Here’s a little bit of late-night updating this week. I’ve been knitting most of the day — about 7 hours I’d say. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that Vivian has any place here today. She’s been put on the back burner. For one, it’s warm out! She’s out-of-season, and I’m not too anxious to finish her. Secondly, I’ve got some commissions that are taking a priority. That’s what I’m going to show you today.

I’ve taken on a commission for kilt hose tops, but these I’m particularly proud of. My client came to me with a sample that had been machine-knitted overseas. It is particularly easy to machine knit intarsia in the round — not so easy by hand. Some people say it’s impossible. Others say it can only be done with a small section of intarsia on a solid ground. Still, others say sure, it can be done, but you need to have a seam involved. I say no to all that rubbish — I set out to prove that solid intarsia can indeed be done in the round. And that is exactly what I achieved. The kilt-hose pictured started with an intarsia section, followed by a plain knitting section, which was then doubled up and joined together to create a double-thick cuff. Now I am on the second diamond pattern. Once finished, some diagonal lines will be duplicate-stitched across, giving you a true argyle feel. I will be posting about my findings for intarsia in the round at a later date. I want to work out any possible kinks before I go about telling people how to do it!

I am also working on some lace. Fairly simple, nothing complicated — easy to memorize. The stitch count is rapidly increasing. I’m somewhere around 240 right now. The goal is to get to in the 380 ballpark range. The pattern my client chose is Twin Leaf by Jojoland, with their recommended yarn, Jojoland Cashmere. If you can’t figure out the growth pattern on this pattern, it’s ridiculously back-and-forth between written pattern and charted pattern. I despise that combination! However, I figured it out and this pattern can be done pretty blindly. The yarn is nice, though. No complaints there — super soft, super warm, and just a touch fragile.

I’m still working on Vivian, and she’s slowly but surely getting near to completion. I’ve added a cable repeat (consisting of 30 rows) to each sleeve, because I’m not quite as skinny as Ysolda and my sleeves were stretching more in width than in length. Now they’re perfect. I admit I’m a tad worried about the length of the body, but I’d rather that be a bit short than the sleeves. Short sleeves just look ridiculous. I’m really hoping I don’t run out of yarn. I had maybe 200 yards spare according to the pattern requirements at the beginning. I got both sleeves, as well as a few inches of the body out of the 2nd skein. I don’t feel like I need to worry, but I am often wrong.

The sleeves are attached! I don’t know if Ysolda really thought it through when she made the different sizes. I could understand the design issue if a tech editor made the multiple sizes though, because it’s an easy thing to miss. What the heck am I talking about, you ask? Well, for the smallest size you put 4 stitches aside when you join the sleeve, to kitchener later. These four stitches are conveniently, the seed-stitch between cables. The cables then flow up either side of the sleeve. Very pretty, yes? So what’s the problem? In my size, you put 6 stitches aside, but you still have a 4 stitch seed-stitch panel. You’re taking one stitch from each cable in order to set stitches aside for the sleeve. And, no less, it’s done on a cable row! Not the best planning. This also means that right away the first stitch from the sleeve that hasn’t been put aside is now converted into the fourth stitch for the cable, effectively eliminating a decrease later on. Of course, none of that is mentioned in the pattern. If you want your cable to continue you have to decide that for yourself. I have no problem with that, but I know people that rely heavily on a designer to explain those things.

I’m not even going to get into the errata for the decreasing on the yoke. In fact, I’m doing what I think looks good. I know the sleeve portion is to decrease down to the 16 stitches that encompass the cable. I also know that the first few decreases are double-decreasing; namely, s2 k1 psso, followed by normal decreases. I’m sticking to that, but apparently the errata is regarding stitch markers and where you decrease. I see no option but to decrease on the sleeve-seed stitches, next to the body cable. I’m sure that’s what Ysolda intended, so that’s what I’m doing.

Stats:
Body and sleeves joined.
Yoke progress: row 122