The Long Rows

Thanks to those of you who left comments about Amberson. It was a rare treat to publish in that I knit the sample, graded and wrote the pattern, had it tech edited and test knit, and published it all in less than a month -- that's a really fast turnaround time in my book. Meanwhile, I'm still working on getting the sweater ready to publish; the sample, grading, pattern, and tech editing are done, so now I'm in the test knitting phase (and I still need a few more testers -- the testing thread is here, if you're interested).

For now, I am focused on getting my Chandail done before the end of the month (and the end of the Madelinetosh Lovers knitalong). On Tuesday night, I was finally able to join the sleeves to the body and start on the yoke. I always think this section will be fast, but the truth is that until you've worked a bunch of decrease rows, these are some really long rows. That first night I managed only getting everything on the needles and maybe two rows in about an hour and a half. But now I'm to the point where the stitches around the arms are no longer tricky to move along the needle and I can see the yoke starting to come together.

I did make one little booboo on the sleeves. I had intended to stop the cable pattern in the same place as I did on the body, but it turns out that I can't count. I thought I had done six rows after the cable crossing on the body, but it was actually seven rows. The cables are crossed every 10th row, and for knitting flat (as the body was and as the yoke is now), that's always on a right-side row. Unfortunately, because the sleeves were knit in the round up to the underarms, that meant that every 10th row would fall on a wrong-side row for the sleeves. I already had two ends to weave in at the top of each sleeve (because I was alternating skeins every two rounds) and didn't want to add in two more to add one more round -- I'd already cut the yarn -- so I just decided to do the cable crossing one row early on the sleeves for the first cable crossing after joining all the pieces. If you look closely and count rows, you'll see it, but I don't think it's very visible to the naked eye. Conceivably I could have crossed the cables on the arms on a WS row, but I didn't want to have to think that hard about it; it's much easier to cross all four cables in the yoke on the same RS row. There are some people I know who couldn't abide this particular design feature, but it's one I can live with.

The goal is to try to get this done this weekend, perhaps in between washing the last four loads of fleece in the basement. We're about to install a French drain system down there, so I'd like to get it washed and out of the way before it gets even dirtier. There's also some yarn to ply, so expect to see some bright colors on Sunday!