Watermelon Sweater: Complete

Long overdue is this photograph of Anna in her Watermelon sweater:













July 5, 2006
Its hard to tell much about this project (you can get a closer look without leaving this page by right clicking on the photo and select "open link in new window") but the base fiber is a pima
cotton/wool (80/20) variegated (makes me think of watermelons--peach, green, pale yellow). The back is finished and I'm about one third finished with the front. It will be a short-sleeved, v-neck pullover for Anna Banana. I'm going to alternate the peach/green stripes with the variegated until the yoke which will be all peach. I'm not sure what I'll do with sleeves. Probably all variegated. Its based on a very basic pattern by Ann Norling that I personally find to be pretty boxy but in a fiber with good body it drapes well enough to conceal the strong shape. Haley's is finished and is gorgeous. If I can get her to put it on, I'll put up a photo. The yarn I'm using is Sierra Quattro which not only feels fabulous as you knit it but its also allegedly machine wash/dryable. Ha! And at only 9 bucks for 195 meters, I'm getting these sweaters done for under 30 bucks each.

July13, 2006
Anna's Sweater Is almost finished. I'm about to switch to peach for the neck shaping. I can't decide whether to do short- or three-quarter sleeves and what color (or combo) to use. Suggestions? The fabric of the sweater is fairly heavy so going to 3/4 sleeve would make it a late fall/most of winter garment but short sleeves would be strictly spring/fall. Decisions, decisions...



July 17, 2006
Anna's watermelon sweater is showing definite signs of near-completion: front and back both finished, the first sleeve over half done. I couldn't make up my mind about sleeve pattern so as it stands right now I'm going for the 3/4 length. I'm going to make two different ones: the one you see part of (green and peach with small tweed accents at cuff and break). The second is going to be largely the tweed with three or so stripes of peach and green at the upper arm. I'm hoping I'll like having mis-matched sleeves for this playful sweater, otherwise I'll pick which one I like best and make one more, use the other one for something for another little girl. The colors are photographing very hot, not sure why. To be sure, they're quite vivid but not quite this much. I'm *really* unhappy with the marks left in the fabric by the mid-row increases. They're a good reason to make a third sleeve since I'm not about to frog this one at this point. I guess I'll get lots of practice with the M1R technique since kfkb doesn't seem to work so well in this cotton.

July 18
Well, I cast off Anna's first sleeve. Between the mid-row increases looking crappy and it fitting more snugly than I'd like, I'm going to frog it and give it another go. Good news is that I really like the color layout.

July 22, 2006

I worked on Anna's sleeve yesterday; its about 1.5 inches from being finished; looks great. I did bar increases on the knit side and they look MUCH better and aren't any more difficult than the "easy" kind. Fab. Only bad news is that now I'm out of green yarn. I'm not sure what to do about that. I could rip out the test sleeve but that won't really give me enough now that I've increased the width of the sleeve. I'm thinking I'll do the second sleeve with peach/tweed and green stripes at cuff and break. But I'm not buying another skein of yarn for 6 inches of sleeve. If I'm a good girl today, I might get both finished and be able to make a start on my Krista tee or work on Cara's Baby Brights.

July 29, 2006 Friggin' Froggin'
Remember how I said I was nearly out of green yarn after the first sleeve? Well, turns out I had enough of it to do roughly 75% of what I wanted to do; that meant I had to rip out the test sleeve I had done previously to get about 8 inches of yarn to finish. Because I have no clue how to frog from the bottom up, I had work top down. As I didn't want to spend my time pulling out the peach yarn to get to the green, I cut across the tweed band and pulled out from there. I hate unravelling work. I just pressed through because I really do want to drop it with the finisher tomorrow. And guess what? As I was finishing up a row, I saw a twisted stitch about 6 back. So I pulled out and something funky happened and I had really screwed things up. So here are the sleeves as they look when I decided it was time to take a rest. I had to run a safety line about three rows down and do more frogging. Bleh. But I should finish this tonight with no problem.



Stitch-n-Bitch At Woolwinder's tomorrow the topic is going to be "learn to knit the other way"...eg, if you're a "wrapper" like me, you can learn the "right" way or Continental knitting which involves much more subtle movements and should speed up knitting. Not that I care to knit terribly fast but hey, if they're going to show me AND give me wine, I'm there. Anyway, you just can't say Continental to me without my envisioning this clip I was fortunate enough to find at YouTube.


Bethy and I were capable of spending days on end sitting around chatting as we knit and watched movies. I really miss those days together. It may be what I miss most, just the idle times, watching our families grow up...

Finished: 8/6/06

Anna's watermelon sleeves are finished and as soon as I block the pieces, they're off to the finisher. Isn't it cute? She'll be so squeezable in it...