UFO to WIP

Last night, the Sweetie was out, so I invited a friend over for knitting, and tea and cookies. We were so into the knitting that there were hardly any cookies eaten!

I took the opportunity (sitting at home, knitting the primary activity) to seam one of my designated UFOs. I had blocked it the night before (finding out that my pieces were way too big; but hey, it's a baby sweater - maybe it'll be a 1-year-old sweater...).

I finished seaming the shoulders and started on the edging last night. The edging begins as a garter stitch band, 5 stitches wide. The instructions say to start at the center back and do enough to go around to the point in the front when "gently stretched". Then you increase to make the collar, and do short rows to make the collar turn down. I ripped the short rows out this morning, to attempt a better wrap and turn. I wondered why the edging wasn't knitted on as it is made, but every time I tried that, I ended up with bulky stitches. So now I know. The only thing I regret was that when I started the edging band, I did a normal (knitted) cast-on. I now wish I'd done a provisional cast-on, so I could do the edging in the other direction without grafting. It also says to sew the edging on as you go, but then later it says to sew it on. I tacked it in place with split ring stitch markers - I love those things!

The only other thing was that the shaping of the body is stepped with cast-ons to make it wider. I was putting some knitting patterns and books away this morning, and saw the Winter 2005 Interweave Knits, which had an article on short rows. I took a look at it (because of the holes in my edging) and saw it recommended short rows instead of stepped shaping. Wish I'd known that! Those steps are going to be challenging to sew the edging to. Oh well, they say experience is that which you get right after you needed it. When I'd read the article last year, I'm sure I didn't know what it meant by "stepped' shaping.

A few days ago, I cast on for a chemo cap. I tried to use my KnitPicks Options, but 24" is too long for this. I lent/gave my size 9 16" needle to SIL for her first knitting project, so this is being done on a size 8. I had cast on to the size 9, so I thought I'd just knit on to the size 8. But I twisted it and ripped it out. Boy, this stuff does not like to rip out! Also, as you can see, the changes from pink to purple are ...sudden. And suddenly back to pink. Not what I thought it would do. Oh well, it will have stripes. They could look cool.



In other news, I finished one of each kind of sleeve for the Pea Pod sweaters. Here is a photo of the body of the sweater, with each kind of sleeve and some contrast color (actually another sleeve end) at the neck to represent the neckline. I think I like the right sleeve better than the left. What do you think?