply dk-weight (14 wraps per inch, according to my iSpin Toolkit app) worsted spun yarn from 13.1 oz of BFL fiber dyed by Chris at Briar Rose. I can't say enough good things about this yarn or the fiber that it came from.

Needles: size 4 (3.5 mm) Addi lace needle for everything but the turned hem and a size 2 (3.00 mm) needle for the inner part of the hem.

Gauge: 5.5 spi and 8 rpi

Started: 9:30pm on Friday, February 12

Finished: 9:05pm on Saturday, Februrary 27

Mods: Well, the obvious change is that I shortened the sleeves. The pattern calls for long, bloused sleeves and at first I planned on shortening them because I was worried about having too little yarn. But as I progressed through the pattern, I realized that, even though I probably had enough yarn for long sleeves, I much preferred the look of a just-below-the elbow sleeve. This would also save me the trouble of pushing the sleeves up to my elbow like I normally do.

The modified sleeve has no shaping other than the blousing just above the i-cord edge.

Because I was worried about having enough yarn, I also made a much larger modification and changed how the sweater was constructed. When I was browsing through finished Coralines on ravelry, I thought the pattern was worked top-down. That seemed like the most natural construction for a sweater of this sort and I was expecting to have a lot of flexibility in how and where I shaped the piece. Sadly, that was not to be and had I actually looked at the pattern before the opening ceremonies, I could have saved myself several moments of panic. 

The pattern calls for working the body and sleeves up to the armholes and then joining everything together to work the yoke. That is fine when you're not concerned with running out of yarn but it inspires sheer terror at the thought of running out two-thirds of the way up the yoke. I like a wide scoop neck as much as the next person, but I like it to be intentional.

So I decided to work the body up to the underarms and then provisionally cast on stitches where the arms should be. This let me work the yoke without worrying about yardage. Once the yoke was completed, I picked up the stitches from the provisional cast on and worked the sleeves top down. I switched the pattern increases to decreases and then worked an i-cord bind off.

One last little mod: since my row gauge was a bit off from what the designer used, I added an extra 2 rows to each section of the smocking pattern and worked an extra set of short rows at the top of the yoke. This just brings the proportions a little closer to what the designer intended.

I think this is a great pattern for handspun yarn. The endless rows of stockinette on the body and sleeves really let the yarn speak for itself while the patterning on the yoke provides just enough interest to keep the knitter from getting bored, without taking any attention away from the yarn.

This was my first experience with the Knitting Olympics and at the finish line I have mixed feelings about the experiences. First, let me say that the excitement of the whole thing was a lot of fine. I truly enjoyed picking a project that was going to be a challenge (and this one turned out to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be) and then pushing through obstacles (like big work projects) to complete the piece before the close of the olympics. I also adore this sweater - my first knit out of my own handspun yarn. All that said, knitting to a deadline was a bit more stress than I really wanted in this experience. Perhaps if I'd been a bit more on-the-ball with my Christmas knitting this past year I wouldn't have minded quite so much. 

Ultimately, I don't think knitting monogamy is for me. Sometimes you just don't want to spend the night with stockinette and that new cabled pattern or intriguing little sock is a bit too enticing. What can I say? In my knitting life, I'd rather play the field.

But monogamy isn't all bad. It gave me this:

Off to a slow start

Coraline is turning out to be much more of a challenge than I had initially thought. First, the issues with gauge (it always starts with gauge, doesn't it?). I knit a swatch and got stitch gauge (6 spi) on size 4 needles so I decided to go ahead with the 34" size as written in the pattern. Not having to tinker with the pattern sounded great.

Off I went and after knitting the inside portion of the hem facing, I decided to alternate skeins every two rows. As you can see, the skeins have a fair amount of variation in them and I thought it would be a good idea to try and even things out.

Two to three inches later, I decided that I really didn't like the look of alternating skeins but that I did like the gradations that appeared on the inner side of the hem facing. Not wanting to rip everything, I decided to cut the second skein and proceed with only one skein at a time. Cutting your own handspun is horrible, just horrible, so I strongly recommend frogging in order to avoid it. About 20 stitches into the next row, I decided that I couldn't live with the stripes and frogged back to the turning row of the hem. 

Fast forward several inches of plain, boring stockinette (but with beautiful color shifts in the handspun) and I start to think that maybe the piece is a bit wider than 34 inches. Lo and behold, my gauge had loosened up to 5.5 spi and now I was knitting a size 36. That's ok, I thought, I'll just add waist shaping to nip things in. I dutifully did the math and progressed another several inches with the newly added shaping. Then I tried the piece on.

It looked terrible. The shaping was too curvy for what is ultimately a swing jacket. And no amount of blocking was going to fix things (despite what I tried to tell myself). 

Lovely, no? Well, this was reduced to a pile of spaghetti when I ripped it all out this morning. As I was trying on my first attempt at Coraline, I realized that the shape that I really wanted was not a shaped garment but rather a swingy piece with a lot of drape - a lot like a lovely little linen cardi I had picked up from JCrew last summer. So several days later than I should have, I actually measured the linen cardi and found, much to my surprise, that it is a 32 bust with no shaping at all. That's not a number I'm used to using.

At least now that I am progressing forward again with the new size 32 numbers (I'm actually following the size 30 numbers to account for my slightly larger stitch gauge), the rows are a lot shorter!

Oh shoot, that one's not for me

I was knitting along on my Aestlight shawl last night when it hit me: this isn't for me. Yes, I know I bought the yarn and chose the pattern fully intending to make this shawl for a friend of mine. But look at this -

Wouldn't you want this, too? The color really is that rich. 

But you know what I can keep? This - 

That's 1050 yards of light worsted weight 2-ply BFL spun from roving dyed by Briar Rose Fibers. I know this is a bit heavier than what Coraline is designed for so I'm going to have to tweak things once I figure out a gauge that I like. Looks like it's time to swatch.