Cape Cod sweater
Recipient: MIL
Designer: Alice Starmore
Pattern: Cape Cod
Source: Fisherman's Sweaters: Twenty Exclusive Knitwear Designs for All Generations
Due: December 25, 2005
Colours: Lilac
Yarn: 60% cotton 40% linen, fingerweight quadrupled
Completed status: Given Christmas, 2005
Notes: Cropped the sweater by one pattern repeat so it came to slightly above the hips.
Pictures:
front
back
detail of sleeve
me modelling the sweater, seen from the front
me modelling the sweater, seen from the back
me modelling the sweater, seen from the side to show off the underarm gusset
Other Cape Cods:
by Flor
by Sandrine
by Valerie - full sweater and details
at www.strickmoden.de
- 2005-Dec-26
- This was finished on the commute home on Friday afernoon. I also fixed the laddering problem on the left cuff:
It's not perfect, but it's scads better.
I recently discovered (and you may or may not be able to tell from the above photo) that the 'laddering' problems I'm having whenever I do in-the-round knitting with the Magic Loop technique or double-pointed needles are actually due to the fact that I pull too tightly in an effort to avoid laddering (oh, the irony). So I've started being more relaxed about how I start off the stitches on a new needle, and am noticing a big difference. Sadly, I didn't make this discovery in time to knit the Cape Cod sleeves perfectly, but the number of people who will notice are extremely few.
Upshot: my MIL loves it. Really, really loves it. You know when someone says, "Oh, Kathleen!!!" several times that it's a hit.
Yay!
- 2005-Dec-23
- Christmas sweater for MIL
- The knitting component of the sweater is finished (11pm last night). Yes, there was enough yarn. This is how much I had leftover, smiley face mug has been included for scale:
Tons. I'm not even sure why I was worried. But I'm pretty annoyed with myself about it because when I accepted the idea that I might be making a short-sleeved sweater, I started slacking off on The Schedule, which is why there has been some frantic catch-up knitting over the past several days.
I am now working on weaving in a whole bunch of @#($*&@&!!! ends:
This is the sweater inside-out. I was trying to demonstrate the multitude of ends for you, but the picture quality doesn't really capture the hopelessness of it all. Trust me, there are a lot.
Ends aside, I think the sweater looks good enough that I don't really have to block it, which is good, because I'm not sure at this point that it would dry in time. However, I might do the damp towel thing.
Two days ago when I finished the first sleeve, I tried the sweater on just to see how it looked on a human being.
IT. IS. AWESOME.
This may be the most incredible thing I have ever knitted. I love the sweater. I adore it. It's completely the wrong colour for me and a little big, yet I have still had a few moments of weakness where I contemplated braving The Masses and going to a mall to get a last-minute gift for MIL just so I could keep the sweater all for myself. And that was just with one completed sleeve. Last night I tried it on again when the knitting was done and loved it even more. When the ends are all woven in I will take pictures, and I will get DH to take pictures with me in the sweater, and you will see what I am talking about. GORGEOUS. All hail the Starmore.
There is just one problem. On the left cuff, right at the top where it's really obvious and MIL will see it whenever she checks her watch, is some really nasty laddering that occurred because I was panicked and not being careful while knitting in the round - you can also see where, about three-quarters into it, I realised that I was screwing up and started doing it right. I could kick myself. In shame I offer the visual proof of my poor knitting:
Sorry, Fran. :(
- 2005-Dec-21
- This project is now the be-all-and-end-all of my knitting life. I have to finish it by tomorrow night so that it can block and dry on Friday so that it will be ready to be wrapped and brought to my MIL's on Saturday. As of this morning, sleeve #2 looked like this:
and I had this much yarn left:
(spool of thread included as a size reference)
Right now I have about 160 rows left to go - 105 on sleeve #1 and about 55 on sleeve #2.
So! The two big questions are:
- Do I have enough yarn to complete both sleeves?
- Will I be able to finish the sweater in time?
The answer to each of these questions is: I have no freakin' idea.
This should be fun.
