progress report...

Seriously, I’ve been sticking to my plan – pattern write some, knit some, pattern some, knit…I’ve got the schematic done – a little intense – more complicated to size than I originally anticipated – I’m doing  6 sizes from finished 38 to 54” – the point of the original design was to be able to make a plus-sized cardigan with 3 main body pieces instead of 4 so the side panels took a little more thinking than usual…but  I do have most of the pattern written – need to go over it with a fresh eye tomorrow and do some air-knitting of the more intricate shaping.
 As for the next piece in Jan’s wardrobe, I got started on  the tweed ‘Granville’ – sometimes I wish I never talked to my mk friend – when I mentioned my plan of re-making ‘Granville’ to her, she asked if I was going to make the cables closer…what the heck did she mean? then I realized that she meant,  was I going to turn the cables closer together, like every 6 rows instead of every 8 rows?
Let me back up a bit. ‘Granville’ has columns of  braided cables up the fronts and back – and they are made over 8 sts by making a 3X2 cable on the left side at row 4, knit 6 rows, and then turn a 2X3 cable on the right side, so you are actually turning cables every 6 rows. Back to the demise of KnitStyle and the last garment I made for them and never told you about – they had a aran/cable theme for one of the story lines for #195 and my submission was a pullover featuring a yoke of some impressive (for the LK150 machine) looking cables with a outline diamond,  a 3X3 cable and a 2X2X2 braided cable on a background of purl sts. In my experiments/swatches, I found the cables to look much nicer and more rounded by turning them more frequently than I would normally do. As machine knitters, we often are looking for the easy way out and sometimes sacrifice on the finished product. Anyway, I had mentioned  this to my friend back then and darn, she must take notes when we talk because she remembered that – I wouldn’t have – I would have just read my pattern and done what I did on the original!
When she asked me, I said no, that’s way more work and maybe if I were making this for myself I’d do it.
So I started off with the sleeve and it niggled…would it make that much difference to turn them closer or did it only show up in the heavier yarn? You know me - I thought, I could do it on the sleeve – there is only one braided cable up the middle of the sleeve – I could try it and if it didn’t make much difference I could go back to the  quicker way…damn this is really nice – good thing Jan has slimmer arms that I do – I am making it in her size and her sleeve width is a full size smaller than I would make for myself…I’ve got the second sleeve made, I really like this and you know, that midnight tweed is really pretty…I may not mind an extra snug sleeve – they say a fitted sleeve makes you look slimmer….