confessions of a machineaholic....

I didn’t wanna be just a knitaholic – too generic! Anyway, you may not want to hear all this so, be warned, you can quit reading now if you’re easily bored.
So, I had this idea and as ideas go, remember it’s just thoughts, meaning I can go anywhere with it. I’m talking about that last sketch ('what's on deck' - Mar 30/12) I tossed out there, with the 7 ivory yarns. I swatched and swatched and then looked, rearranged and looked some more. I call that percolating…I had wide ribs in WCD (not loose enough); tried adding tucks on the main bed stitches (didn’t like what happened to the ribs); changed the ribs to longstitch (really not right and realized I didn’t like the texture of the WCD); switched to a thinner cotton yarn (Yeoman’s Brittany 2 ply), changed the needle arrangement slightly, played with stitch size and one-row-tuck or not and got a winner for the bottom section – it’s 5 knit, 3 purl with a tuck on the 5 knit stitches – so, on the main bed there is 5 in work, 2 out all across and 3 in work on the rib bed in the place of the 2 out of work main bed needles – swing H, of course, side facing on machine is right side.
Made more swatches with some of the other yarns – that darn Silk Bourette and WCD which were my original first picks  got weeded out - not the right thinness or texture even with lace or slip. Added in some Mini Dina that had previously been hiding (you know how that is) and swatched some more.  Threw them all together, moved them up and down, stood back, held them up – arrrggghhh!!! Then I sat back and thought some more. Honed in on the basic idea and realized what I was really looking for was a loose, airy, lightweight cardigan to use as a cover-up for the coming hot weather. Made a few more swatches and thought I was on the right track.

I got knitting the actual project by making all 4 bottom sections of the tuck rib – the back needed to be made in 2 pieces with a centre seam to get the width I wanted for the hem line – so I took each one off on a garter bar piece to save some time with the rehanging of that. Then I hung 2 pieces for the back, did the hand work of Batttenburg; remove, turn, rehang, reduce and knit the slip stitch, RTR’d again; knit some lace in WCD in the opposing blocks pattern, took it off on waste yarn to have a good look at it and saw where it went wrong.

So, here’s what I’ve got now – the bottom tuck/rib, side facing is right side. Then, I threw in a little Battenburg using the 3 ply mercerized cotton – this is a hand transferred lace (see KnS #180 or Knitwords # 39), side away is right side, so the first section needs to be turned and rehung, decreasing across the row to match the width required for Battenburg – not to mention the fact that the stitch and row gauge of each swatch is different – then next section is a slip stitch with Skinny Majesty (side facing is right side) followed by a little Mazatlan (lace carriage, KW#45) and then some more of that slip pattern with the 3 ply cotton to finish off the top. Did I mention that I’m also switching between using my EC1/PE1 for some stitch patterns and then DAK knit-from-screen for the others? To keep track of the shape, fortunately I’ve got the KR11 and just have to change the stitch and row gauge for each different stitch...

I’ve got the perfect beautiful little shell buttons that I bought years ago in England – will need to play a bit again to decide on the neck/bands – I’m currently favouring the tubular band from Geezer, No 50, using the 3 ply cotton – but it’ll be up to the swatches!