theraineysisters knitting and so much more

Happy New Year, Faithful Readers! As I said to Sally this morning, I overdid it last night. No, not drinking and raucous revelry! I overdid it with my knitting. I am suffering this morning from sore wrists and sore elbows. Just too pathetic for words!

New Year’s Day is a time of reflection. As I look back over this past year, I have made quite a few smaller projects. I think I have suffered of late from “failure to launch” syndrome. It has become mentally difficult for me to tackle the big, complex projects because I know how much time and work is involved…so I haven’t. My New Year’s Resolution is to get up on that diving board and take the big leap!! And lose 30 pounds (but that is my resolution every year!).

What will be that big project? I went down into the dungeon -er- my knitting/sewing room and started searching through bags. I do have several big projects stashed. I came upon ‘Dale of Norway 10903’ as it is affectionately known. Long time readers may recall that I “started” this project quite a while ago (The Long and Winding Road). I do not remember why I started the bottom band and then put it away.

It seemed like a great idea to restart this lovely Norwegian sweater since the boring band was already done. It took a while to regroup and figure out where I was.

A word about Norwegian sweater patterns: they leave a lot of details to the imagination. Like the number of stitches for the shoulders, and any number of other things. Because the sweater has both a pullover and cardigan version, I was able to cobble together the numbers by comparing the two. I reworked my pattern so the armholes will be centered to the latticework pattern.

Off I went with a vengeance. But then reality hit. It looked awfully small. My original blog post specifically mentioned that I had gotten gauge on a US 2, but I chose to use a US 3. I don’t know what went wrong, but I was 7 inches off!! So, after knitting 12 rows on > 300 sts, I had to start over!! This is why people do not make sweaters!! I started over by doing a provisional cast on — I will knit the band after the body. I also changed to a US 4 needle and things seem to be going swimmingly. Whew!

This particular pattern also has a unique aspect to it with the patterning. There are some incredibly long (31 st) “floats” between color changes!! I first fell in love with this sweater when I saw it on WendyKnits Blog in February 2004. Wendy discussed that she did not wrap her floats across the 27-31 st white areas because a- they show through and b- they create puckers. So, I thought if she can do it, I can do it. So I did not “grab” my floats in the dark olive/white section of the leaves that I finished last night:

The back:

Risky, to be sure, but I wanted the white sections to look as good as possible. The red arrow on the top picture shows where I caught the green float. I usually grab floats to align with sts already worked from a previous row, which did not exist to this point. The second choice is to align the floats with a stitch from the NEXT row. Since the next row is covered up, I mark these spots on my chart with a pencil dot so I know where to grab the floats and cause minimal disruption to the fabric.

The next color up is pale green, so I may catch them — shouldn’t show through as much. But later I will have burgundy against the white, so I will again have very long floats.

So, we will see slow progress over the coming months. I would love to go start the pale green rows right now, but I need to ice my elbow. I am a knitting dork.

PS – Twinset Jan mentioned that maybe the long floats will felt to the back of the sweater with washing and wearing. A great thought, but the yarn is Daletta, which is washable! 🙁