The Sitcom Chic sweater is done! (A picture will be forthcoming. It’s already 82 degrees outside, and I’m not really in the mood to put on a sweater at the moment.) I’m overall pretty pleased with this as a first sweater. It’ll probably be a wear around the house sweater, as there are some irregularities in the fabric that are more due to my laziness then anything else. For that reason, I’m suspending my search for a clasp. The search wasn’t going anywhere anyway, so that’s no real hardship. (My local Joann’s had nothing I liked, and that’s about my only non-online option, and fasteners are the kind of thing I prefer to see in person before buying.)
As I think I mentioned before, my one problem with the pattern is the lack of stitch checking at the top of the pattern. I’m pretty sure my raglan shaping went bad toward the top, but I have no real reference point to determine if that’s really true or not. Still, the sweater looks fine, so I’m not sweating that too badly.
I’m pretty fond of the Knit Picks Shine Worsted yarn I used for this sweater. This is the second (well, I actually cast this one on first, but finished the other first) project I’ve done with this yarn. It’s got a good shine from the tencel. It does seem fairly stretchy (I got full length sleeves using the 3/4-length pattern with no alternations), but the gauge at least seems consistent. It is washable, so I’ll have to see how it behaves once I try that.
In other news, I’m plugging away on the Nutkin socks for my mother. I was loving the pattern until I came to the heels, which are my first experience with short row heel shaping. The pattern uses the yarn over method, and three frogs later, I gave up on that. For whatever reason, I just could not wrap my head around how everything was supposed to work. After some serious googling, I came up with a tutorial for the wrap method that seems to make much more sense, and was based on the correct stitch count. I tried it once yesterday, and have actually already frogged it once, but I could see where I’d gone wrong, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be ok on the second go around. Doing it this way has even sort of made the yarn over method make more sense. Not so much that I’m willing to give it another go today, but I might try it again the future.
The one thing I’m definitely still completely in love with from this project is the yarn: Pine Woods Yarn, which is locally made, and from what I can tell, only available at Seaport Yarns in town. This is the only yarn that I’ve worked with where I feel like squealing “It’s sooooo soft!” everytime I touch it (and I’ve worked with some of the more widely available yarns that elicit that reaction from a wide variety of people). I’ve been restraining myself from running down and buying some more to keep for myself. I figure I have plenty of other yarn to play with for the moment, and it might just be a fluke anyway, so I should avoid buying more to avoid disappointment. Ok, that’s crazy talk, but it’s keeping me away from the store for now 😉