Sunday, March 28, 2010


Soul-warmer

Having got this far, I might as well show you the picture, hoping I’m not treading on any copyright toes.

It was the less-than-youthful model that caught the eye. Those full sleeves, gathered in to the wrist, make it look awfully comfortable and comforting. Many/most shrugs are sort of skimpy.

Shandy, what do you think? Do your observations about the shape still apply? [Everybody should now go look at Shandy’s Celtic throw. It’s absolutely amazing.]

Maybe you’re right, Tamar, and I ought to go back to the drawing board and start working out a jacket for myself. Grannypurple, thank you for the observation that the Sock Yarn sweater uses a heavier sock yarn than I was thinking of – meaning that I can’t just plug in Koigu. I should have noticed that.

The swing jacket in VK – Winter 2007-8, No. 19 – does have a schematic. At least that’s something to start from. It’s knit side-to-side, with swing produced by short-row wedges inserted both in the body and the sleeves. The yarn is worsted, 4 sts to the inch, totally non-Koigu. One would have to start from scratch, and think. I do hate thinking.

But, as I said yesterday, there’s time. I’ve started the second tier of lace for the jabot, and after a couple of false starts which slowed things down a bit, am getting on nicely.

The new VK, amongst a number of nice things, has got a scarf, no. 24, which would be splendid in Koigu and which makes me want to fling everything aside and cast on. It’s been a while since any pattern in any magazine made me feel like that.

They’ve also got a nice plug for KnitCamp, which goes some way – but not all the way – towards reassuring me. They say that 30% of the classes filled up right away, when registration opened in January. That doesn’t surprise me. But what has happened since? I did the sum this morning – if all the Ravelry members of the KnitCamp group go to a class at every session, everything’s fine. But they won’t. Many, indeed, will only go to the Ravelry Day on the Saturday, which can be expected to be a huge success like last year’s one.

It sort of sounds as if one woman is organising the whole thing – bigger by a good deal than a Knitter’s magazine summer camp.

I can but worry and watch. I need to know whether I am going to be able to park – parking is apparently limited on the Stirling campus. Trivial, but the sort of detail that needs to be covered. Maybe they should call in Theo, whose speciality is organising and whose attention to detail is second-to-none.

VK also has a nice plug for Judy Sumner’s Japanese-pattern sock book. I feel as pleased as if I had written it myself.

3 comments:

  1. I think parking is unrestricted on the Stirling campus during the holidays but I'll double check with Hubby. (He is a lecturer there.)
    I am waiting to get my own summer holidays straightened out before I book classes. There are a couple of wobbly variables at the moment.

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  2. Thankyou for you comment on my throw. I really value your opinion. I hope I have made clear how Alice Starmore is the designer of all the cables.
    Interesting picture of the Soulwarmer. It is quite a bit fuller in the sleeve than the one I knit, and will therefore be wider down the back. Since it has no shoulders, it will tend to slip down, as a stole does. The one I knit looked decidedly odd from the back , as not only did it look like a scarf, but it had odd loose bulges just above where the sleeve seam finished. On my back, older and fuller, this did not look good.

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  3. I have always avoided shrugs. One of the reasons for this is that all the designs seem either to be skimpy or have immense sleeves in order to have a back of reasonable length.
    Then I realised that this did not have to be so and I made one for someone else but increased the sleeve portion from the cuff until I reached the width that was needed for the back. It looks tidier to me and the wearer likes it that way.

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