Winter Obsession

Norah Gaughan is a genius. I am as obsessed with this sweater as Mardel over at Purls and Murmers. I had planned to make a shoulder wrap with a ring of pentagons ever since I finished Plum Blossom aka the Swirled Pentagon Sweater from Knitting Nature. I was going to make it in 1x1 rib again until I saw this picture on Mardel's blog. I must make this right this minute.




Well, I don't subscribe to Vogue Knitting and will have to wait until the issue hits the newsstands tomorrow. But that didn't stop me from poring over the pictures over at the VK magazine website and starting a swatch.

Before I get going on the capecho, I must finish the Icelandic yoke sweater. I am sooo close. I had finished 2/3 of the left sleeve last night before I tried it on. Oops, I didn't like the how drastically I had reduced the sleeve stitches in the beginning. (In order to reduce 82 sts to 48 sts, I had originally planned to make matched decreases every 4th row 10 times and then every 8th row 7 more times.) I frogged it back to the armpit and will try it again with decreases every 6th row until I get a width I like. At tonight's quilt group, I will be knitting instead of quilting.

The 17" sleeve length (including ribbing) recommended by The Best of Lopi matches my pattern sweater exactly. Because I am using a finer yarn than the pattern called for, I added a few rows of plain purple to the pattern chart to increase the yoke depth. The 10 shortrows for neckline shaping also helped.

Here's what the sweater looks like now. My sister was right, the mild corrugation of the yoke disappeared with gentle steam blocking. I used 108 stitches of 2x2 rib for the neck. I probably could have used a bit less.

That's all folks.