I love fall best

Even tho we live in the desert and we should hit the mid-80s today, you can still feel that fall is upon us. The mornings are cooler, the sun is not so blow-torch-on-your-head intense. What knitter doesn't love fall and the idea that soon you can start wearing all your lovely, big wooly knitted things again? The change of seasons gives us an excuse for our obsessions. In the back of my mind there is that niggling fear that eventually I will have knitted up all the sweaters I could ever possibly wear, and either have to move to Siberia in order to make use of them year-round, or that I'll then start knitting up decorations for every room in the house and start looking like one of those obsessive lunatics.

I'm sorry? What did you say? I'm what? Oh, shut up!

Let's throw some pictures in!
It is taking Blogger forever to load pictures again. And there is just so much watching of the neighbors one can do before you get bored and have to start cleaning the house for the day.

The pattern for this sweater comes from the Elann.com website, called, for obvious reasons, the Aran Lace Cropped Cardigan. The yarn is also from Elann, and it was a pleasure to work with, a wool and alpaca blend. I took this project with me when I went in March to have a benign breast tumor removed, and there I learned an important lesson- Never try to knit lace when you are nervous or high! And bring a shawl with you to wear in pre-op, because your shoulders get really, really cold. I used recycled glass for the beads and just happened to have some on hand that worked really well with this color of yarn.


It seems that just about every knitter is obliged to knit an Einstein coat, so here is mine. Only, as you may be able to tell, I changed the pattern quite a bit. The original is knitted with a sideways panel on the bottom (as mine is), with sts picked up along one long side to form the upper body. As mine is. Then they immediately divide for front and back, work those, and then pick up sts from one upper front to the upper back, and work these as sleeves. The pattern finishes with sewing a long seam from wrist to neckline, and then the collar is knitted on.

Well, I just can't leave anything alone. To start, I made the lower section longer than the knee-length given in the pattern. One thing I noted from the schematics is that the strong design line in the pattern where the upper body starts happens to fall at waist level. Honey, I'm past the age where I want to call attention to my waist, so I raised that line to just below bust level (it has since stretched down to waist level anyway). Next, the original sleeves would also start at waist level, which to me would feel like awkward batwings. So I worked the upper body in the round for 5-6 inches, then divided for front and back. This gave me a proportion that was more similar to a drop-shouldered sweater knitted in the round. When I finished the upper body I did a 3-needle bo at the shoulders, and then picked up around the sleeve openings to work the sleeves after refiguring how often I would want to place my decreases.

I made this with Cherry Tree Hill Potluck Bulky, and found that unfortunately the pattern does not call for enough yarn - after asking on the knitting lists Is it just me, or...? I found that everyone needed 300-500 additional yards. So one sleeve is lighter in tone than the rest of the coat. However, since this was a potluck nothing is an exact match, and it makes for an interesting garment. The buttons are - you guessed it - recycled glass. I liked the idea of glass being heavy and chunky, it just seemed to suit this piece.

Ok, off to work to teach someone to make a felted fish...