The Clincher

I'll admit that when I was packing my knitting projects for my vacation last week, I was a bit dubious that I would get both of them done by the end of the week. I figured the socks were a safe bet, as I could take them along wherever we went, but the sweater still had a lot of work left on it. I needed to finish both to make my Stash Dash goal, however, so both went into the suitcase and I hoped for the best.

The socks were no problem. I ended up knitting the entire foot and toe of the second sock on Saturday, during our drive from the Cape back to Boston, on the airplane, and on the ride home from the airport. They just about match, too.

Pattern: my basic cuff-down recipe, worked over 70 stitches
Yarn: ONline Supersocke 4-fach Season Color (70% superwash wool, 25% nylon), color 2081, 83 g/381 yds. used
Needles: US 0 (2.0) Addi Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Completed: August 10/August 19

The bigger challenge, of course, was the sweater. When we left, I had completed the back and a few inches on the front. That left the rest of the front, seaming, the neckline, and whatever I was going to do to fix the bottom hem. I pulled it out of my suitcase after we landed in Boston and worked on it in the car on the way to our final destination on the Cape. I worked on it just about every evening and here and there during the day. The one bright side to a gloomy, rainy last day of vacation is that I got a couple of extra hours to knit on it during the afternoon. By Friday night, the night before we left, I had finished the knitting and the seaming. And finally, on Sunday afternoon, just before the end of Stash Dash, it was finished -- and it was the project that pushed me over the edge to my 10K goal.

Pattern: Driftwood Tee by Mercedes Tarasovich from Interweave Knits summer 2014
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Woobu (60% merino/40% bamboo) in Bleck, 1.47 skeins
Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm) and US 3 (3.25 mm)
Started/Completed: July 20/August 20
Mods: added two inches in length; added an additional garter ridge to the neckline; and added bottom hem after the fact, with short rows added to the back

As written, this pattern is very straightforward. There are only two pieces, a front and a back, which are identical save for the placement of the eyelet detail. There is no waist shaping, so really once you've finished the eyelet pattern, you just work in plain stockinette until it's the required length to start the sleeve shaping.

Unfortunately, though I did read through the pattern and highlight the numbers for my size, I missed a very important instruction to work a set number of rows of garter stitch at the beginning, so that necessitated an adjustment later on. But I'll get to that in a minute. First, let's discuss my modifications.

To begin with, I misread the gauge information and swatched with the smaller needle specified in the pattern. I didn't quite get gauge, but it was close, and I liked the fabric I was getting. So I did a bit of math and figured out that I could knit a size smaller than the one I was planning and have it come out more or less the measurements I wanted using my gauge on the smaller needles (US 3). And that did go as planned, I'm happy to say. I also added an additional two inches in length to the body because I knew, looking at the schematic, that if I knit to the specified measurements the sweater was going to hit me at the most unflattering spot, even allowing for the drape of the bamboo content in the yarn and its ability to stretch when blocked. In hindsight, I probably could have added another inch or more, but it's fine where it is, too.

I used a US 1 needle to do the neckline, and while the pattern called for adding two garter ridges before binding off, I did three to complement the three stitches on the edge of the sleeves that are worked in garter.

Then I tackled the bottom edge of the sweater. I had contemplated doing something like an applied I-cord edge or some other treatment to keep that bottom edge from rolling upward, but in the end I decided to stick with the garter stitch that was originally specified. I picked up stitches all around the bottom edge of the sweater with my US 1 needle and then, using the US 3 needle, knit down to add length to the bottom of the sweater. As long as I was adding extra rounds, I decided to throw in some short rows on the back. I mentioned earlier that the two pieces that make this sweater are identical except for the eyelets, and I knew I'd never remember which side the eyelet detail was supposed to be on, so in addition to adding some additional posterior length, the longer back makes it perfectly clear to me which way the sweater should be worn.

Other than my than the one mistake due to user error, I did discover some minor issues that I was able to correct fairly easily. The first was in the stitch counts given during the shoulder shaping. On the first row of this shaping, you bind off a certain number of stitches at the beginning of a right side row, knit across the remaining stitches for that shoulder, bind off stitches for the neckline, and then knit across the stitches for the other shoulder. I don't remember the exact numbers, but let's say that after I bound off the initial shoulder stitches, it told me to knit 25. The problem is that this number doesn't take into account the one stitch that's already on your right needle from the last stitch you bound off, so I actually had to knit 24 (or one less than whatever the number was) for the numbers to work out correctly for the rest of the row. In addition to that, the instructions for the front tell you to work the shoulder shaping as you did for the back (the two pieces are identical, remember) -- except that you need to reverse left and right with regard to the shoulders to do the shaping correctly. (I also noticed that the designer's last name was spelled incorrectly in her bio, but that is neither here nor there -- noticing things like that is kind of an occupational hazard for me.)

Overall, I'm very happy with this top, and as luck would have it, we've got a bit of a cold front coming through tomorrow that should allow me to wear it to work one day this week without being too warm. The yarn, which I picked up at my former LYS when it was closing, was a delight. It feels like wool but with a touch of smooth coolness. I wouldn't hesitate to use it for another sweater, and I really feel like I have to find something nice to do with the leftovers.