random stripes...

Here I am with five colours that need to be used together somehow…why did I choose these? A couple of weeks ago, a girlfriend had on a hoodie – it was Tommy H – I should have known! and it was a couple of grey colours with a red stripe and some white or ivory I think and that’s been stuck in my brain and when I saw two shades of grey, I went all in. I wanted five cones – I thought that would give me a fair shot at determining the quality of this yarn, so I’ll admit, it was an easy pick. It was hard to choose from the website as the colours don’t always look like what you’ll get so adding in the black was last minute and I figured it would go will all the shades no matter what – same reason I chose white over ivory (although I’m totally excited they have ecru, vanilla, and pearl) I may have to order one of every colour! I did find a page on their KKS Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/pg/knitknackshop/photos/?tab=album&album_id=390848707620182] that has all the cones together but no names on them – I guess you can’t have everything but it’s easier to compare when they are all together.
I have been wearing Ozark every time I go out of the house lately and I’m enjoying it – it’s wool and one of these days, it’s bound to get warmer, so I thought I’d do a cotton version. I’m still hooked on that ‘sailor’ collar – I’ve been re-watching Downton Abbey and I never noticed it before, but those ladies did rock the sailor collar over and over! Going to stick with the A-line shape for the body instead of cutting it in to the waist as I did in O – going to try out more random stripes and colour blocking – this may be a bit out of my comfort zone, but, really five colours is, so why not? My basic plan is that it will be outlined in red – I’m going to use the same circular hems but instead of the longstitch facings, make tubular bands in red going up the centre fronts, added later, and I’m thinking that way, I can use the knit side as the outside of the collar – it works in my mind right now anyway! As usual, I start with the sleeves…
Don’t be too shocked! BTW, if you are one of those multiple brand machine owners, the Silver Reed/Studio is the best choice for a project like this – the jam release gives a super-quick free pass for those odd number rows of stripes, or to move to the opposite side for the next colour so you don’t have two ends to darn in at the same place. Also, the fact there is no need to be closing/opening the gate each time the yarn is changed makes for quick progress. If Silver Reed is your only brand, bask in the glory!

kinda busy here...

Let’s analyze the situation. Look how I’m including you in this ;-)! I don’t like that large patch of ‘willow’ (gray) on the front above the olive/waist area. I was going to use that colour for the patch pocket…maybe the pocket will tie it in better? maybe have to change that? Actually, the more I look at it, it seems the pockets and belt of the AON coat are fabric but I’m not going there!  And who knew that 2 RTRs could/would change the width of a stripe? Why didn’t I know that? Ar-r-r-g-g-gh!
Issues with the collar are also sneaking in – I know you’re probably not going to like this, but my version of the collar (sort of like a sailor collar) is going to be that khaki circular hem, straight across at the back, the width of the shoulder line, and then black, with the longstitch facings at each edge, coming up around the neck to meet up with the facings from the fronts (which overlap slightly in the centre) and it will look like a vee or shawl collar turn-back when attached to the collar – the part I think you won’t like is the back/purl side of the collar will be showing as the outside but I’m okay with that.
What I’m going to do here is finish/redo(?) the fronts (they will match each other), do some seaming, fit the sleeves in, then try it on. I’ll cut a collar mock-up from fabric that I can pin in place and use to get the right size/feel for it – tell you more later! Good thing I got a lot of yarn!
I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a project! Master class coming up!
P.S. Notes for knitting stripes: for stockinette, make your yarn changes at opposites sides. End one colour, say at the right. Yarn tail at right. Do a free pass and start next colour from left. This way, you won’t have to darn in ends over top of each other. However, when in longstitch mode, make yarn changes on the side opposite longstitch so you won’t have ends to darn in on the open/facing side. XO

plan D...

I knit the Back, doing all those RTRs quite happily, blissfully even. My dilemma with the Back was whether to shape the waistline, which I did – most everything I’ve made recently has been quite A-line and I felt it was time to get back to shape. I love the final look and hardly paused before jumping right into knitting the Front.

In my mind, all I needed to do was to take the 8-stitch ribber longstitch facing off on waste yarn manually, turn the main bed work with the garter bar and rehang the ribber facing sts at the other side for the 12 rows of the stripe. In reality, the ribber stitches were now behind the main bed side of the purl stitches – no place to hang them! I know you’re laughing now and it doesn’t matter.

I calmly took it off again, turned it back around, figuring I could just reform the stitches to purl side manually after they were knit on the main bed. I messed around with that and wasted the good part of an hour before facing the fact this was an exercise in futility. Though I did learn how best to unravel a row that was reformed, as I abandoned that tactic, you don't need to know how because it was futile! Go ahead and laugh louder - get it all out of your system! I don't mind - I just here to entertain!  I rethought the situation – I was going to go through hell and back to make two purl side stripes in the front that were then going to be mostly covered with a patch pocket in another colour – wow! What was I thinking? It will be just another design feature!
But that longstitch facing does look good!
I did the next best thing, went to my granddaughter’s hockey game. There’s always another day!

searching...

I paged through the episode, hunting for shots of Wendy’s sweater coat. I’m not sure what attracted me - the stripes (rather random, not matching), the colours (olive, grey, khaki, black, I thought), the shape (belted in back, long-ish, bell-sleeved, open front and is that a sailor collar?), the fact I was sure there was a ribbed, long stitch facing on the fronts or, the pockets (block, patches)? I may never know but I spent the weekend thinking of it and then today,  punched ‘laura linney ozark sweater coat’ in Google and got a ton of stuff. Wading through all the images – there were pages and pages of stuff - I finally found this!

OMG! It was from Anthropologie, sold out, of course, called ‘Angel of the North’ and it actually said that Laura Linney/Wendy Byrde wore it on ‘Ozark’. It said it was wool knit, green, yellow, navy (???), 32.5 inches long with a removeable belt and had been $169 – I liked it better on the show, but it gave me more of a starting point. Believe it or not, I have a fair stock of wool in the brown, slate, khaki, gold -ish tones, some full cones, some leftovers...