Additions and Errata

As promised here is a picture of the newly completed Beach Hat! The brim is very floppy, but the pattern has worked out well and the linen yarn is fantastic. Now, I just need another beach holiday to wear it!

In between my next projects, I’ve also decided to lengthen the blue cable jumper. Because the cables pull the ribs in, the jumper comes up shorter than the yellow version with the plain ribs. As most of my trousers finish fairly low on my hips this does leave a bit of a gap. The tricky bit is going to be matching in the cable!

As you can see from the cable chart below, the pattern begins with two plain rows, with row 2 a repeat of row 10, this be the row that is grafted so I need to end my extension at row nine and then count back.

I’ll also need to unpick the current row 1 so that the pattern isn’t elongated. This means that the back extension piece will need to be 1 row shorter than the front so that the two are same total length when grafted.

So the plan is as follows:

Back: knit 16 rows of 112 stitches decreasing 2 stitches at either end on row 16.  The extra two stitches won’t alter the shape too much, but will hopefully add a little extra width so the jumper isn’t stretching too much over my hips (causing it to ride up).

Front: Knit 17 rows of 113 in patt, decreasing 2 stitches at either end on row 16. The front has an extra stitch in order to centralise the cable pattern.

To graft back: Unpick the cast on row securing row 1 stitches on spare yarn. Using a tapestry needle use an invisible graft to join the two pieces.

To graft front: Unpick the cast on row and row 1 securing row 2 stitches on spare yarn This will cancel out the extra plain row at the start of the cable pattern. Using tapestry needle use an invisible graft to join the two pieces.

Use mattress stitch to join the side seams.

Getting Shirty

Today I've been waiting in for the new washing machine to arrive and taken the opportunity to start work on the first of two blue polycotton shirts. I've been thinking about these shirts since the article on the come-back of the silk shirts in January Vogue.  I started day dreaming in silk, but then acknowledged that the reality of washing, wearing and inevitable staining means that it would spend 98% of its life in the laundry basket waiting to be handwashed. My mum suggested polycotton, leant me her Simplicity - Design a Blouse pattern (9210, now sadly discontinued) and pointed me in the direction of Fabrix in Lancaster.

I wanted to include lace in my design, and ran through a series of options in my sketchbook.  I finally settled on a pale blue lace collar and cuffs overlaid on the dark blue cotton. For the second shirt which is a paler blue I'm also going to overlay a lace back. Amazingly the pattern provides instructions for adding lace overlays to the collar and cuffs, unfortunately its still a sewing pattern and therefore prefers to provide rather vague instructions in two sentences or less. Initially everything went quite well.

Then I spent FOUR HOURS sewing the collar & facing...and now I'm not sure that it looks how I wanted. I have enough materials to undo it all, start again and make a longer collar that goes all the way to the edge of the neckline, and now that I know how it works it shouldn't take four hours to do it again...So I'm having a think about it for a few days. Certainly until I've recovered my patience. In the meantime I'll start on the sleeves, but not today.