- 2005-Dec-18
- I have reached the halfway point of sleeve #2, which means I am about 40 rows away from being finished, if I stay with the short-sleeved version. However, I'm now looking at the amount of yarn I used up in the first half of sleeve #2, and the amount of yarn I have left, and I'm wondering...maybe I have enough for full-length sleeves after all? If so, it would be both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because...well, I'd be making the sweater I wanted to make in the first place. Terrible because...well, I'm kind of a week behind. I'd have to do two half-sleeves in one week in order to have the sweater done by the morning of the 24th (when we leave for my MIL's). So. All this *#$(*@&!!! planning and once again, I may be screwed.
- 2005-Dec-15
- A tiny bit more has been done on sleeve #2. I'm finding it difficult to knit throughout my entire commute these days because the portion of the commute spent in the car with DH and DD now tends to be spent playing with DD. This is an extremely personally rewarding use of my time, but as Christmas knitting goes it's very stress-inducing.
- 2005-Dec-13
- What with all the other projects I'm trying to get ahead on, progress on this has slowed a bit. However, it's still coming along:
- 2005-Dec-11
- My DH is entirely unhelpful. I revealed my yarn shortage concerns to him, and my solution for coping with it (making a short-sleeved sweater instead of a long-sleeved one), and asked whether he thought his mother would wear a short-sleeved sweater.
"Maybe," he replied, with just the right amount of pessimism and wishy-washy-ness in his tone to make me want to kill him.
On the plus side, the second sleeve is coming along nicely.
- 2005-Dec-6
- The niggling worry that I might run out of yarn is rapidly escalating into full-scale paranoia. This is why:
There really isn't that much left on the cone and I'm not even done the first sleeve. This was a unique yarn purchase and there is no way I can get more, ever. I think I'm screwed.
However, as I was moaning about this problem to a co-worker at lunch, it occurred to me that I could make a short-sleeved sweater instead of a long-sleeved one. After all, the yarn for this project is a cotton/linen blend...a short-sleeved wool sweater would make no sense whatsoever, but a short-sleeved cotton/linen sweater would work. And so, here is my plan. In about five rows, I will come to the end of the current texture stripe that I'm working on for the first sleeve. At that point, I will place the sleeve stitches on waste yarn, and begin the second sleeve. If I hit the same point of the second sleeve and have very little yarn left, I will cast off artfully on both sleeves and be done. However, if I hit the same point of the second sleeve and there's lots of yarn left, I will forge ahead on both sleeves (although not simultaneously, obviously) and try to do the full sweater.
This is a good plan. It is a smart plan. It is a workable plan. Except for one thing...
I can't remember ever seeing my MIL wear short sleeves. What if she hates short sleeves? What if I've wasted hours and hours of knitting and untangling labour making her something beautiful that she will never wear?
I could still be sooo screwed. Stay tuned...it could be entertaining. (If you're not me, that is.)
- 2005-Dec-5
- Still going well. I think this will be the project I take to the book launch - an entire evening of working on it will probably up my odds of finishing the first sleeve by the end of this week like I'm supposed to.
- 2005-Dec-2
- Last week, as The Schedule said I should, I finished the front yoke, joined the shoulders, knitted the neck gussets (the patterned neck gussets, mind you - so freakin' cool), and completed the neck. Behold:
shoulder seam and neck gusset
neckline
Not only did it all turn out really well, but I finished it before the end of Sunday, and was able to start on sleeve #1 earlier than scheduled.
This morning I hit the halfway point of sleeve #1. (I thought I'd hit the halfway point last night, and crowed triumphantly to DH about this achievement, but upon a recount of the stitches this morning I discovered that unfortunately I had jumped the gun with my celebration.) Check it out:
completed (patterned) underarm gusset
sleeve #1 so far
It is only Friday and by lunchtime today I'd already finished The Schedule's dictates for this project for this week. It's going quite well. So well, in fact, that forgetting the pattern at home this morning didn't even slow me down...I had enough of it memorized that I was able to work on it during the commute. Once at work, I phoned DH and got him to dictate the pattern details I would need for the rest of the day until I got back home to my pattern again.
