Ruthless Knitting

I managed to finish the body of the Fana pullover on Tuesday, and yesterday I blocked it and sewed and cut the steeks.

I was a little nervous about this stage, and not just because it involved cutting my knitting. No, I was nervous because I had come up with a plan for wasting the least possible amount of yarn on the neckline by doing decreases in the steek. In developing this plan, I made reference to neither my own experiences nor trusty knitting books. I just sorta flew by the seat of my pants. Then, shortly before it was time to cut the steeks, I started to doubt that the plan was going to work out. The steek was frighteningly bulgy, and it distorted the rows all around it. I began to wonder if, when I cut the steek, the bulgy, distorted part would just . . . sit there . . . rather than opening up into the shape of a crewneck. The stakes were high, since if my logic was faulty, 7″ worth of sweater would be ruined — a blow from which the trusty Fana pullover, already short on yarn, was unlikely to recover.

I subjected David to a long explanation of my steek logic, complete with numerous hasty sketches, near the end of which he said, “I still don’t understand the purpose of a steek.” (I maybe could have explained a little more slowly and clearly.) Eventually, I filled him in enough that he was able to agree that my steek reasoning was probably — but not definitely — sound. With this meager reassurance, I plowed ahead. Thankfully, everything came out fine.

After the picture up there was taken, I picked up stitches around one armhole in white and knit the first three rows, but then my progress lurched to a halt. A few days earlier, when it had become clear that I was definitely going to run out of yarn, I ordered some white ShibuiKnits Merino Kid from Knit/Purl as a substitute for the white Izu. On Tuesday I learned, to my great disappointment, that not only does Knit/Purl not have white Merino Kid, white Merino Kid does not actually exist. That it, it is not produced by ShibuiKnits, and it was only listed on the Knit/Purl website by accident.

This news came as something of a disappointment. It turns out, however, that Knit/Purl has something even better: they have the discontinued ShibuiKnits Izu itself, in just the ivory color I need. So now I am waiting for it to arrive before I work on the sleeves, since there’s a small chance that the dye lots will not match and I will want to blend the two whites together over both sleeves to minimize any color discontinuity.

While I wait, I have yet another sweater to work on. Or, more properly speaking, a shirt. Believe it or not, this will be the fifth design in my Fall/Winter 2007 collection. For this top, I’m combining Zephyr’s laceweight wool/silk with Interlacements Tokyo, another 50/50 wool/silk, in the Wave and Box Stitch pattern, like so:

I’m going to make a simple boatneck T-topper* in two pieces knit from the bottom up, with garter stitch borders on the bottom, on the short-sleeve edges, and at the neck. I’ve done about 3″, and the teensy, curly strip of knitting looks promising.

I’ve never knit a T-topper before, and I can’t be sure it will be a flattering style, but even if it turns out to be a disaster, it will be a very soft and very colorful disaster.

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*I can’t find a picture of a T-topper on the Internet, and I’m not sure if the term is widespread or something that Maggie Righetti made up. I got it from her fabulous reference Sweater Design in Plain English. Basically, a T-topper is a T-shirt constructed in two pieces, front and back identical. Each piece looks like a capital T, with the trunk of the T for the body and the top of the T for the arms. The sleeves end up being dropped a bit off the shoulders and are perhaps a teensy bit dolman-ish in that bunchy-under-the-arms way. I think it’s the sort of thing that Janet on Three’s Company would have worn. So, yeah, wish me luck with that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 3:01 pm and is filed under 2007 Collection, Design, Projects in Progress. 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.