stripes go round

so last weekend i was really really - like manically - busy and somehow the busy-ness only pushed me to productively fill up every last second of my day with... something good. when i was not outside sweating to death and hauling construction debris from the side of my house up and into a dumpster, i was inside slurping ice water and finishing old knitted projects. admittedly, i worked a lot of wood splinters and dry wall dust into those projects - but i needed to knit them! there was no time for washing my hands and turning on some calming music, etc... it was work work work now sit down and knit knit knit now back to work work work. and it was great. i finished 3 big projects - 3!! i haven't had a chance to get a good photo of this one on me yet, but allow me to present the stripes go round sweater from interweave knits summer '04:

i know you can't see it all, but at least you can see the stripes and the yoke and the neckline and the cute little sleeves... actually, the rest of the sweater is pretty boring in comparison. just imagine the stripes going down (no waist shaping) and just kind of draping right below my waist. i increased the length a bit before adding the sleeves so the bottom of the sweater hits an inch or so below the top of my jeans - it's a good length.

all these stripes though meant a sweater with some pretty ugly guts:

lots of ends to weave in. i started by joining the new color each time i got to a color change round but in the end opted to just carry the yarn up the side, as you see here. MUCH better...

i tried my hardest but the armpit seams also came out a little ugly:

should i have grafted those stitches with green instead of the gold-colored yarn? maybe... at least i can say there aren't any holes where the grafted parts meet the rest of the sweater. i've had that problem in the past (child's placket neck sweater) and i thought it was super ugg.

anyway, i recommend this sweater. simple construction, easy to wear, nice and cool, pretty cute, too. i love the open, scooped neckline a lot. here are the details:

yarn: elsebeth lavold hempathy (hemp / cotton / modal); 6 balls (3 green; 2 gold; 1 pink)
needles: size 3 inox circs and long bamboo circ for sleeves done w/ magic loop
pattern: IK knits summer '04
mods: none - except lengthening the body by about an inch...

well, back to work... oh, and check out the results of the home-work i was talking about!

before:

and after:

~r

p.s. that pile re-grew itself since i took that last shot because the demolition continues!

posted by rockbridge @ 8:34 AM