(As an aside, I must say that teaching one's spouse to knit makes this kind of thing sooo much easier. The dear man was able to comprehensively describe the chart instructions, and work through the myriad of abbreviations so that he could read the important bits to me quickly and clearly.)
As it all begins to really come together, I am constantly being struck by what a triumph of mathematical precision this pattern is. I love it.
Okay, I am starting to get a niggling worry about running out of yarn, but at this point I'm dismissing the feeling as rampant paranoia. There's still plenty left on the cone.
- 2005-Nov-23
- Tonight I finished off the left neck shaping and started the right neck shaping. I've also pulled my 2.25mm circular out of my Hillhead project (replacing it with something else, of course) so that I have it at the ready once it's time to join the shoulders. Soon! Soon!
- 2005-Nov-22
- Oh yeah, I did some work on this too. :) Neck shaping has begun.
- 2005-Nov-21
- It grows:
I'm just six rows away from starting the neck shaping, which means sometime tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about this. Because the neckline scoops lower in the front than in the back, the front yoke will not take nearly as long as the back yoke. And that means that I should be able to finish not only the front yoke by the end of the week, but also the joining of the shoulder seams and the neckband. I live in hope.
- 2005-Nov-20
- Yesterday I hit the halfway point of the front yoke. This is good. But what is better is that I rewound the skein that was giving me so much tangling trouble. The odd thing is that I wound it into a ball. Yes, a real live, old-fashioned, cats-can't-resist-it, bounces-around-as-you-pull-from it ball of yarn. It turns out that this is the best method (that I've found so far) to prevent tangling on this
#@*$&@! delicate yarn. Who knew. Things are moving much more quickly now.
- 2005-Nov-16
- Things are no longer going so well. One of the skeins is tangled pretty badly and I'm currently occupied in rewinding the whole thing from the free end. It sucks big-time.
- 2005-Nov-15
- No pictures today. Although I'm making excellent progress, the front still hasn't reached a point where you'd really notice the difference visually from the last picture. But at the rate I'm going, it won't be long.
- 2005-Nov-13
- This week's target goal is FINISHED, as of this morning - I'm done with the back. Even better news, I'm already several rows into next week's goal of finishing most of the front:
- 2005-Nov-10
- I am on fire, I tell ya. Fire. There are 100 rows in the back yoke of this sweater. I want to have the back yoke finished by Sunday night. At the moment there are 90 rows in the back yoke. I am so ahead of schedule - I'm almost giddy with the excitement of it all. Here is what 90 back yoke rows look like:
Last night at the SnB, Megan (the owner of Lettuce Knit) looked at all the skeins on the table that I was working from, and said, "I can't believe that doesn't tangle!" I assured her emphatically that it does. It so really, really does. It's just that it tends to tangle more while I'm standing up on the train, when it would be horrendously difficult to untangle anything, and far less when I'm seated and still with a nice table in front of me so that untangling would not be so onerous. (Murphy wins again.)
- 2005-Nov-7
- Last week's goal was to finish half of the back by Sunday night, and amazingly, I almost pulled it off. I expect to reach the halfway point before the end of the day. This means I am definitely catching up to The Schedule. This week's goal is to complete the back, and if I keep going at about the same pace as I've been doing recently, I'll make it with room to spare. Hoo freakin' ray.
- 2005-Nov-4
- This is really shaping up (pun sort of intended). I've divided for the armscyes (last week's goal) and am now working on the back yoke (this week's goal):
This is such a terrific pattern. I'm still four days behind schedule, but then again, last week I was five days behind schedule, so there is still a faint glimmer of hope. I have Remembrance Day off next week, so I will probably use that to try and catch up.
- 2005-Nov-1
- Coming along - although I've been hit by a few pretty bad tangles lately. However, the division for the yokes draws ever nearer and the design on the underarm gusset is developing very nicely indeed. I like.
