FO Friday - Green Ink Flare

Yes, two FOs in a week! First the Lombard Street Socks, and now Ink Flare. 

Ink Flare, after being a really quick and straight-forward knit, actually caused quite a bit of high drama at the end. I finished the body and the sleeves very quickly - all in all it can't have taken much more than a week - and I was equally quick to assemble the jumper and sew the sleeves on. I then grabbed my crochet hook and set to crocheting the hem, and that's when all the trouble started.

I'd decided to forego the garter hems at the sleeves. The plan was to hem with a crochet chain instead.. Having done it I realised that the end result was... odd-looking. The yarn is so stretchy that the crochet border, even when done very loosely, kind of drew the knitted fabric together in a way that didn't suit the jumper at all. 

So the crochet border was unpicked. Now the sleeves rolled up slightly - much better.

I then went on to crochet the neckline. This turned out to be much more of a problem than the sleeves. Even without the crochet border I'd already had the suspicion that perhaps the neckline is too high / narrow for this type of jumper. I don't mean that there is a flaw with the pattern - it worked just fine for my purple Ink Flare for example - but that for this type of yarn, and this type of open, airy fabric, the neckline needs to be particularly open and slouchy to pull the project together. See, even while I got the correct gauge, the open fabric stretches quite a bit and makes this a very casual knit, wide in the body and the sleeves, and the neckline, I think, needs to reflect that slouchy look. As it was, the neck looked like the only fitted thing on the jumper, making the whole lot appear like it was oversized with only the neckline done to the correct sizing - not a great look! 

So I unpicked the crochet, then tried it on again. While this was better, the neck was still too tight. This is where it got messy. Being the lazy thing I am, I didn't then, like a good girl, decided to de-assemble the jumper to carefully unpick the tops of all the pieces. Nooooo, not me! Instead I decided to do it while it was all still hanging together. 

Yeah.

You can imagine how that went... 

It didn't help that a) the yarn had sort of tangled and didn't particularly wanted to be ripped (it is mohair, after all) and b) that I had already sewn some of the ends in, meaning that I had to unpick as a I went along... 

Great idea, that was... 

I undid what I think was about three rows, then crocheted that border on again, using the leftover yarn from the unpicking (that was another bad choice because there was never enough of it so I had several joins). I cast off, then tried it on. 

Nope, the cast-off, despite  being very loose, was still too tight and bunched the fabric up. More ripping, followed by another, ultra-loose cast-off. Then I crocheted a very very loose crochet chain to finish the now rather messy-looking neckline off more neatly. Tried it on again.

Nope, still not right - the crochet border, once again, pulled the fabric together in a way that made it bunch up. This was quite amazing to me because you can't imagine how loosely I did the crochet border - the loops were HUGE!

So the crochet was ripped once again. Assessing the situation I then decided that I was going to have to go with the flow and just leave that slightly unsightly unfinished border as it was, because at least it meant that the neckline sizing was right. 

I tidied up the sewing where the sleeves attach to the body of the jumper - this looked pretty messy by now but not much I could do about it, and then stuck the whole project in the wash in the hope of levelling out the neckline a little by blocking it. 

Some blocking was required, and it's still not perfect, but hey, the rolling hems do help to hide the unsightly bits!! 

But you know what? I love it.

It's been some journey, this last bit of knitting Ink Flare, but I love the end result. Yes, to the discerning knitter the problems around the neckline and the messy sewing which resulted from the repeated ripping are fairly obvious, but the jumper is cuddly and so so soft, and I do actually quite like how it fits now. The boys like it too - boy #2 has already announced that he wants me to knit a jumper for him now. I'm only too happy to oblige! :) 

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Freshly Finished Friday

A Year of Projects

Fiber Arts Friday

Creative Friday

WIP Wednesday - Ink Flare

I'm still recovering from my tonsillectomy on Friday, so things have been pretty slow around here. I think I had wildly unrealistic expectations for my recovery time... It really amazes me how groggy I still feel, five days on from the op. Part of it, I suspect, is that sleep is so interrupted, because one of the few things that really help with the pain is drinking lots of cold water. Well, when you sleep you are obviously not drinking, and when you are not drinking your throat really dries up and, well, OUCH! 

But enough of me whinging. I'm feeling a little better today, so I've decided to tackle the disaster zone that the house has become over the past few days, and I've also had a chance to take a few pictures of Ink Flare as she looks right now. 

