acho que não

The first sweater is knit with two strands of Silk City Denym held together. The style I was going for was a closely fit bodice to an empire waist, followed by a flowy, skirtlike bottom. It worked out exactly like that until I washed it, now it's a too small bodice with a strange line across the underside of my boobs, but I still wear it anyway.

I knit the fronts and back of the top separately from the bottom up with a provisional cast-on. They're plain stockinette stitch, with some short row shaping around the bust. I set in the sleeves to the top and sewed it together. Then I used the provisional cast on to start knitting the bottom section down, around the whole body of the sweater. The waist band is basic seed stitch about an inch wide, which matches the button band and finishing around the wrists, collar and bottom. The main section is a simple eyelet pattern (K1, yo, K2Tog / purl back / yo, K2Tog, K1 / purl back) worked over three times as many stitches as the bottom of the bodice. I finished the sweater with three gorgeous pewter clasps, however, I found they didn't really provide the closure I wanted, so I backed them up with some small snaps on the inside.

The thing I love most about this sweater is the neckline. It's long and swooping and I think really quite flattering. I get the most compliments on the clasps, however. The thing I love least about this sweater is that I shrunk it in the wash and it no longer fits as well as it did in that picture. I did reknit the sleeves to add some length to them, and I might eventually pull out the bodice and do the same to it. As long as I don't have to reknit the skirt, which took forever!

The second sweater is a version of Jill Vosburg's Diamond Patch. There have been many variations of this sweater knitted by AK listers, but this is the first two-color version I remember seeing. Jacquilynne writes, “The blue yarn is Novita Cottonella and the white is Patons Katrina. [I used] the five diamond configuration. I started out planning to do just basically the diagonal diamond patching method from Jill's pattern, but there were aspects of that that I didn't like. I wasn't happy with the idea of having upside down patches on side of the sweater. What I did instead, was knit the front and the back separately so they were both facing straight up. Then, at the top of the shoulders, I finished each side with a half horizontal diamond - by decreasing on each end of the decrease rows as well as in the center, your diamond closes up with a flat top half way up. These half diamonds, I sewed together to form a shoulder seam just like any other sweater.

I also knew my mother wouldn't be fond of the plunging back neckline, so I had to fill that in. I added an extra full diamond and two half diamonds to bring the back neckline up and make it flat. At this point, I ran out of yarn and I hadn't done any of the trim. Since I had bought it on close-out, I couldn't get any more, though I looked terribly hard. I also had some other issues with the sweater - it was too short, I didn't really like the sleeves as described in the pattern and the neckline was not pulling together the way I thought it was supposed to.

I went on a lengthy yarn search for something that went with the Cottonella both in colour and weight. I tried about five different yarns combinations, knitting several patches in each before finally settling on the Patons Katrina in white. It's a brighter than I might have liked, but it was the best combination I found.

I knit two more rows of diamonds for the bottom of the sweater and sewed them on to increase the length. To bring in the plunging neckline, I knit a series of quarter sized diamonds (casting on half the stitches and then working the diamond as normal results in a diamond shaped patch one quarter the size of the original) in Katrina around the edge of it.The top two quarter sized diamonds are half diamonds of the type described in the instructions that help line up the front and back of the sweater. I then did some crocheted edging around the entire neckline front and back.

For the sleeves, I knew I wanted them at least elbow length, because my mother, like me, and I'm sure many of us amples, suffers from rather unattractive upper arms. I used a series of graded diamonds in order to size the sleeves. I started with 30 stitch diamonds in the bottom row, then increased the starting number of stitches in the diamond by 2 in each row. At the top, I used more horizontal half diamonds in the original blue and attached the sleeves to the edges of the original sweater.

I'm not totally pleased with the yarn combinations, and I think the sleeves are still too large. The DP design, however, drapes beautifully and really emphasizes curves in a very flattering way. The lighter contrasting yarn around the neck line gives the sweater all the body flattering advantages of having a deep v-neck without actually revealing that much skin. I've worn the sweater as well, and despite being several sizes larger than my mother, it looks fabulous on me, too.”

Related Links:
Ample Knitters
Just One More Row
Silk City Spaghetti
Patons Katrina

I found this link on boingboing, and the whole thing is amusing. Most amusing, at least to me, is the fact that while the article goes on and on about the whole thing being knit, the first picture depicts a cake that is clearly crocheted. The tea cups appear to be crochet, as well.

So, I'm having my house professionally organized. It's forcing me to come to grips with my love of stuff, and just how much of it exists in my house at any given time. While I have yet to sacrifice a single CD, and the only books I've given up are trashy novels by the likes of Maeve Binchy, I am caving on the yarn front.

I'm eventually going to freecycle all of this, but if anyone wants some of it, now's the time to speak up. I'd be happy to pass it on for the cost of postage (keep in mind that some of this stuff probably isn't *worth* the cost of postage). I probably know you, so you can paypal me money, or buy me an iTunes gift certificate or something once I figure out how much it cost me to send it, I'm not too fussy on that front. I can sorta kinda estimate postage, but they're likely to change once I take it to an actual post office, anyway. Comment if you want something (on my actual blog, por favor, LiveJournal feed readers). Leave anything you want kept private, like email or mailing address in a separate comment, since I've got them all on screen anyway, and I'll not approve those for public viewing.

So, here are the available items. (On a separate page, because inserting a table into my blog is proving painful.)

What am I keeping, you might ask?
Some blue wool blend aran weight that I'm in the middle of knitting a very geeky sweater out of my mother.
Some blue worsted weight worsted wool that I'm in the middle of knitting a Cabin Fever sweater out of for my Dad.
Some forest green Cottonella that will eventually be either a Diamond Patch or San Francisco shirt tail for me.
Some really pretty greeny mossy cotton that will eventually be a tank top for me.
Two skeins of mohair blend, one pink, one lime, that will be something piratey.
Half a ball each of pink and lime kitchen cotton, because I need to do some work on my piratey corset.
6 balls of natural coloured hemp in lace weight, I'm not sure what they'll be, but they were expensive, so I'm clinging.
98 zillion pounds of grey silk/wool blend that I made a jacket (which I hate) out of, but which I still love anyway.

The brochures for the Canadian Sewing and Needlework Festival (now called something dorky that I refuse to acknowledge) have arrived!

The current iteration of my planning spreadsheet.

Events are colour coded as sewing / knitting / feature presentation. Choices are in order of preference from top to bottom. I have 27 class hours to schedule, so I won't get something in all those timeslots unless I add another day's worth of classes.