- 2005-Oct-31
- Slowly catching up to The Schedule:
- 2005-Oct-28
- Tiny perfect underarm gusset:
Notice those few purl stitches in the gusset? That is the beginning of the texture pattern in the gusset! I'm so excited!!! Plus, see that shell motif at the left? That is the fewer-than-two-rows-away-from-being-completed fourth pattern motif. Oh, happy day.
- 2005-Oct-26
- Good work forging ahead on this yesterday...but I fell down again today thanks to many tangles (insert swearing here). However, the very cool part is that I have started the underarm gussets. The patterned underarm gussets. I'm so totally jazzed about doing patterned underarm gussets. (For the moment, I'm ignoring the fact that the gusset pattern doesn't start until about ten rows in - thinking about that would reduce my jazzedness.) This will shortly be picture-worthy again.
- 2005-Oct-24
- Woefully behind schedule. I'm still working on the fourth pattern motif, even though The Schedule dictates that I should be starting the fifth pattern motif today. Ah, well. I'll try to concentrate on this project this week and see how I do.
- 2005-Oct-22
- I started back in on this a little bit tonight, but I've still just barely started pattern motif #4.
- 2005-Oct-19
- Got a few more rows done on this today. I haven't reached my centimetre quota for the day yet, but I have other knitting priorities to attend to.
- 2005-Oct-18
- Coming along nicely:
Just eight more rows and the third pattern motif will be done - which means I'll be back on track with The Schedule.
- 2005-Oct-16
- In my last blog entry I forgot to mention anything about how I had started back on this project after many months of neglect. But it's true - I'm back to concentrating on this so that it can be finished in time for Christmas. In order to succeed at this, I must accomplish about a centimetre a day while I'm working on the body. This is very tough to do - not only are there are a lot of stitches per round, but the fact that I'm combining four strands (of what is essentially just thread) as I go generates further complications: slower knitting to make sure I knit through all four strands in each stitch; gentle coaxing of more yarn out of the skeins instead of rapid yanking; and fairly frequent breaks to do some untangling.
This week I failed miserably in my centimetre-a-day goal, but I did catch up a tiny bit yesterday on the two-hour drive to the SCA event. I'm now over one-third done pattern motif #3. I'll be concentrating a lot on this project during my 'knitting vacation' this week to give myself a chance to catch up.
- 2005-Oct-14
- I have caught up to The Schedule! Two pattern motifs are done and I'm working on the third. Unfortunately I am nowhere near finished the third motif, which The Schedule wants me to do by the end of Sunday. But for now, at least, I can say that I'm on track. Pictures will come when there is more visible progress compared to the last time I posted a picture.
- 2005-Apr-7
- Coming along nicely! I'm quite close to finishing pattern repeat #2.
- 2005-Apr-6
- Coming along very nicely indeed. I'm three-quarters into pattern repeat #2.
- 2005-Apr-5
- I think I will be taking another photo of this soon. I am making excellent headway on pattern repeat #2. The yarn is also flowing much more freely. I have discovered that although I can't stop the yarn from hanging up on itself, if I pull verrry gently and slowly, it will refrain from actually tangling and sort itself out.
- 2005-Mar-29
- The tangle on one skein got so bad yesterday that I cut it. About a minute later, I figured out how I could have unravelled the tangle without cutting it. (Insert aggravated Marge Simpson soundbyte here.) As per my resolution of yesterday, I started pulling the yarn from the outside of the skein. So far, we are cruising tangle-free on that skein. Lookin' good.
- 2005-Mar-28
- These tangles are really killing me. They're a huge time-buster, and they're also pissing me off. As the skeins start running out and I have to wind new ones, I will pull the yarn from the outside of the new skeins. Pulling from the inside is what seems to be causing all these tangles. (In direct contravention of traditional knitting wisdom, thus upping the pissing-off factor.) I didn't even get one lousy row finished this morning thanks to all the untangling...and I still have quite the snarl to finish fixing!
