The knitting I'm doing

Elsie knits, Joe doesn't. The first project is a simple cotton sweater in stockinette and garter stitch, and a stitch I call broken rib, but is probably not really called that. It is basically a way for me to make a border stitch that lies flat that can be knitted in the round with a minimum of purling. Row 1 is knit, row 2 is k1p1, row 3 is knit, etc. I hate purling. Here's the sweater, my own design based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system.



This is my second attempt with this absolutely beautiful mercerized Egyptian cotton yarn Elsie's mom got at a yard sale. It's a vintage yarn, I believe, and incredibly smooth and strong. I even like the label.


I usually don't like knitting with cotton at all, because there's no give, but I enjoy this. The first sweater had a split hem like this one, but the split was in the front and back rather than at the sides, and I did this weird thing with a dropped stitch at the outside of the sleeves that seemed like a good idea at the time, but just didn't work. It was all just a little too fashion forward somehow, and a little too small to boot, so I frogged it and designed this one with more ease and a more predictable boat neck, drop shoulder, split hem design. It's not particularly creative, perhaps, but it is simple and it suits me. Here's where the sleeve will meet the shoulder.


For finishing, I have this idea that I got from a costume I saw in a TV movie version of Merlin, but I'm not sure I'm going through with it. Rather than sew the fronts and backs together (leaving room for my head, we presume) I'm thinking of leaving them open, and attaching them with a button and loop closure, at only one point on either side of my neck. We'll see how it looks as I get closer to the end.




REBECCA! DON'T READ ON!

I had a knitter's epiphany recently when I read on someone's blog that she kept ten knitting projects going at once. TEN. She actually kept a list in a column on the left hand side of her blog, and made sure she never went over a maximum of ten projects. Going at once. This, combined with a conversation I had with my mom's friend Tyson, who described her method of having two projects going at once (one with a chart for a quiet room at home, and one in plain knitting for meetings) convinced me to consider that it might be possible for me to work on more than one thing at a time. So I've also been working on a lace scarf with beads for my charming future sister-in-law.

I think it looks like seaweed. In a good way.


And it's almost done.

Next there's a vest I want to make from this book, and I'm going to learn tubular cast on for socks if it kills me.