Sweaters in the Queue

Continuing with the theme idea, Tuesdays I’ve entitled In the Queue.  These are all projects I’ve wanted to do, but have never gotten around to doing, or perhaps at the time didn’t have the skills to complete. I have many, many, many of these. Some of them are other people’s designs, some of them are my designs but they all rest sort of tidily somewhere, awaiting my attention.  Today I have two sweaters for you that I’ve always wanted to crochet. Since I just began crocheting wearable items, these have waited until I could figure out the whole fitting thing a little bit better.

Floral Fantasy Pullover

The first one is the Floral Fantasy sweater I saw quite a while ago on the Lion Brand website when I was first looking at more complicated patterns. I really love the lace floral design, and I’m fond of the color. It looks lovely for winter.

This example was crocheted in a yarn (now discontinued) called Romance. I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway, because it’s a bulky mohair blend. I don’t care much about the fuzziness of the sweater, so I just needed to find a suitable bulky, same-color replacement.

I found replacement yarn in San Francisco in August (remember me in that yarn shop? That’s what I got there) that’s just this color. I love periwinkle. I think it will be a beautiful substitution. It’s hand-painted yarn, so the color is a bit varied, and it has great drape. I’d show it to you, but in this packed-up mess?  Who knows where it might be.

Boho Blocks Cardigan

The other sweater is the Boho Blocks Cardigan, originally published in Interweave Crochet, Fall 2006.  I guess I like things I’d describe as “updated hippie” like this. I’m mostly opposed to the term Boho (can we not spell out bohemian? Must we always reference SoHo?). I mean, it is made of conjoined grannysquares, right? But in a nice, non acrylic-fuzzy-blanket way.

I like the heavy-looking drape on this sweater. I think I’d stick to two colors, though. The difference between chunky afghan squares and nice drapey squares is the yarn choice.  The pattern uses a laceweight yarn of blended silk, which makes all the diference.

The yarn is  Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace yarn in mother lode, Douglas fir and camouflage. Since it’s a  wool yarn I won’t be able to use it, but I think another laceweight silk blend would work fine. Maybe a nice alpaca/silk like “Silky Alpaca Lace” from Classic Elite? I’ve heard alpaca is good for allergy-stricken folks. Maybe bamboo/silk? I don’t know yet. It’s not like I’m starting this project next week.

So those are the two projects that have been in my queue the longest. I do intend to make them one day. When there’s time. Which I have to find more of.

A Problem of Fit

In the evenings, I’ve been sitting in the fading light, watching Bones on my computer and working on my sweater. Which will be done long before October, and therefore long before I can wear it. But I ran into a problem that might make it take longer than expected.

The Fit Part

I like this project, but remember how I said I was going to try to make this sweater more fitted?  Yeah, well, that part is testing my patience with making clothing.

Fit is the reason I don’t make clothing. It’s hard. It’s not easy to wrestle with your particular body type and its oddities. And the truth is that ready-made clothing is wonderful, but it leads to most people making do with a fit that is less than desirable. In my case, I discovered just how it is that I’m making up for the fact that most clothing is meant for women who are rather less generously endowed than I in the bust region.

So what really I meant by “making the sweater more fitted” was in reality my code for trying to give myself an adequate amount of bust room. The blue sweater that I made last year was great, mostly, but there wasn’t enough bust room, and it made for a weird fit. I wanted to fix that this time around.

I figured that I simply needed to add some stitches toward the top of the front.  I even added them in a clever manner that spaced them out.  I figured it was better to give myself extra room where, anatomically, I seem to need it most.  The red triangles are my increases from just under the bust to the top.

So far so good.  I held it up to myself and behold!  The edges came just to where they should!  It worked!

Then I pinned the front to the back and discovered a problem I had not expected. When I add room specially for the bust, it means the rest of the garment doesn’t have to try to make up for a lack of room.  It turns out I am not actually an extra large. I’m more like a medium.  I am just used to whatever extra fabric I have on the back of the shirts I buy making up for the fabric the manufacturer didn’t put on the front of the shirt. So when I made the back piece my “usual” (and wrong!) size it was just plain too wide.  I’ve got nearly three inches of room I don’t need.

But … how in the world do I do that without re-crocheting the whole thing?  Can I?  ::sigh::

I have decided, for the moment, to persevere with what I have.  I spent too much time crocheting the back to just frog it right now.  If it’s too awful, I will re-crochet the back, although the prospect does not delight me.  One thing I know, though, is that I will crochet my clothing projects differently in the future.

Cute and warm

I am sitting here waiting for some medication to take effect.  I am sick again.  This hardly seems fair, and I am endeavoring to not be a grumpy Gus about it.  So I find myself with a half an hour until sleep, just enough time to post pictures of my dog. As promised, I have completed Audrey’s dog sweater.  See?

The sweater was originally a different project, a sweater for a cousin, begun way before this blog started.  It began to be a dog sweater when I messed up the stitch and ended up with a fairly wide bit of fabric I couldn’t use and wasn’t sure what else to do with it.  I discovered that the length of fabric fit around Audrey well.  She was then 11 pounds, which is a tad bit on the hefty side for a Yorkshire Terrier.  Now she’s about 9.2 pounds through cat-inspired exercise and illness, which means the sweater had to become a wrap sweater in order to fit.  I still need to shorten the wrap ties, but those ties make this one of the easiest-fitting sweaters I’ve ever wrestled onto a dog.

Honestly, dog clothing is on the silly side, and Audrey doesn’t like wearing it.  I mean, she’s a lapdog, but she’s still very much a dog‘s dog, if you know what I mean.  Nevertheless, I made this because Yorkies have fur issues – they don’t actually have fur, it’s hair, and they don’t have an undercoat. That’s good ’cause they don’t shed, but bad when it’s freezing out, because she takes a step out the door and starts shivering so much her paws skitter on the pavement.  So you can see that her getting deathly ill in January sorta made me think – hey, where’s that sweater!?

This one was designed to be loose in the right places, cover her tummy but leave her legs bare.  Audrey has this funny (really hysterical, actually) problem with her legs and feet – if they’re covered, she stops dead and refuses to move.  If you really want her to stay in place, put shoes on her.  She’ll stand there for hours on three legs.

As a last step, I am going to sew a harness right into the inside of this sweater, because separate harness + sweater = 15 minutes wrestling with dog.  That way I’ll just put this on and clip on her lead, and there will be less fuss for everyone, and a dog that doesn’t end up shivering pathetically!

Now I’m going to go collapse in bed.

P.S. So the Lion Wool (the royal blue in this sweater) … after about 5 minutes I had to get a hand covering.  It started to feel like I was rubbing my fingers with steel wool or an emergy board.  That can’t be good.  I guess this isn’t what it feels like to people who aren’t allergic?  What does it feel like?  I really don’t know.  Surely Lion Brand wouldn’t sell any if it felt like that to everyone.