- 2005-Mar-26
- Took this with me to my mom's house for the family Easter luncheon, and got a little bit done. My relatives were suitably admiring of the project, especially my grandma (a knitter), who shuddered when she saw it in the manner of one who would never attempt such fiddly work. :) Naturally I will not be bringing it along to tomorrow's family Easter luncheon, since we're going to my MIL's house. But at the moment, it looks like this:
- 2005-Mar-24
- I'm settling nicely into the second pattern set. I wanted to post a picture, but DH and I kept falling back asleep after the alarms this morning, and I ran out of time. Stay tuned!
- 2005-Mar-23
- I finished the first pattern set. The instructions call for doing four and a half pattern sets before starting on the underarm gussets, but since the finished sweater is long and I want it to be short, I can get away with doing fewer pattern sets before the gussets. I was thinking of axing just one of the sets, but I'm looking at the model in the book, and it really does look like cutting out two pattern sets off the bottom would give me the length I want. Hey, if I'm wrong, I can always do up another pattern set and graft it into the sweater. (Famous last words.)
- 2005-Mar-22
- It was Tangle: The Revenge for me last night, and much knitting time was wasted on de-snarling. Happily, the result was that this morning's commute saw the yarn flowing freely out of the skeins. I am very close to completing the first shell motif.
- 2005-Mar-21
- Took this to work with me today. Didn't get a whole lot done on the morning commute, but I haven't given up hope of meeting my 1-centimetre quota for the day.
- 2005-Mar-18
- At least something I'm making looks good.
- 2005-Mar-17
- Tangle is vanquished! Hooray! Work continues. And I made my 1-centimetre quota yesterday. However, I have yet to finish even one pattern set, although at least I can say that I'm over half done the first one. It's not photo-worthy yet, though, since it doesn't look enormously different from yesterday's shot. Hang in there. Things will pick up.
- 2005-Mar-16
- One of the skeins has a tangle at the moment, so that's slowing me right down. Yes yes yes, I should have plied it all up beforehand. Whatever. I wanted to knit. So I'm plying as I go. Mostly it's going well, but every now and then a tangle pops up, and I do some growling. Before I left for work this morning, the project looked like this:
Alas, only one or two rows have been done since. Curse you, tangle. I'm trying to achieve at least a centimetre per day. But I'm not that worried. I'll soon sort the tangle out and then I can get back to meeting my 'quota'.
- 2005-Mar-14
- Surgery was performed, and disaster was averted. I un-Moebiused the sweater without ripping the whole thing out. Instead, I unravelled the first ten stitches of the round all the way down to the bottom, cut the unravelled strings, untwisted the project, and re-did the knitting all the way up those ten stitches, joining it at each side of the opening. I am a demi-god. I refrained from assigning myself full-on god status because I was impatient and didn't take the extra time to perfectly mimic knitting at the joins. Thus, you can tell where the fix is. However, I still think it looks fine and it saved me gobs of time. Knitting continued on this project over the weekend and I'm now on the main pattern. Before I left for work, it looked like this:
A few more rows were done on the ride to work. Now that there is an honest-to-goodness pattern going, the work is going much faster. Or maybe it just seems that way because it's less tedious. Either way, I win.
- 2005-Mar-11
- The third, and possibly worst, feeling of horror of the day happened on my bus trip down to the subway this morning. I know that at the beginning of a project, the knitting wraps around and around the needles quite a bit until you get a bit of length going on the project and it starts to hang down from the needles properly. Well, I've got about an inch done on the sweater so far, and it occurred to me that I was still untwisting just a little too much for my comfort. So I checked. Turns out that I managed to twist the work when I joined it up in the round. I now have a lovely little Moebius Strip going. In response to this discovery, many words formed themselves in my brain which were not fit to utter in public. What the hell was I going to do? Given that I was on a bus with a long commute still ahead of me, I did the only thing I could think of...I kept knitting. (I believe the words 'f**k it' summed up my philosophy at the time.) Now that I'm safely ensconced in my cubicle, I'm mentally weighing the pros and cons of ripping the whole thing out and restarting vs. trying to do some very clever surgery. I must admit that I'm leaning towards the surgery. It was just such a damn pain in the heinie to meticulously make sure I had exactly 352 stitches (it takes quite a while to count to 352, double- and triple-checking the whole while), and there's no guarantee I won't make the same boneheaded twisting mistake again. On the other hand, the surgery is likely to be complex and nasty. I'm still leaning towards the surgery, though. Stay tuned.
