Friday, January 13, 2006

Ingeborg process and musings about armhole steeks

Maybe I should have saved all that "she's alive" stuff for today, because today you can finally tell that it's actually Ingeborg.

Ingeborg January 13


Okay, I can tell that it's actually Ingeborg. Don't know about people who aren't as obsessed with the pattern.

I already have one thing to add to the "lessons learned" list for this project. I've found that weaving is just not going to work. There are a few rows in the pattern that have fairly long floats, so I weaved halfway through. Unfortunately, in this yarn, at this gauge, the weaves are not going to be invisible. At least, I can see them, and even feel them. All floats for me on this project, from now on.

In the problem column, my gauge is off, and I made one mistake in the pattern. But they're not big problems. My gauge is tighter than it was when I swatched, but my floats are loose enough that I'll be able to block it to the correct size without a problem. And I'm just going to duplicate stitch over that one blip I had in one of the first few rows. I tried to drop down and pick up the float to fix it, but there were all sorts of tension problems with the stitch when I did that, so I'll fix it later.

Something I've been thinking a lot about is steeks. As is typical of this style, there are no armhole steeks. The instructions tell you to knit the sleeves separately, mark off the armhole depth on the body when you're done with the sleeves, then machine stitch and cut right into the body. Right into the patterning. If I had and knew how to use a sewing machine, I'd probably do that. But I don't, and I don't. I've thought through all my options, and all their permutations, and I think the two options that make the most sense are to either hand sew the steeks (a technique that Eunny describes here), or to change the pattern so I knit steeks stitches there, then use the crochet method to secure before cutting. Right now I'm leaning toward the second option. If I used that method, I'd also probably do the traditional fair isle thing and pick up stitches around the armhole and knit the sleeves down to the cuff. This would allow me to really size things perfectly, which is something I fear would be difficult if I had finish the sleeves before cutting the armhole steeks, which would mean I couldn't try on the body until everything was knit.

That's all for today. I'm going to watch another 20 minutes of skating nationals before work. Look for SFCKAL stuff this weekend, here and on the Yahoo group. (I just took pictures of the patterns to upload there.)

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If I were to knit Ingeborg, I'd do the crochet steek and knit the sleeves from the top down, too (long arms). Makes sense. Eunny's article was timely, wasn't it?

Beautiful progress, Rebekkah!

- MJ

1/13/2006 6:40 PM  
Blogger Laughingrat said...

There's something about black, red, and white in a geometric pattern like that that's just breathtaking.

1/16/2006 12:16 AM  

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