To my amazement, I sat down in a few free hours yesterday and finished the Pacific Grove pullover. Not yet blocked, as you can see. This is a pattern from Just One More Row designs. I used Harrisville's Orchid yarn, in its earliest formulation as a soft spun wool and mohair-- I think they later added silk. These are the steps that build this sweater:
- knit mitered squares onto each other to create the front and the back as two separate pieces
- do shoulder seams (if I remember correctly, by picking up stitches and binding off together)
- with the side seams still open, pick up stitches to knit the sleeve, forming the shoulder cap by knitting short rows.
Cool construction. But this is what the shoulder cap ended up looking like. My problem is that the shoulder cap extends about two inches farther than the top of my arm does, and then the decreases for the rest of the arm help make that stand out. My pullover has leg-o'mutton sleeves. Help!
Blocking is NOT going to fix this. The sleeves will have to be frogged (frogging this soft part-mohair yarn will not be fun.) I have to figure out how to change those short rows. Obviously I need fewer rows in that short rowed area. Since you do the short rows until all the sleeve stitches are live on the needle, one possibility is to do the sleeve over fewer stitches. The knitter decides how wide that sleeve will be on this pattern. So I am going to try the sweater on again and see how much I can narrow the sleeve.
Another possibility would be to change how the short rows are done for the shoulder cap. The pattern calls for starting with the width of that triangle you see (this is the top of the sleeve, where you pick up the stitches), and short-rowing out. That is, I picked up enough stitches for the sleeve, knitted back to the far end of the base of this triangle, and then started doing the short rows, knitting the width of the triangle, wrap and turn, do the same on row 2, and then each row after that you knit the wrap and the next stitch together, wrap and turn, etc etc until all the stitches are live. Maybe I should try doing the short rows every row like that ONLY for about half the rows called for, and then simply knit across all the sleeve stitches.
I am going to give that a try, but I am concerned about how well the yarn will stand up to being frogged. Any recommendations on how to frog this sort of yarn gently are greatly appreciated. 'Cause I have to call this FO on account of shoulders, and frog both sleeves.
In other news, I am now on Ravelry. I set up my "notebook," and joined some groups, as RobKnits (creative naming once again). I am not at all sure how I am going to use Ravelry, or if I will, but I am going to give it a try. I am not sure I want to see lots of other versions of something I have knit, and I change patterns anyway. I am looking for cardigan and jacket patterns now, and I found way more looking through all my back issues of Interweave Knits than I did by searching Ravelry. And while groups are fun, well, that's how I use Knitters Review. But it is always fun looking at pictures of people's knitting, so maybe that's what it will do for me.
And, the Secret of the Stole. I have knit rows 71-76 several times now. For some reason I keep coming up with an extra stitch, which means either an extra YO or a missed SSK or K2tog somewhere, but so far no luck in getting it right. I put it away for a day and finished (temporarily) Pacific Grove instead. I did want to finish the Hint #1 chart before Hint #2 came out. Oh well. Hint #2 was released today. Here's a picture, anyway, of the left point from the first chart, up to about row 72.
Wish me luck with this weekend's knitting!
