New Threads TUESDAY!
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the ending of Summer Sweater…

Pattern: Chic Knits Basic Chic V-Neck Cardi
Designer: Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn: Plymouth TUSCON

DONE! Just in time for my road trip to Northern Michigan, a aran-weight cotton blend cardi. I’ll be living in T-shirts & jeans (shirts in wheat, grey, teal, kelly & white; 1 Max Studio Shirred Bodice Dress, silver flip-flops, black slip-on wedgies).

The 5-Day forecast for where I’m going says one hot day (today) then cooling temps coming in, right down to 45 degrees at night later on in the week. My people say that’s good Sleeping Weather, but I say it’s definitive Sweater Weather!

I’m taking this BCVN, my cotton Cerisara, and a little wool one too just to be sure.

Even though I love traveling, I loathe packing!

Always, I want to take about 5 pairs of shoes, too many dresses, magazines and other entertainment because I am from the City. I am going to the Country. What the heck do they do out there to pass the time?

(Which is, of course, why I’m going: to hopefully re-boot the brain cells and do nothing.)

But, I know, the first 48 hours, I will be going through Multi-Tasking Withdrawal, and just in case, it’s good to have some familiar distractions until my head stops spinning, metro-style.

Consider: just to get through a day in Chicago, one must possess a set of Sound Filters that weed out sirens, dogs, neighbors, lawn mowers, power saws, horns, early-am drunk singing, marital discord, planes, trains, and automobiles.

This thick-head now travels to a place where one can almost hear the butterfly flit through the breeze, a place where sunshine might be the only sound…

It’s a different kind of lag, a savoir-faire born of taking one’s time because there Is No Hurry.

I can hardly wait.

  Monday Morning Mirth  

Ah, yes, ladies and gentlemen, ’tis the season of the Red Carpet!

And wherever there’s a chance to Be Seen, there will be those of the celebrity persuasion that grab the spotlight and flare in the glare!

WITNESS: January Jones (wearing Versace) in electric blue, mit cones…

Thumbs up? Thumbs down, gentle reader?

Getting ready for a trip out of town can sometimes be a frenzied task, especially when it includes Knitting Projects To-Go.

I’m trying to wrap up and prepare a couple of goodies to take up north to Michigan. Here’s my Twist cardi ready to be seamed, then hooded. I’m hoping to do all the seaming and buttonbands once I land in the country (visualizing now sitting on the porch swing, ribbing…)

I set it out flat like this so we could see a wonderful phenom characteristic of piece knitting.

Here you can see that the side edges and armhole edges of the Front pieces mimic the Back.

How do they correspond? Taking a look you can see:

The Right Front has the same shaping as the Left Back Edge.

The Left Front has the same shaping as the Right Back Edge.

From the Chic Knits Archive:

How to continue and match the pieces of a sweater? Like many of you, I make a working copy of the pattern then do Mark-Up. In the margins, I keep track of rows in various places (length of ribbing, length to underarm, length to shoulder, total length, etc) as reference points for the entire sweater.

If you notice, sweaters knit in pieces already have this functionality built in. They usually start you out with the Back Piece first. Here you will find the Rosetta Stone for the Fronts. Many times, knitters email me with shaping questions about cardigan construction and I always refer them back to the Back.

Now, this requires a slight leap of imagination, because the Back, as is, is the Mirror Image of the other pieces and not the doppelganger…

All of the shaping information one needs to make the Body and Armhole areas of the Fronts are already accomplished on the Back.

So, if a pattern gives instructions as: “Continue as for Left Front, reversing all shaping. Substitute SSK for K2TOG and vice versa as needed, using Back piece for reference, as needed”

Spread the Back piece out and read it like a map! :)