WIP report

By | February 22, 2012

In a couple hours I’m off for a fun-filled weekend at Stitches West. But first, I wanted to update y’all on my projects.

The Swirl has really grown:

Swirl in a bag

Kind of funky looking, huh? Over the weekend, I bound off across the back neck and along the edges of the lapels, and started increasing for the sleeves. This resulted in a floppy, unruly pile of knitting. Now a drawstring bag holds the “body” of the Swirl – the circle forming the collar, lapels, sides, and lower back — while the nascent sleeves poke out the top. Much easier to deal with!

Look close and you’ll see tan and light blue bits of waste yarn. Those are provisionally cast-on stitches that I’m gradually incorporating into the knitting to shape the “bottom” of the sleeves. Later, to shape the “top” of the sleeves, I’ll put stitches on hold instead of binding off. Since I’m essentially short-rowing across both sleeve edges, grafting the edges together might prove a little fiddly… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also over the weekend, I started a simple triangular shawlette:

nice and simple

As I was contemplating my options and getting ready to cast on, I suddenly realized I’ve never knit a simple, two-wedge, top-down triangular shawlette. Big rectangular and circular shawls with fancy edging, yes. Top-down shawls with Faroese shaping or with multiple wedges, yes. But a simple shawlette? Nope, never, despite their popularity.

So that was it. I had to start a simple shawlette. And I’m glad to have it. Given its petite size, it’ll make much better airplane knitting than the Swirl. Still, I’m taking both projects to Stitches West. You never know which project you might want to work on at a given time, right?

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