Ruthless Knitting

For the past few weeks, I’ve been in an odd knitting mood, not really devoted to anything that I’m working on while simultaneously convinced that it’s not really a good idea to start something new. There are too many loose ends in my knitting life, so I want to tidy them up — except, you know, that I don’t really feel like it.

One reason I’m having this problem is that I have a few design ideas that are giving me grief. I think these are good ideas, and thus maybe I’ll want to submit them one day for publication, and therefore I shouldn’t blog about them. But that makes all the failure rather harder to put up with. The yarns are picked, the original swatches are triumphs, and then I hit a snag. I swatch and swatch until I get to the slightly bored and despairing part of the process and then I leave the projects to languish for a while.

It occurs to me that this whole deal would be easier if I could let go of the idea of publishing these not-even-in-existence-yet sweaters and just focus on creating them first. If they come out well, I can always post the patterns here for general consumption. The miniscule amounts of money I might theoretically be paid at some distant point in the future are not sufficient recompense for all the pressure I’m putting on myself to be secretive, to knit something perfect, and to do it without outside imput.

So allow me to present to you a few ideas that I’m working on.

The William Morris cardigan

Remember when I was all fired up about William Morris? (No? See this entry.) Well, I have an image in my head of a lightweight cardigan with a panel of Morris-inspired Fair Isle in the upper center of the back, plain fronts with wide Fair Isle button bands, and three-quarter sleeves that end in sewn-on Fair Isle Cuffs. This is how far I am toward its realization:

I like this panel a lot, though the design requires some tweaking. The next task is to figure out how to inset it into a plain piece of knitting created at an entirely different gauge. This step is giving me some trouble. I am not out of ideas yet, but I’m temporarily out of patience, so this has been lolling about in my drawer for a while.

The fatigue sweater

I’ve also decided that I want to create a sweater with the type of styling that I found described on the Internet as a “fatigue sweater,” or what L.L. Bean calls a “Commando Henley” (tee-hee):

My idea is to do something a bit different — I’ll lose the fabric patches, change the ribbing to a more subtle vertical pattern, make the collar shallower and wider, and add waist shaping for a more feminine look. I’m also considering doing a slightly different male version of the sweater. Here is what I have so far:

I really like both of these swatches. The Mountain Colors wool is just fantastic, with a wheaty color that I have been craving (it’s better than the picture), a really soft hand, and great stitch definition. I only bought one ball, though, and I’m not sure I’m willing to spring for enough for a whole sweater. The New England Highland yarn is much more of a crunchy traditional wool, but the color is amazing, as are all the colors in this line and its companion two-ply, New England Shetland. It would do nicely for a male version of the sweater.

I got stuck at the next step: working out the neckline. I was unable to find any patterns with the kind of neckline I wanted, so I’ve been inventing it. This is version 2.0, and there are still some hurdles to jump (aside from knitting the other side, doing the shoulder shaping on the side I have finished, and blocking it).

The biggest problem is that I’m just not sure how to finish off the edge of the neckline. If I have the slipped-stitch, buttoned portion in the middle, an angled portion up to the shoulder, and a straight portion across the back of the neck, how do I tie all those parts together without making the whole thing look too busy or bulky? The traditional fatigue sweater usually has a collar at that point, but I don’t think it will work in this design. Also, I suspect that the whole collar needs to be stockinette (with the slipped stitch edging to keep it from rolling) rather than patterned, because the patterning makes it look busy. I suppose I need to start again here. I am already fatigued.

Since I’ve reached an impasse on both of these projects, I started some other things. I have half of a brioche scarf done in black alpaca and various shades of Mountain Colors sock yarn. It’s pretty, but I had trouble getting a decent picture.

I also have a small pile of swatches — my refuge when all else seems too boring or too difficult and I won’t give myself permission to start something new.

The good news about these swatches is that they’ve done their job: they have inspired ideas for two sweaters to be made from stash yarn. I am now planning to combine the Interlacements Tokyo with some Zephyr Wool-Silk in Basil, which I ordered yesterday from Sarah’s Yarns, to create a baseball shirt-styled sweater — something very light and soft, with raglan seams, hems at the edges, and three-quarter sleeves. I think the sleeves should be solid and the body variegated.

The Golden Siam swatch is making me think of a longish tunic with a boatneck, slightly flared sleeves (possibly three-quarter), and thick brown and blue horizontal stripes. I am not sure yet if that will be a flattering and elegant garment, as I hope, or a garment that will make me look wide and lumpy.

Additional exploration is required. Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 11:24 am and is filed under Projects in Progress, Swatch-o-Rama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.