The body is done, and so is sleeve #1. I'm about 1/3rd into sleeve #2 right now. I've not done as much knitting as I thought I would over the past week because even knitting often seemed to energetic, lol, but there has been some progress and considering how quickly this project is knitting up I think it might be possible to complete it over the coming week or so. 

As for reading, I've been indulging in a bit of pop lit. I have another book I want to start, but with my head so fuzzy I didn't quite feel up to it. So I've been reading Deborah Harkness's All Souls trilogy (A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, The Book of Life). I'm currently on book three.

I'd heard a lot of good things about this trilogy, and it certainly makes quite good sick-bed reading, but honestly? I'm not entirely sold on these books. I enjoy the historical aspect of them, and the detective work of historical research, which feed into my own interest in history and own compulsion to research absolutely everything. It also helps that the author is a historian and academic, and therefore knows what she is talking about in that area. 

What I haven't particularly been able to get behind is the main romance. Since it's pretty much at the centre of the book this is obviously a bit of a problem... It's not only that the trope (a vampire / witch love story) is kind of exhausted, but that I find the main characters individually, and their relationship with each other, a bit annoying and tiresome. The rhetoric is so over-romantic at the same time labouring the point of how hard they have to work at making it work, how independent they really are, how much they adore each other, blablabla. It's hard to explain but even while it's trying to present a realistic portrayal of a new relationship it seems like a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the author, with the heroine an independent modern woman who wins the (flawed) dark, brooding male hero, and while everyone is initially skeptical and hostile towards her she manages to win them all round because she is so amazing... Sorry, I'm exaggerating, but, well, I'm just not feeling it, you know? I always get the sense that I'm being  told how to feel, how amazing these characters are, how amazing this relationship is, while what I'm seeing is something quite different. I'm not only unconvinced because I just can't feel it but also more than a little put off by how simplistic it all seems, and by the unhealthy obsessive and stifling nature of the dynamic of the relationship. I don't know, it's probably just me - it's not the first time I seem to be swimming against the tide of the general popularity of a book. :/

Shared with:

A Year of Projects

Yarn Along

Keep Calm, Craft On

Yarn Along Wednesday

With all the Christmas business this is my first Wednesday update in a while. I do have things to show for though, both WIPs and FOs. I won't dwell on the latter here, as I'm planning a more extensive FO Friday 'reveal'. ;)

In addition to my usual A Year of Projects update and Keep Calm, Craft On, I'm also joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along this week and I thought I'd for once do the reading-and-knitting update that Yarn Along really is about. I actually read a lot, but I rarely remember to blog about it. 

This Christmas I got a little book of poems on motherhood from my brother in law. It's Carolyn Jess-Cooke's BOOM!, and I'd been hankering after this book for a while now so I'm thrilled to finally get my hands on it. The poems are lovely - in turn funny and touching and always so very recognisable in the emotions that they express. Truly beautiful. 

I'm also dipping in and out of sixteenbynine, which is the pilot issue of a new journal on television. It's interesting, but not having read much of it yet, right now I'm probably most in love with the cover design, which I desperately covet as a poster to put in my office! ;)  

As for knitting, with various projects close to completion I've embarked on another Ink Flare. I fancied making another one ever since I knitted one with my unruly purple wool last summer, and I had this perfect green hand-dyed mohair yarn from Fleece Artist lying around here. I'm making this one in the round to avoid all that sewing and on 6 mm needles this knits up so fast. After knitting both Tea Leaves and the Garter Yoke cardi on 4.5 mm needles I'd forgotten how quickly a project can grow on big needles. I've already completed the body and have just started the first sleeve.  Judging from prior performance with sleeve knitting this will probably be the point where progress slows right down, but it's a lovely yarn to work with and I really REALLY want to wear this jumper soon, so I'm hoping this will keep my motivated. The knitted fabric is loose and airy, which is what I'd intended, and the colour variations give it some texture and I'm so looking forward to seeing it finished!

As for my other projects, the Scheepjes Mystery blanket is truly finished now. Here is a little peak before the bigger post:

The Garter Yoke cardi is also finished, at least the knitting part. I've ordered some buttons for it that will hopefully arrive soon. 

There is some progress on my never-ending sock, but not enough to warrant a photoshoot. Who wants to see the same sock every week anyway if there isn't any vast difference?!