The narrow yoke cardigan is finally done.  Once again, this was totally one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” projects.  Those super dark grey stitches?  They are TINY.  It needs buttons still (the ones that I originally got for it are too big), but other than that I am quite happy with how it turned out.

When I started this project, I asked O to pick out the colors she wanted in it, and about stroked out when she added that BRIGHT red into the mix.  She insisted that it would be great, and since I (mostly) trust her color judgment, so I went with it.  She was right.  The one line of red in the yoke really does work.  Since I had a full skein of it left, I decided to do the inside of the cuffs and hem in red, and I couldn’t be happier at how that came out (well, ok, I could – it could be flatter, but it’s a turned hem, so it’s never going to be and that’s just fine).

In other exciting knitting news, the evil top down raglan is also done.  And blocked.  And I don’t hate it any less.

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Sometimes.

The more drafting I do for class, the more charts I end up doing, whether for working out how a stitch pattern will work out in a given shape, or weird neckline decrease issues, or whatever. The current class project (well, one of three that have to be done by next class on January 11) is a dolman sleeve sweater. Go ahead. Go throw up. I know. I’ll wait.

There are many things that I don’t want in a sweater, and giant dolman armflaps and seams down the top of the sleeve are two of the big ones. Which made this particular class project that much more of a challenge.

So. I started by making the dolman curve as shallow and angular as Jean would let me get away with (ok, maybe slightly more than she really wanted to let me get away with, but so far so good. She might make me rip it all out in class again, but hopefully not). Then I asked (begged) to do a wide patterned panel up the top of the sleeve, which would not only eliminate the seam that would normally be there, but would add a bit of visual interest, drawing attention away from the under-arm area. Bonus. Jean ok’d it, with that little smile. I knew that meant I was probably biting off more than I could chew, but this is all about the learning, right?

I picked one of my favorite patterns out of the Japanese 250 pattern book (if you don’t have one, you should. Kinokuniya in Seattle stocks it, along with a ton of other great Japanese pattern books) and swatched and swatched and swatched. Then traced the neckline onto tracing paper, and gridded it, and realized I was SCREWED. Bigtime. I ripped back several inches of sweater back, and then redid the graph for everything from shoulder point to neck.

And that’s where Excel comes in. Recreate the grid in Excel, and add the pattern with the (great) knitting font from Aire River Design. So. Easy. Extrapolate down to figure out where in the pattern to cast on once the neck is figured out, and this is what I end up with (enclicken to embiggen, as usual):

That turns into these:

The rest is super boring stockinette stitch and still needs the hems knit and grafted on (yes, Lara, still doing it all the hard way…), so there won’t be pictures of that bit until it’s all done, but hey. At least there’s been *some* progress, no?

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All that driving to lower Canadia, all that math, all the homework, all of that.

The purple sweater was finished. FINISHED. Done. Ends woven in and everything. Turned in, proclaimed to be “very beautiful” by Jean (WOOT!), done done done. Well… Except for that tiny bit of “next time, you can do this other thing, if you want to…” from Jean, pointing out something about the neckline that was, once again, used as an example in front of the class.

See, I had followed what she’d taught us thus far when I did the neckline and ribbing, and it was fine, but there was (of course) a slightly different and better way it could be done next time. HA! And then I tried it on, and it was all perfect everywhere except the neckline. Of course. That was too big. WAY too big.

Here’s where the proofy bit comes in – my reaction to the neckline being too big? “oh, I’ll just RIP IT OUT AND REDO IT”. No swearing, no trepidation, nothing other than maybe a wee bit of excitement (which, honestly, strikes me as maybe a touch of insanity…). So I did. Ripped it right the fuck back. Didn’t even hesitate. It was SO freakin’ liberating!. RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP! Then, of course, I got to pick up all those stitches again, and do a crapload of math because now I not only had to evenly space the decreases, but I had to not decrease across the center of the front, *and* I had to figure out how to space the decreases while doing 2×2 ribbing that matched the center stitches. And? And? I did it. It took a while, but the math got done and the decreases are spaced evenly into the ribbing and the ribbing matches at the center front and it won’t be too big this time.

Critterboy, of course, looked at me like I was a total loon when I started ripping the neckline back and doing all that math. And then especially when I was doing the triumphant happy dance when I finished it and it all worked. Heh.

This hasn’t been a tremendously difficult pattern, really, even with all the ripping back and redoing of the maths, but I’ve learned SO much on this one, and have absolutely lost my fear of crazy knitting math and pattern drafting. And that, my friends, makes it ALL worth it.

And in other news: MADRONA! Today! More on that later, after I’ve been and seen and (omg! Bluster Bay Woodworks!) bought…

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