- 2005-Mar-10
- Work proceeds, slowly. Quadrupling really fine yarn has been resulting in frequent tangling. Nothing serious so far, but it does slow the process down. Before I left the house, the sweater looked like this:
Sad, I know. But since then I've done a few more rows and it's looking better and better.
- 2005-Mar-9
- Winding up four skeins last night took way longer than I thought. What I hadn't counted on was that it takes a while to wind a substantially-sized skein when the yarn is super-thin. So I barely had enough time left over last night to swatch. But swatch I did. I got pretty good row gauge, but my stitch gauge was off. Augh! What is it with Alice Starmore and her wacky tensions? I have decided to ignore the gauge problem and forge ahead. (Ominous chord sounds in the background.) This morning I cast on 352 stitches for the body and worked the majority of the first row. It ain't much, but it's a start.
- 2005-Mar-8
- The yarn is here! The yarn is here! And oh...my...gawd. The lilac is exactly the colour I had in mind originally for this project. I mean exactly. Like, you couldn't have gotten any closer if you had plucked it directly from my brain. It may not have silk content, but it is very smooth and soft and quadrupled up it should work very well indeed, although of course I will be swatching first. I am very excited about this. Tonight, as my reward for doing laundry, I shall wind up some skeins and get swatchin'. The only question remaining is, what do I do with the other cone I bought? But I'm not worried. I am sure I'll be able to find some use for a pound of cotton-silk blend in a lovely cream colour. Mmm. (Incidentally, if anyone's interested, the vendor for all this yarn was knitfolio.)
- 2005-Mar-2
- I won two yarn auctions a few days ago. I am counting on one of these auctions being the yarn I will use for this project. The first is a one-pound cone of 63% silk/37% cotton in a white/natural colour. The second is a 1.25-pound cone of 60% cotton/%40 linen in a lilac that I am really hoping is the colour I had in mind for this project originally. Unfortunately, with the vagaries of digital photography colour and differing monitor displays, it will be impossible to tell until the yarn is in my possession. As always happens when I am expecting a knitting package, I am now practically vibrating with suppressed anticipation.
- 2005-Feb-24
- I have discovered possibly the most generous seller on eBay. Prior to my winning the auction of the pale apricot possibly-silk, the seller had sent me a sample and had advised me to bid on the cone anyway if I wanted it, and if I didn't like the stuff, she would be happy to refund my money. (!!!) Well, the sample arrived before I had a chance to pay her for the auction, and unfortunately the colour wasn't as I had hoped (the vagaries of monitor differences strike again) and it didn't really feel like silk (I'm thinking maybe cotton). So I emailed the seller again, asking her if I could take her up on her refund offer, and if so, I offered to pay her insertion fees, final value fees and the postage costs for the sample. She emailed me back saying no problem and told me not to worry about any fee reimbursement. What a totally nice person. Needless to say, I left her extremely positive feedback. If anyone's interested, she's Mad Angel Creations. Unfortunately, as nice as this transaction was, it means that I am still yarn-less for this project. I shall continue to hunt.
- 2005-Feb-21
- I won an eBay auction this morning for 15oz of what the seller thinks is 100% silk in a pale apricot colour. I'm hoping that when it arrives, I will find that it works perfectly for this project. I suspect I will have to double or triple the yarn to get gauge, but with any luck, the yarn will look beautiful in the texture pattern of the sweater.
- 2005-Feb-17
- I've started milling around on eBay lately for the yarn for this project. I know I originally wanted to do this in lilac, but now I'm thinking maybe that wouldn't look so hot on my MIL. I'm instead leaning towards something creamy. There are a few very promising-looking auctions at the moment, so we shall see how it goes.
- As of 2004-Nov-08
- Gotta go looking for the yarn - maybe I'll be able to find lavender!
