Queen Anne's Lace

Finally!  I know a lot of you have been waiting to see this finished!  And so have I!  Thanks to being stuck in the house the week before last to wait for my HVAC guys, I powered through and finished it up, spending a whopping 5 hours that day finishing the second sleeve, weaving in all the ends, cutting the neck steek and picking up the neckband stitches, and finally knitting and tacking down the neck.  By the time I finished, I was too tired to be elated!

As you can see, while it is a gorgeous piece of knitting, it's not the most flattering of garments.  I knew that going in - I mean, it's square dropped shoulders!  I did reduce the sizing from the smallest size by one pattern repeat (I worked 7 repeats around rather than 8).  This shaved about 5" off the circumference of the sweater - one pattern repeat is the width of one of those diamonds you see.

What with all the progress posts and videos along the way, I don't think I need to say much else!  If you want to look back on any of it, you can click the Starmore button in the category cloud at right.  My Ravelry notes are minimal, as the only change I made was to the stitch count on the body.  I used all the original yarns and colors used by Alice Starmore - you don't mess with perfection!

You can see here how wide the sleeves are.  The 40" final bust measurement fits me perfectly in the hips.  Ahem.  If I were to do it again, I'd make the sleeves narrower, but that's really the only other change I'd make.

Here are two photos that show the patterning well, although you've seen it ad nauseum by now.  I decided after seeing these photos that super pale lipstick does me no favors ;-)  It looks like I have no lips!  So I switched back to red for the last few.

Yes, the sweater makes me look a lot heavier than I am.  But that's OK; you can't believe how cosy this thing is.  Scratchy, yes.  But so lightweight and WARM!  Toward the end, working on it was the same as having a snuggly blanket on my lap, which is why no knitting on this happened over the summer.  I'll likely be wearing a chambray shirt under this, but for these pics I just tossed it on, as I was doing a marathon photo session that day.  You can probably tell that by the time I got to this sweater, the light was gone.  But I think you get the idea.

I have a good idea what my next Starmore will be - oh yes, there will be more in my future!  Take a gander at some of her newer designs on her website.  I'm thinking of giving myself a kit for my next birthday :-)

Sugar Maple Pullover

This fall, all I really wanted to knit was pullovers.  This one was a holdover from last year's to-knit list.  Last fall I intended to knit the original cardigan version, but this fall . . . it had to be a pullover.  Easy enough - just get rid of the front steek stitches!

I used the yarn and colors of the original pattern - Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport in a heathered green, with contrasting patterns in shades of wine, pale grey and white.  I don't remember the exact date I cast on, but I'd say that the actual knitting only took 2 weeks at most.  That was stretched out over about a month though, because of travel and blazer-making.

This sweater is worked in the round - body and sleeves worked separately, then joined at the armhole.  Which means that once you get to that point, it is a LOT of fabric to shift around.  Still, it's easy knitting - all stockinette, and the Fair Isle patterns are traditional in that no row uses more than 2 colors.

To change things up a bit, I decided to use a tubular cast-on.  The one I used here is used in many Brooklyn Tweed patterns, and I think it will become my go-to tubular cast on for working in the round.   It has a beautifully rounded edge and is nice and stretchy.

Once I had the tubular edges at the hem and cuffs, it didn't feel right to have a normal bind-off for the neckband.  Years ago I knew one that was sewn; I'd learned it from a Katia knitting magazine.  I still have the magazine . . . somewhere in the depths of my garage.  So I did some googling and found the very same one!  This one has the benefit of having photographs of each step too.

You can see the fold line in the top picture, going right across my stomach.  This one was in the drawer when I got it out for photos, but rest assured that it's already been worn.  I was worried that the wool might be too scratchy against my bare skin, but I wore it that way for an entire day and it was scratchy, but not unbearably so.

I really enjoyed this pattern.  The charts in particular I thought were very well done.  I have always loved yoke sweaters, so I think I'll be knitting this one again at some point in a different color scheme.


Ravelry notes here.

Starmore Sweater: Cutting Open a Steek

The weather has turned cooler, and that means I've gotten back to working on my Starmore sweater.  I spent a fair amount of time on it yesterday and managed to finish the first sleeve. 

This morning I cut open the steek for the second sleeve, and took a video while I did so.  It looks like the last video update I did on this sweater was a year ago, and there were some comments in between asking to show how the steek is cut.

I apologize for the poor focus - I had the camera to my left side, which meant I couldn't always see the screen to see if I was in focus!  But I think it's clear enough to give you the general idea.

So you see - nothing to fear!  If fear of steeks has kept you from working a Fair Isle sweater, fear no more!  If it's the massive amount of work involved though - well, I'm afraid there's no way around that.