Shapes Of Things To Come

This will be a quick one because hey, the sun is shining and it’s warming up. There’s walking and more gardening to get in before the day is done! Speaking of gardening, we’re done prepping the veggie patch except the greenhouse, which needs clearing out but not while the poor little seedlings need to stay in there. The dye garden is cleared and composted and ready to plant. Now there’s just the front gardens to clean up. Great progress!

In knitting news, I’m nearly at the point on my Candelia where I start the hem and the pockets. The pockets are knitted as extensions to the bottom edge and then folded up and stitched into place. I may make them slightly larger both in width and length too because in the photos the pockets look a little too small to be functional. And I’m all about the functional. Easily done.

And I promised to share the next make with you as well. This is the Mia Tank by Jennifer Wood from the latest issue of Knitty. Here’s Jennifer’s version:

And the back has a cute little seed stitch tail:

As I said, I’m using several weaving threads from the stash held together:

Clockwise from the top left that’s 4/12 rayon, 15/2 silk tweed (the same yarn I used in that bubbly black and natural scarf I wove awhile back), and 16/1 natural line linen. The resulting swatch is slinky and drapey, with a good hand and a natural unbleached colour that goes with everything. I got stitch gauge no problem but the row gauge is much denser than the pattern calls for. Hopefully that won’t present too much of a problem. I can always compensate by knitting more rows to gain length if necessary.

The construction of this tunic sweater is interesting. It starts at the back neck, including the shoulders, and works short rows to slope the shoulders nicely (great for those of us without square model-hanger shoulders). Then you work down the back and add a little shape toward the underarms where it stops. Then you go back to the beginning and pick up one side of the front, knit that down to the bottom of the neckline, shaping as you go. Hold that and pick up the other front and make a mirror image of the first side, add stitches across the neckline gap, beginning the little seed stitch area, and carry on down to the underarms as for the back. Thereupon you join the front to the back, adding plenty of stitches at the underarms and start knitting in the round adding width, depth (short rows again) and the cute gather at the top of the tail section as you go. Finally you knit the seed stitch hem all around and bind off. The neckline and armholes are finished with (gasp!) crocheted picots. Love. Can’t wait to finish this one. I’m already partway down the back section. The one drawback is that the cones of yarn are heavy so this project is not at all portable.

Spinning the alpaca tweed is coming along. Nearly another full bobbin then I’ll be ready to ply skein number two. One more to go after that! Since I’m not in a hurry to start this project it’s okay that it’s taking awhile.

Goodness. It’s getting late! Off I go.