Baby Steps

Slow-going.

Astonishingly close to True Colour. I have no idea how this happens. Or doesn't, more often - a photographer I am not, unlike my daughter who brought in, according to the guy running the gallery, "huge crowds, at least twenty people or so" which I'm inferring is a lot for a Sunday.

So as you can see, I have this marquise shape thing going, which I'm rather enjoying: little cupped peyote leaves and right angle weave open shapes, each with its own accent bead. If I carry on enjoying it this much and don't get anxious for The Next Thing, it'll go all the way around the neck in the same manner, but more likely, the back will be simpler and smoother. 

Something I'm liking as a side-effect to joining curves to curves is that it isn't too stiff, and I'm hoping it will lie naturally around the curve of the neck.

I've been knitting, but not photographing my knitting until this evening.

Above are the sleeves, complete with saddle shoulders (out of the picture to the left) and cabled cuffs, knitted around first (out of the picture to the left). 

The yarn has the slightest ever fuzziness due to its mohair (kid as in baby, not joke) content. The grey undertone variations are from the mohair and some blue silk, and the variations in russet intensity were an intentional dyeing effect.

The plan is for an A-line cardigan/jacket with asymmetrical collar if I have enough yarn, so right now I'm knitting the cabled bottom edge of the body, which seems never-ending, and is horribly reminiscent of a knitting scarf, though I hope shorter, but I'm loathe to calculate as the final measurement is likely to make me unhappy.

The cuffs flare ever so slightly, which is fine for sleeves, but will be unattractive in a hem; this is useful information as it will help me to adjust my stitch pickup rate. What I really ought to do is to be very careful and precise, altering my pickup rate depending on whether the stitches will become stocking stitch or a cabled section, which will draw in more, thus necessitating a faster pickup rate.

For the cuffs I picked up (or knitted up, if you like) three stitches for every four cuff rows, which as I said, resulted in a slight bell for the cuff.

This is not what I want for the bottom of my jacket, so I'll pick up four for every five cuff rows, and six across sections that will be cabled. Cables draw in, somewhere between five and ten percent in general, unless they're extreme cables, with huge crosses (like ten by ten), so if you're working cables off a bottom band, you'll want to increase five to ten percent across the cable sections so that you don't get unevenness and puckers on the bottom welt.

Amazingly, I've seen published patterns otherwise pretty but spoiled by this lack of attention to detail.