FO: Death By Cables

Just in time for summer, I've finally finished Death By Cables! This sweater has the dubious distinction of having taken me longer to complete than any other project ever. It's been on the needles since October of last year--that's seven months; longer even than Icarus. Mercifully, the temperature has dropped from its 100 degree high two days ago to an absolutely lovely 69 degrees, just in time for my photo shoot.

Pattern: Dickinson Pullover by Kathy Zimmerman from the Fall 2007 Interweave Knits (my favorite issue of any knitting magazine ever).

Size: I followed the pattern for a 40 inch finished bust. Mine is not actually 40 inches. I'm not sure how to measure accurately because the ribbing and cables draw in the fabric so much, but I have a 35 inch bust, and as you can see, the finished sweater is fairly clingy. (This may change. I haven't washed and blocked it yet, which is also why the cables are a little uneven looking.)


Yarn: Berroco Softwist Bulky (wool/rayon) in burgundy. Seven skeins, I think. The yarn is beautiful: drapey and soft, with a gorgeous sheen from the rayon. I will never, ever use it again. It was the biggest pain in the world to knit with. The rayon is not only incredibly slippery, but splits like nothing I've ever seen and snags on everything. Working numerous cables and textured stitches in this yarn was like slowly peeling off my own fingernails. The only yarn I have ever disliked working with as much is Berroco Cotton Twist, which is a cotton/rayon blend, and for exactly the same reasons.

Needles: Size 8 (for the body) and 6 (for the collar) Knit Picks Harmony circulars. They were perfect for this slippery yarn.


Mods: I made the body two inches longer and the sleeves 3/4 of an inch longer than the pattern called for, to accommodate my height. I'm very happy with the finished length of both body and sleeves. Other than that, I followed the pattern to the letter. There's a first time for everything, I guess! If I were to do this again (and I won't--not ever), I would leave out the textured stitches on the sides of the large cable motif on both the body and sleeves and knit those sections in plain stockinette. I like the textured stitches, but they added four whole charts to the pattern, and those charts were not in sync with the cable charts and were impossible for me to memorize. Without those, the pattern would have been much, much easier for me to follow, and I would undoubtedly have been able to finish months ago. So although I like the way they look, I wouldn't knit them again.

Do you think this finally gets me off the hook with the KG?

And On It Goes

I consider myself a decent knitter. I've got yarn; I've got needles. I even have many, many completed projects that look good and fit correctly. But recent evidence indicates that maybe I need to reconsider how I think of my knitting skills.

I've been through a whole string of knitting disasters lately: gauge issues, fit problems, seaming goofs, running out of yarn (that's been a big one). Last night I discovered a whole new way to screw up.

I finished the knitting for Death By Cables! Yes, despite 100 degree temperatures, I've been plugging dutifully along on a chunky weight cabled wool pullover. And--who'd have thought?--all that knitting led to a finished sweater. Or, um, at least a finished something.

What's wrong with this picture?

If you guessed, "Hey, someone sewed those raglan sleeves to each other!" you're right. Just for the record, I don't have two right arms. I do, however, have a sweater with two right sleeves. You should have seen me trying to make it fit. I have spatial orientation issues, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that no amount of pulling and adjusting was going to get the left sleeve onto the left side of my body when it was sewn to the right sleeve.

Fortunately, I have other projects to share with you.

We have a pool in our backyard, and, like most pools, it is in full sun. This is lovely when one is floating in cool water, but not so lovely when one is steaming in the hot tub. For years, I've wished our hot tub was located in the shade, but there didn't seem to be any way to arrange this, since the hot tub is integrated into the pool. And then I saw a picture of an offset umbrella and a lightbulb went on.

We faced a small dilemma. The very large weighted base required to support the cantilevered umbrella would not fit on the narrow strip of concrete that edges the hot tub.


So my brilliant former-engineer husband came up with an alternate solution. He bought a pre-formed concrete footing and bolted the bottom section of the umbrella pole to the top of the footing.


Then he dug a big ol' hole in the raised bed behind the hot tub. He dug down far enough to sink the entire concrete footing below the level of the patio.


Then he reinstalled the landscape blocks and backfilled the hole. We put the umbrella into the base, and voila!

Instant shade (almost)! We've been delighted to find that the hot tub remains in full shade until about 3:30 in the afternoon. After that, the late afternoon sun slowly creeps under the western edge of the umbrella and lights the hot tub. But during the hottest part of the day, the hot tub is in lovely, cool, refreshing shade, while the pool remains in full sun. No frogging required!

Dear Knitting Goddess:

You win.

Dickinson it is.

Cheating

It's come to this. As if cheating on Death By Cables with the Retro Ribby Shrug weren't bad enough...now I'm cheating on the RRS with Sligo. Shameless, that's what I am. A project hussy.

The RRS is done. At least, the knitting part is done. It has a back, two fronts, and two sleeves, just waiting to be blocked and sewn together.

Usually, I'm pretty gung-ho about finishing. I don't like the sewing (if I wanted to sew, I'd, you know, sew), but I generally hop right to it once the knitting is done, because--let's face it--you can't really walk around with the individual pieces pinned to your shirt and call it a sweater. (Although some of us may have been tempted to try it.)

But even though the RRS was an exciting fling, and a very quick knit, the thrill is gone, and I'm seeing it in the harsh light of day with its curlers and its house coat, and I'm getting that wandering urge. I'm having a hard time resisting the siren's song of Sligo (so green...so green...). And Death? I've sent Death on a long vacation while I reconsider the relationship . I'm going with Bea's reasoning: "you have to look at your WIPs in relation to the season, WIPs for fall and winter 'stay' in that season, when spring comes, you start over at 0." Have you ever heard such a piece of knitterly brilliance in your life? Even the Knitting Goddess can't possibly argue with that reasoning!

Falling Down

I was doing really well with my vow to finish Death By Cables before casting on anything new. I only made one bag and one baby blanket and started one pair of socks and the shrug part of the Retro Ribby Twinset. And none of those count, as I've explained repeatedly.

But I'm going down now, and I'm going down hard.

It's totally not my fault. The new Vogue Knitting came. This did not seem to pose a problem, since, as usual, I didn't like any of the designs.

And then I found this:

I like this. I like it a lot. I like it so much that it has jumped to the very front of the queue. Death By Cables? Who needs a cabled wool sweater in San Diego in April? So I immediately started shopping for yarn. And then I remembered this:

This is the gorgeous, hand-dyed, superwash merino from Sharon's shop, in the Sligo colorway (she just posted some BFL in this same colorway, and it's totally different and absolutely lovely). I love this yarn. It's soft and smooth and lightly variegated and it's green, which aside from being possibly my new favorite color is also the Project Spectrum color for April. I've just been waiting to cast it on until Death was finished. But, you know, if I use yarn from stash...

...it doesn't really count as a new project.

Staggering On

Just to prove that I really am still plodding on through Death By Cables:

The back and front are done. This is the first sleeve. It's about a third of the way done. I have stuck to my vow to the Knitting Goddess not to cast on any new projects until I finish this...I mean, if you don't count socks, or the Great Green Glob. Speaking of which...

Here is the G-cubed prior to felting. That's me holding it. This is one freakin' huge bag.

And here it is after felting. It's like magic. It's still pretty big, but after multiple trips through the washer, it is dense enough to stop bullets, and I just don't think it's going to felt any more. I got a huge kick out of knitting this, which was a sort of knitting joke. And who doesn't love a good knitting joke, after all?