Arms and dimples

 

Well, the Giant Sweater of Gloom has two attached sleeves and the start of a drastically reducing yoke. Elizabeth Zimmerman designed this Hurry Up Sweater to be finished in a month, even taking time out for holiday preparation, but I am woefully behind.

 

Part of its charm, however, is the sloping yoke, with decreases every round at the armpits of the Sweater. Six episodes of a Korean drama under your belt and you have a finished sweater!

Years ago, a blogger by the name of Mr. Wynne, was making a sweater on his knitting blog. He was looking for a name for his sweater and included some photos of his sleeves.

Gosh, he had the best decreases! They looked like evenly spaced dimples! I mentioned this and he ended up calling the sweater "Dimples!"

Well, this view of decreases is barely visible but I'm liking the pattern of divots.

 

Well, onward to glory. I don't often wish for cold weather in April but this sweater deserves it.

Another inch in the wall, er, sweater

 

After regular breaks in my knitting time (this bulky yarn and size 13 knitting needles is killing my wrists!) - I'm officially up to the arm pit area of my Hurry Up Sweater. 15 inches in the front and 17 inches on the back, thanks to the short rows I added in. 

 

I decided to mark everything in order to keep track - Elizabeth Zimmerman's directions are usually very short and concise.

One of the other knitters doing this project - there's kind of a Knitalong group at Lila and Claudine's Yarn Shop in Mahtomedi -  was counting back to her increase markers for the same reason!

 

She's already pretty far ahead of me!

Looking ahead - I'll be at the Minnesota Knitters' Guild Annual Retreat again this weekend. I'm taking both gray projects as well as a ball of hand spun and a new hat pattern I just bought, the Whiskey Highball hat by Thea Coleman. It was just published this week and I snapped it up, her patterns are just that good!

 

Hopefully, I'll be through to the sleeves of both sweaters by the time I'm back!

Two shades of gray

Although one of my New Years resolutions was to wear less gray, I'm starting off my winter knitting with two gray projects.

 

The first is a Hurry Up Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Almanac. I'm part of a group knitting this project at Lila and Claudine's Yarn and Gifts in Mahtomedhi.

It's a hefty project, knitting at 2.5 stitches per inch with size 13 needles. I'm using a very vintage looking Briggs&Little super bulky yarn in deep gray.

 

I'm liking the devil-may-care EZ style - but the yarn in pretty tiring to work with.

My second gray project is actually a do-over. I began this Islay cardigan and got practically to the sleeves before I had to set it down. It's not a hard pattern at all but I wasn't careful enough with my bodice lace patterns and pretty soon - I decided it was better to just rip it back and do it correctly. Why finish something you aren't going to like?

And for days when I don't want to work with gray - I'm breaking away to navy blue. I'm working on a navy blue Berocco Vintage Pine Tree Blanket - only done as a shawl.

 

 This uses the Gull Wing Lace pattern made famous by Elizabeth Zimmerman's February Baby Sweater. It's easily memorizable and easy to take places.