Knititude

No FOs here!

(Cross posted from the CAL.)

Well, I like the lace upper back well enough...but not for this particular top. Even though the upper columns of faggoting do line up with the similar columns in the Dayflower Lace pattern, to my eye they appear totally unrelated, and in fact the upper panel achieves a certain dominance--which I had not intended.  Maybe I can use that lace panel for something else. I actually don't mind the wavy quality of the accent ridge--or wouldn't mind it, if it continued around the circumference of the garment, but it only waves in the area of the upper lace panel.

As shown in this photo, I decided to try two different ideas for the upper bodice: on my right, no decreases to compensate for the underbust  increases, and plain stockinette except for the faggoting around the neck and armholes. On my left, above the bust decreases and extra decoration. I much prefer the plainer side, although I think it looks a little wide, and might benefit from more decreasing at the armhole edge.

Anything else? Looks a little tent-y, you say? I agree; I think the underbust fit needs to be closer.

And then there is the matter of the faggoted edge treatment I tried: although it looks okay from some angles, I had not anticipated that it would have a larger row gauge than the stockinette fabric, meaning that it flares in a rather unflattering way around the armholes, in particular (with the aid of gravity, the neckline seems to lie flat enough).

Ah, well. Blue ramen noodles, anyone? (Don't worry, I only frogged back to the lace.)

Funny Friday

Eye Candy is all very nice, but sometimes what I need on a Friday is a good laugh.  What we find amusing is perhaps even more revealing about us than what we find beautiful...but if we didn't want to reveal anything about ourselves, then we wouldn't be blogging, would we?

Anyhoo, the Italian post has a terrible reputation for delivering mail on, shall we say, a relaxed schedule--if they deliver it at all.  Here is one of their delivery guys, with mail stacked in front, mail piled behind...gosh, if that was my stuff, I'd be nervous about it falling out....

Another cross post from the CAL

Isn't the difference in color in these photos wild? The middle photo is WAY too blue and the others are too gray. Anyway, first a little background: I did decide to use increases along the front to shape the bust area, rather than short rows or increases along the sides. But what then to do with the extra stitches above the bust? I could just leave them; the front of the top would then be slightly wider than the back. I could take the extra stitches into account when I decreased to shape the armholes and/or neck edge, especially if the neckline was a deep U or V--but I was concerned this might give those edges an odd line. Or, I could place decreases directly above the bust, giving what I felt to be the most, how to put it, anatomical shaping possible. The first photo shows my initial attempt at this; unfortunately, I didn't like the way the decreases looked--to my mind, as if someone had snagged a stitch and then yanked on it. (I noticed that Hattie mentioned a similar problem, but with increases, in this post. I had luckily realized that the corded edge at the top of the Dayflower Lace--visible in the left lower corner of the above photo--hid my bust-shaping increases pretty nicely.)
Then I thought I would try a different way of decreasing, along several rows instead of one, and also try using some columns of faggoting to hide or camouflage the decreases: see the photo at left. This proved to be difficult to place so that the columns didn't look odd next to the faggoting along the neck and armhole; if I tried to center the decreases over the bust, the faggoting was off center, and the angled neckline made centering the faggoting difficult. In the end, I decided that too much going on in the upper front just detracted from the lace...but I still thought that some vertical openwork columns lined up with the Dayflower repeats might dress up the upper top, so I tried putting them on the back instead. Hmmm...that corded edge is looking a little wavy...do I like it? Or not? (Hint: RIBBIT.)

A couple of reader knits

Here is a lovely Sherwood with a few minor mods, by Eileen; according to her the color is really more red than it appears in the photo.

And below are only three of the Maple Seed hats knit by Sandra, who is apparently making one for everyone she knows! 

LYS in Parma, Italy

A couple of weekends ago we took a little trip to Parma, ostensibly for my son's baseball tournament, but really, unbeknowst to my family, it was all a ploy to find a certain LYS that Connie had spotted.  Well, I don't know if this is the same store, but when I asked at our hotel for a "negozio dei filati," this is the one the concierge suggested, on Via Mazzini.  And it was a pretty good one, so in celebration of the find, I bought some Egyptian cotton yarn, a brand I'd never heard of--Ormaghi Filati Red Dune--in a grassy green, and some Filatura di Crosa Brillante, a cotton/viscose blend, in a light, subdued gold.  As you can see, I wasn't the only one to be drawn in by the shop window display.

Unfortunately those yarns went straight into the stash, because I just received this yarn in the mail--a lovely bamboo/merino wool blend.  The photo doesn't really do it justice; in real life it's less blue, more palest violet, with a subtle silvery sheen.  More like the color of the blossoms on the wisteria I spotted the other day.  How old is a wisteria vine, if the trunk is nearly a foot in diameter?!  And yes, this yarn is destined to become my next project for Interweave Knits, so I'd better get to work!