Thursday, January 04, 2007

Miscellaneous, today

The Calcutta Cup sweater is currently 15” long. The pattern-sweater Alexander gave me to use as a model (with red wine spilled down its front) is 17” to the armpit. I must figure out today where in the stitch pattern I want it to end at the shoulder, and distribute the resulting knitting above and below the armpit.

Tamar, I am very grateful for the effort you put in to the solution of what might be called the Prince of Wales problem. I will try to find the vertically-striped pattern you mean in Sheila Macgregor’s book. And I am much taken with your idea of casting on the sleeve at the underarm. Am I capable of it?

My current inclination is to go ahead as planned. I can’t really imagine what it will look like, and I want to find out. The pattern will flow continuously, although the colours won’t. And as you say, I will have learned some valuable lessons which can be applied next time.

Meanwhile, I have been impressed by the recent posting of a Seamless Hybrid on the Zimmermania website. I love that neckline, and used it for Theo’s Striped Koigu, only you can’t really appreciate it from the front.

It sounds as if the Zimmermania knitter knit it as EZ gives it and then blocked the hell out of it. The result looks terrific. I always found that the shoulder puffed up dreadfully when I tried it that way. I made it lie smooth (on Meg’s actual suggestion) by considering stitch and row gauge, and doing an occasional k2tog to make them come out even.
On this sweater, as on the Fair Isles I used to knit in the 70's, I planned the sleeves to match the stripes on the body. I could do that with the Calcutta Cup -- abandon the body at the armpits, knit the sleeves, join all and proceed. It wouldn't be as originally intended, but it would avoid any actual break in the flow.

Whatever (as the young say, at least in novels). Since EZ is all percentages, I could knit a Seamless Hybrid for a little boy out of Koigu and Louet Gems Merino, and am rather keen to do so.

Technical

Google Analytics is terrific, as I said yesterday, but seems to claim for me only half the readership I used to have with Alexander’s hit counter. What a swiz.

I have a website of my own at the moment, although rather neglected of late, in some “free space” that comes with my old dial-up connection. I kept it on for 2006 in a superstitious fear that my connection with the world would disappear if I stopped paying. The time for paying the annual bill is fast approaching, and I am afraid it would be silly to go on. All the material is safely here on my desktop computer, reasonably well organised. Some of it, at least, I’d like to find another home for. Does anyone have any ideas? I don’t mind a modest monthly fee.

1 comment:

  1. Good morning, Jean.

    I've been mum about the Fair Isle because I have nothing useful to contribute. But as for a space to host your Web site, I can recommend Yahoo.

    I use them for my site, and have found the service to be very satisfactory and the price low. In addition, they make it very easy for you to register your own domain name, so your site could become (for example) jeanmiles.co.uk.

    I use their "small business" package. I believe they have a personal Web site package that's even less expensive.

    I will say about the sweater that however you work out the pattern, it's going to be a stunner.

    xoxo

    ReplyDelete