Alive and Knittin'

Wow--I am sorry for the dead silence that has prevailed here for the past three weeks. I have been distracted from all bloggy pursuits by the demise of my freedom. In short (as Mr. Micawber would exclaim) I have begun graduate school.

I don't know whether to be thrilled to dickens that I've entered the final stage of my academic career (end point: Master's in Library Science) or utterly incensed that all my knitting time has gone the way of the continential glaciers.

Either way, I will not be one of those librarians famed for her ugly, unflattering sweaters; I finally finished the Top-Down Shoulder Warmer!



Mahvelous, dahling. I don't know how many times I had to frog this silly thing--three?--but in the end, it all came right.



Specs!
Pattern: Top-Down Shoulder Warmer, by Laura Chau
Size: Large back with modifications for effigy-pot arms (see below)
Yarn: 3.5-ish skeins O-Wool Balance
Needles: U.S. 8 (5 mm)
Modifications: I had to sub out the sleeves as written for sleeves that would fit me. To do this, I kept the number of sts cast on for the back, cast on fewer sts for the sleeves, and worked the same number of increase rows.

This was the first time I'd worked with the O-Wool, and it receives an A+ on two counts: holding up to a lot of ripping out and being soft and comfy in the finished product. Hurray for organics!

Now I'm off on two different projects at once (one for me, one as a gift), and my biggest job over this next week will be figuring out how to balance school and knitting.

What the Dickens!

(I'm not sure why, but Stella finds this a comfortable style of repose)

The new season of Masterpiece Theatre is in full swing, and it's the perfect opportunity to get working on my Top-Down Shoulder Warmer. The "Classic" portion of the season--Tales of Charles Dickens--has just ended, and although I knit my way through both the end of Little Dorrit and The Old Curiosity Shop, frankly, I'm looking forward to a good, wholesome murder or two on the "Mystery" leg. It's not that I don't love Dickens--David Copperfield is one of my favorite books and has an awesome Masterpiece adaptation--but these two did not end on the note I was expecting.

I saw the way The Old Curiosity Shop was going when I realized they were cramming the whole thing into one and a half hours. A Christmas Carol fits into one and a half hours. Anything else, forget it.

But Little Dorrit... We pretty much sat there staring at the screen after that one ended, all thinking, did that really just happen? I will not go into detail, for those who have not yet been floored by this one in print or picture form. Suffice to say I didn't know that sort of thing flew in Victorian England.

In the same vein, I am a little puzzled with my Shoulder Warmer. The first thing I realized when I was trying to figure out which size to knit was that my back size (16" or L) had no correspondence to my bust size (34, between S & M). A review of the pattern and a modicum of common sense told me that in a sweater without a front, the back size is probably the way to go. So I went that way.

I think part of my dissatisfaction at the end of The Old Curiosity Shop was that at that point, I discovered that my trim, snug little shoulder-warmer-in-progress was neither trim nor snug about the shoulders. The sleeves, and the shoulder region they grew out of, were too big. Apparently my back size has no correspondence to my arm size, either. I tried the nascent shoulder warmer on three times, deliberated, went through the notes on all the Top Down Shoulder Warmers on Ravelry, deliberated some more, and decided there was nothing to be done but rip the whole thing back to the beginning and fudge it.

The back size had to stay, but none of the sizes written give a a sleeve with a 10-11" circumference, which is what I wanted. Careful perusal of the pattern revealed that the different sizes were achieved in part by working more or less increase rows. Another trying on of my sweater revealed that the armholes were a little deep, so I decided to attempt a custom fit by combining strategies.

First, I cast on more back stitches and fewer sleeve stitches, and now, I will work fewer increase rows. This will produce the right stitch counts and hopefully will *not* throw the design out of whack. I was quite pleased to have figured something out for this conundrum, but all the same it makes me wonder if I'm shaped like an effigy jar.

*Sigh* Nothing to do but continue knitting and keep our fingers crossed for a nice murder this Sunday night.

Guess What's Here

My O-Wool.

I had ordered it several weeks ago, back when I was searching for the project. The weather was changing, and I hit upon the plan of making myself Laura's Top-Down Shoulder Warmer (apologies for the Ravelers-only link; this pattern has disappeared off her blog's shop). I was utterly enthused at the idea of having something light to keep me warm in the deep freeze that is my workplace in summer. Then I learned that my LYS (good on stocking standards, bad on color) had to special order the gray, and my excitement was shot down like the Flying Ace over enemy territory. On to socks!

Well, now it's here, I'm up to my ears in churning out little giftlets, and a shrug couldn't be farther from my mind. Doesn't it so figure?