Winding Up and Swatching

The color of this yarn is truly wonderful. I can't tell if it is lavender or light blue, but what I like about it is that it almost matches my eye color. That's me peeking through the skein. You have no idea how hard it is to hold the yarn and take a picture at the same time. Being of Swedish heritage, it is no surprise that my eyes are blue and my hair used to be blonde. Apparently, the hair in my Swedish family gets darker as we get older, but I have no problem fixing that. Besides, this color will really show the little black hairs that Neko plans to put on it.

So here is the pattern. It is called the V-neck Pullover from KnitSimple's Knits Plus. Yes, I am a plus woman. I've learned to live with it. I used to be hot, but now, that just comes in flashes. One of these days, I will make peace with my figure and have a better body image. But for now, I will use yards and yards of yarn to cover up.

So the bottom part of this sweater is knitted vertically in a rib of 10 x 1, if that can be called a rib at all. Then the bodice is done by picking up stitches along the edge in garter stitch. Although I am going to show you by progress, copyright rules won't allow me to tell you all the details and numbers. However, I can tell you some of the modifications that I am making. I am making a bit longer than the picture shows so I can cover the biggest part of my bottom. And since I am being honest, I will probably need a little more room there, so I am going to add a short row on the side of the rib to give me a little more room. Besides, this cotton/rayon mix has no give or elasticity at all, so I will have to built in my own ease and depend on the yarn.

So I threaded up my swift to wind this wonderful yarn into a ball, or rather a 'cake.' I love my spinner, but I have a feeling this cake will collapse as I work with it. I have three skeins of this cotton/rayon mix, but I am only going to wind one ball at a time.

Zoom Zoom

And a super big cake of yarn

I always make fun of my husband's tools, calling them his 'toys' but I have to admit that we knitters also have our fun little tools -- or toys -- as well. These skeins contain about 700 yards, so it wound this into a cake all the way to the maximum. I thought about dividing it, but I find joining cotton in a garment is difficult so I wanted to work with the larger skeins. Seconds later, the entire skein is done.

So I pulled out my needles to do a swatch. I plan to do an entire rant about swatching at another time, but here is the swatch that I completed for this yarn. The good news is that my swatch matched exactly the gauge listed in the pattern, so my calculations are easy to do. Like I said before, I want the sweater to be longer which I figured to be about 5 inches longer. Since the body of the sweater is done vertically, I had to cast on those 5 inches now. So I cast on my stitches and began my knitting. Unfortunately, I got word from my work of another project they needed done immediately, so I will have to work on this later. I work at home, so I don't have far to commute. I love the work, but it certainly does get in the way of my knitting.

Oh well, back to the needles -- or rather back to work.