The reason I wanted to is that I just finished this top, watching The Graduate with my son, who just had a small surgery this morning and who may not utter one sound for ten whole days so that his vocal cords are able to heal. This is problematic for anyone, particularly a very talky almost-sixteen-year-old.
We were in and out of the Advanced Ambulatory Care Centre within two hours; on the one hand I'm delighted that the surgery and recovery were so quick; on the other hand I didn't get to two of my knitting projects or my beading project or anything. Being over-projected is I guess par for the course; it's not as though I've ever brought along too much travel knitting or anything. Even slightly.
I've been busy busy busy figuring out what I can teach in the fall at my local bead store. There's a cuff:
Which I believe could be reworked as a necklace too, and if Bead Fest and those preparations weren't also vying for my time, I'd be on it right now.
Instead, I've been finishing kit samples to take along to Bead Fest.
I can make two to three of the little snippets while listening to Fresh Air online, so it took awhile to get it done. I like this necklace, as it's substantial but airy. You get a lot of colour for not much weight at all.
My brilliant son has figured out how to talk to me when I'm at work (he has no voice for ten days, not even a whisper, especially not even a whisper). On our Mac, you can get TextEdit to speak the words in the current window, so all he has to do is to call me and hold his phone up to the speaker. Brilliant. I was thinking I'd have to set up some sort of chat so that he could get me any time, or check my email even more often than I do (my home email; I never use work email for anything but work), but we can talk on the phone, sort of.
I have to say, I love technology.
3 comments:
shorter is better than longer though eh?? I hate the hospital...
I'm a little behind in my blog reading...
But... I'm intrigued by that top. Is it a published pattern? If so, which one (I think I need to make something like it).
I'm also perennially intrigued by your beading, but am resisting... for now. If you ever come teach beading here, I'm doomed.
No, it's not published.
This is what I did: Started making little mitred squares in a row until it was 1/4 my desired finished circumference. The starting point I called centre front (or back) and so everything was symmetric about this point. I added another row of mitred squares on top of this one (but i could have added another, as extra length would have been fine), and then worked one less mitred square each row, ending with a triangle so eventually (after working symmetrically) I had a large triangle whose tip reached to the cleavage point and whose sides reached to my hips.
Then I made another one of them, and joined them at the first two rows.
Starting at centre front, I picked up stitches along all four diagonal edges and began working back and forth, making a double decrease at each side seam and a double increase at centre back.
You have to keep measuring everywhere: centre back to see when it hits the back of your neck; side seams to see when it hits the underarm, and front neck to see when the neck is wide enough and you need to start increasing to shape the neck.
At the underarm you work a few rows with doubke increases to make a short sleeve.
At the back neck you split and start decreasing at the neck edge and working back and forth on each half to shape the back neck opening. You need to check and stop shaping when the back neck is as wide as the front neck at that point you join the shoulder seam and start working across, while doing double decreases along the shoulder.
Probably by this time the sleeve is long enough and you're working back and forth there, so your row starts at the sleeve opening, goes over the shoulder and to the other side of the sleeve opening.
When the shoulder seam is a couple of inches, start shaping the sleeve cap by doing the double decreases every row instead of every other row. Do this for a few inches until the sleeve opening is wide enough, then do a three-needle bind-off to close the seam at the top edge of the sleeve.
If you like (I did) work a couple of rows around the neck and along the bottom edge.
Weave in ends.
No sewing, no grafting, done.
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