Friday Knitting Blog (05/27/2011)

Welcome back to the Hey, Transcriptionist!  When last I took pictures of this baby, the knitting was done, it had been blocked, and I was paralyzed by seaming options. Seriously, sometimes I want to smack myself for being easily overwhelmed by seemingly small choices, but I am who I am. Anyway. 

The shoulders seams are in, and when I finally made a decision, I decided to go with unpicking the bound off edges and doing a 3-needle bind off. In the next 2 pictures, you'll see why.  In this first picture, this is where I am tonight. The shoulders are together, all ends have been woven in, and I've picked up all the stitches for the neckline. Just a couple of rows of ribbing to do here and then I'll bind off and be done with that part. The pattern instructions call for the buttonhole band and the button band to be done next, but I'm going to change up the order on that part. I'm going to set in the sleeves and sew the side and sleeve seams first so I can try the thing on and see where I want buttons and how many I want to put (so I can go back to JoAnn and get more if I need to). It's not going to hang properly without side seams, so that's what's next. 

This is the inside of a shoulder seam. I just love how neat and not bulky a 3-needle bind off is. So glad I didn't back stitch. That would have looked OK from the right side, but the ridge on the inside would have annoyed me. 

 And here's that seam on the right side. The only way this might possibly have looked better would have been for me to graft (Kitchener stitch), and this yarn is both slippery enough and heavy enough that the whole shebang would droop had I made that choice. I want to do all my shoulder seams (at least for set in sleeves) with the 3-needle bind off from now on. 

So the goal between now and next Friday is to finish this thing. It's about 95% complete now, and I'm not working on Sunday or Monday, so it's a reasonable goal. And then I can get back to my other project (which is a gift so pictures will wait until the recipient gets it), and then it'll be more socks.

There are actually a bunch of sweaters that I'd like to make, but I'm egregiously behind on my sock knitting goals for the year. With Sock Summit coming up at the end of July (I'll be going with the lovely Lindsay Jean to the marketplace on Friday), I'm on a yarn fast until then. Which means that, since the yarn I have on hand is mostly sock yarn in sock amounts (not sweater amounts), I'll be knitting socks. 

All for now.