What I made, by Sharon

Remember the jumper I was knitting based on one I surreptitiously took photos of on the street one day? Well, we went back today and took the same photos, but with Leon's finished jumper. Here they are: I blanked out the strangers face, it seemed like the polite thing to do. Taking these photos was hilarious, while I stood on one side of the road and Leon stood on the other, a stranger came up behind me and looked at my phone, just to check out what I was taking photos of. Ah, St Kilda, never change. I'm so happy with how the photos above turned out. The jumper itself is ok. The neckline turned out a little lower than I was planning, and the reverse stocking stitch does not look as smooth as I would have hoped. Maybe a couple more washing will sort that out?  Certainly I think it was a worthwhile experiment. And every time I design something for myself, I am reminded of the challenges of designing. Will I do it again? Probably, I have a whole f...

On Saturday morning I decided it was time to fix or rip Leon's jumper. I was rather terrified, which was why I had put it off for so long. First I removed the neck ribbing: Then,  I cut a stitch in the neck line, and dropped back the stitches, to do an extra cable crossing. That was when I realised that, when I deliberately left off the final crossing I had actually moved the whole cable outward. At this point, I thought I was going to have to rip the sleeves and front. But instead I somehow recrossed it and picked up the rows I had dropped down. At this point I started to thinkit might work: I then knit the neckband on smaller needles, so it wouldn't look sloppy, and with fewer rows, because Leon thought that looked better. And then it was done!  I'm really happy with it, and Leon likes it too. Once it's dry from blocking, I'll get some modelled photos. For now though, I'm going to admire it while it dries, and just be ...

Things have slowed down on Leon's jumper, mainly because I barely knit over the weekend. I'm doing the sleeves topdown, and knitting the sleeve cap felt like it took forever.  We went out on Saturday night, and I didn't feel like taking a whole jumper with me. Then on Sunday we went to the zoo - it was world giraffe day!  But really we went to see Obi the new baby hippo - so cute! And again, I didn't want to carry around this huge unfinished jumper. So basically, it's going really slowly because I haven't actually been knitting much. We'll see how this week goes, I've got quite a lot going on, so there might be loads of knitting, or there might be not much at all. 

The best thing about designing this jumper myself was that I could do things exactly as I like them.And one of the things I like best is knitting in the round. I thought  that might be an issue with the jumper I'm making, because after I swatched I discovered that I wanted cables on a reverse stocking stitch background. I know (from somewhere, although I don't know where, I just know) that its possible to knit reverse stocking stitch inside out in the round: knit all the stitches, and then turn the knitted tube "inside out" to reveal the reverse stocking stitch inside. I didn't know if it would work with cables, but, after thinking about it I couldn't see why not. So I knit the body inside out, cables and all. While I'm sure I didn't invest this, I thought it up myself " unvented " it as Elizabeth Zimmerman might say, and I feel so clever, and also so happy avoiding all that purling, but still getting the same look.

So, for those of you who follow me on Twitter, you may have seen #stalkerknits . That's when we (or you, if you want to play along) see someone's awesome machine knit jumper, take a sneaky picture, say you are going to design and knit it. On Saturday I say a guy wearing a very simple, but kind of awesome jumper on Chapel Street Windsor. He was on the other side of a six lane road, but I got a very blurry photo. Which I am not going to put on the internet right now, because it seems a bit disrespectful. Also because originally I edited the photo to remove his face, but what I actually did was move his face off to the right, and it was just floating in the air, not connected to anything. I clearly need to work on my photo editing skills. So, I knit the biggest swatch I have ever knit, with some cable choices and now I am counting stitches, doing maths, and making decisions about how I want this jumper to come together. It's more challenging than just buying a patte...