FO: Lacy Hug-Me-Tight

Pattern: Lacy Hug-Me-Tight from Knit 2 Together by Tracy Ullman and Mel Clark
Size: Small/Medium


Yarn: 5 skeins Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk dk in Ivory
Needles: Sizes 5 and 8 KnitPicks Options circulars


Modifications: Absolutely none.


I loved knitting this, despite the Endless Lace Trim. I think I've covered the issue of not being a lace-knitter pretty thoroughly in previous posts. This was, by any definition, easy lace. Still, it took me a long time and a lot of teeth-gritting to get it done. Most people complain about all the 2 x 2 ribbing. I enjoyed that part the most. I suspect this is because I knit continental style, and it appears to me that ribbing is easier to knit that way. (Please note, this is not a value judgment or a condemnation of English style, or combined knitting, or any other way you may choose to make loops out of yarn, including--gasp!--with a hook. It's all good with me. This is just an observation, 'k?)

This took much less yarn than I expected. In fact, I have enough of this yarn left to make at least one more of these, and maybe two. Not that I'm planning to do so. But I could!

60 Inches...and Counting!

It's true: I finished the Endless Lace Trim! Well, at least, I finished the trim for the body, aided by the season premier of The Shield and the series premier of Sons of Anarchy. At this point, I'll take that as a victory.

But, as you probably figured out some time ago, I have been ignoring a basic reality of separately-knitted trim, which is that, at some point, the trim needs to be sewn on to the sweater, or it's really just a fancy scarf.

Yes, those are binder clips from the local office supply store. I find them to be extremely useful for holding seams together while I sew them.

So as not to lose heart at the thought of 60 inches of mattress stitching in lace, I pretended I was done with the lace knitting and that this was the last step in the finishing of this sweater.

It seems to have worked, since the trim went on with surprising speed and ease and didn't even require ripping! I've laid the shrug out to give you some idea of how it looks on. The structure is odd. The body is really just a rectangle, folded in half and sewn halfway up the side seams, leaving half open to serve as armholes. Then the long strip of lace is sewn on around the bottom edge of the rectangle, and the two short strips of lace are sewn around the armholes, and voila! A shrug. The fabric is so drapey that the rectangle eases into a soft, curved shape around the shoulders that is surprisingly flattering. It will be a few days before I can get a modeled shot, so you'll have to take my word for it for the moment.

In the interests of not losing momentum, I've already cast on for the sleeve trim.

I wonder what's on tv tonight?

And just for the heck of it, here's a typical shot of Sophie the Escher Dog napping on the kitchen floor. How do you suppose she twists her spine like that?

36 Inches

I'll admit this is getting tedious.

Here's the ubiquitous progress shot on the endless lace trim:

But I have officially reached three feet, of the five that I need for this piece, and the seven that I need total.

It would probably be going faster if I weren't also working on this, which is ever so much more fun:

Yes, it's time for another crappy bathroom mirror wip photoshoot. Note to self: clean bathroom mirror before next photoshoot. But as you can see, despite the embarrassing spots of what I can only hope is toothpaste, the Opulent Raglan is progressing swimmingly. I love that fancy cable up the front, and it's so easy! I haven't done much in the way of modification to this one, except for increasing the length and adjusting the spacing of the waist shaping to fit. Oh, and I replaced the turned hem with some simple 1x1 ribbing, which will match the ribbing on the neckline. The turned hem looked sort of lumpy and unfinished to me in other FO pictures, and ribbing is faster and easier and gives a more finished look, in my opinion.

I'm just about to pick up stitches for the sleeves, having already done my daily lace-knitting penance. I still haven't decided exactly how I'm going to do the sleeves, but to my own surprise, I'm leaning toward knitting them as written!

Stockinette to the Rescue

This is nowhere near seven feet of lace, and I am sick of knitting lace. Yes, I know, lace is wonderful, we love lace, I love lace. It is just the knitting of the lace that poses a problem for me.

And so, without even a little bit of guilt, I cast on some nice, plain stockinette, just to take the edge off.

My camera seems unwilling to process the color green. The actual color is darker and greener than this. (It is Elsebeth Lavold Classic Al in a colorway I can't currently put my hand on, but it's definitely green.) The pattern is Wendy Bernard's Opulent Raglan, from the fall 2008 Knitscene. It is the reason I stalked this issue of Knitscene and searched multiple stores to find a copy. (What is it with Interweave that they can't seem to issue subscriptions for this magazine? I know it's an occasional thing, but it always seems to come out four times a year, so why can't they just make it a regular thing and save us all a whole lot of bother trying to find copies of it?)

It's a charming pattern. I am loving the whole top-down, all-in-one-piece, no-seams sweater these days. What's that? Lazy? Why, yes--yes I am. Thanks for noticing! I am loving it so much that on Saturday, while waiting for my son to be weighed in for football (for which we had to drive--are you ready for this?--eighty miles round trip), I went to Barnes & Noble and bought Wendy's new book Custom Knits just for her terrific explanation of how to design top-down sweaters. Tammy just wrote a post about this book (and did one of the test knits that appears in it--go Tammy!), so I won't go into detail here, but it is good enough that I paid full price for it in a brick and mortar store just so I could take it home right away, which I almost never do.

Now, if I could just get some time to read it...

60 Inches

Several of you were horrified at the prospect of knitting 60 inches of lace. I am pretty horrified myself, but in the interests of honesty, please allow me to clarify. The 60 inches I have to knit is a strip of lace only about six inches wide.


It creates the trim for this sweater.


Although, to be fair, I need to knit 60 inches for the body PLUS 12 inches for each sleeve, for a total of 84 inches. For those of you who don't have elementary schoolers and haven't done your twelveses in a while, that's seven feet of lace. I don't care that it's only six inches wide. It's seven feet of lace.

I've called out the big guns for this one.