Improvising is not easy

Before

After

This was my first attempt at knitting a sweater without using a pattern.  I had some ideas, drew them out, knitted some test stitches, took measurements and then started knitting the actual garment itself.  The Before picture is the first “prototype” and the upper arms came out a little too snug despite my taking measurements off an actual shirt that fit her and careful calculation of stitches against the gauge.  The After picture shows the final finished project (I think it’s better, don’t you?) which resulted from multiple adjustments to the top halves of the front and the back, neck, and sleeves spanning over a period of 2 months after the first version was completed.  I think I still have a lot to learn.

What do knitted increase stitches look like?

Increase stitches, sometimes written as inc in short in patterns, were harder to learn for me than decrease stitches.  I didn’t quite understand how to knit all of them by just reading different instructions; I needed either videos or still pictures taken at the appropriate moments, especially for yarn over (YO).   Here are again my own pictures for my own information (my own “knitting for dummies” if you will) and hopefully they will help some others along the way as well.

YO (yarn over)- I always forgot which direction to bring the yarn around when I first learned and when the instruction said bring yarn forward, I couldn’t decide if it meant forward away and ahead of me which would bring the yarn behind the needle, or if it meant forward in front of the needle.  I needed to look at pictures to confirm so here it is:

 Bring yarn to the front of the needle, and then over the needle.

 Knit the next stitch after the yarn over.  In this picture I just started to knit the next stitch by inserting the right needle tip into the loop.  Notice the YO doesn’t quite look like a complete stitch yet.

 The next stitch is complete.  The YO is the one that is slanted on the needle and is the increased stitch.  Knit it like a normal stitch when you come across it in the next row.

The YO creates a hole in the knitted fabric and is a standard stitch for lace knitting. 

More increase stitches will be added soon.

Shopping Spree

What’s the point of going back to work after staying home for five and a half years if you can’t indulge a little?  So I treated myself with these!   Remember I was kicking myself for not buying all sizes of dpn’s last time?  I fixed that.  Got them at eBay for $43.50- 8 sets of 5, 7-inch in length, needles in sizes 4-10 1/2.  A word of caution about auctions…before you know it, the bidding price can go so high you might as well buy retail.  I think I came out ahead because the larger size ones can sell up to almost double my auction price per set at a store.

Shortly before I bought the needles I also bought enough yarns from Knit Picks for 3 projects.  If they had all the colors I wanted, I would have bought enough for 5 projects!  I guess I can wait on some of them as I still have a few projects to get to.  I finally caught the “stash” disease.  Never thought it’d happen to me.  But don’t you just love the self-striping sock yarns with such gorgeous colors?  Ever since the shipment arrived, I’ve been itching to start on those even though I was trying hard to finish a project already in progress.  I finally gave in to the urge and did a swatch which satisfied my “appetite” for now. 

The yarns are:

Felici with Provence colorway for Jaywalker socks.

Swish Superwash Worsted weight colorway Wisteria (lavendar) for a shawl.

Comfy colorway  Blackberry for a skirt.