Sun-Maid

Did I finish it on time? Yes, yes I did. Do I love it? Yes...sort of. It could be a wee bit narrower and a smidge longer in both the sleeves and the body, and it'll probably benefit from a row of crochet along the inside of the neck to keep it from sliding down my shoulders, but it doesn't NEED any of those things and everyone seems to love it as it is, so I'll probably never lengthen or tighten up any of the edges.

Did I wear it proudly to my dearest friend's wedding? Uh, yeah, about that. You know how Tulare in November is usually a grey, misty affair? Fog caressing the ridges of the fallow ground and all that? Perfect weather for a wool capelet over a heavy jersey dress? Funny thing about that. It was hot and sunny on Saturday. Record-breaking heat and surprisingly strong sun. I put the sweater on to shield my back from the burning solar rays, but it was back off again within seconds each time I tried. So now I have a sunburnt neck and cleavage, the itchiest kind of sunburn, by the way, but no modeled pictures of my little sweater.

Details
Pattern
Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet for the gauge and the number of stitches to cast on, but it's my own beyond that.

Yarn
Bouton d'Or Dandy in 'Raisin', Anny Blatt Victoria in 'Chocolate', probably no more than three hundred yards of each. Once I recount the Dandy left in my stash, I'll have an exact yardage measurement. Both yarns were from the stash, so it's another stash-bust quick hit. Woohoo!

Needles
Boye Interchangeables with the size 13 tips for most of it, Brittany 13s for the sleeves. I'd forgotten how much of a difference a sharper point makes when knitting certain yarns. The Brittany needles seem really blunt when compared to the Boyes. I used the Brittanys for the sleeves because it was easier than continually pulling the stitches up onto the needles from the Boye cable. The transition from the join to the body of the needle is really steep on the larger sizes, so my stitches kept tightening up as they slid down to the cable. I spent a lot of time grabbing them between my fingers and working them up to the end so that I could knit them.

Time
I started on Monday night, and I finished seaming the arms on Friday night. If I could string the hours together, I'd say it was about a ten-hour job. If I'd had a long, straight, aluminum 13 needle, it probably would have taken about half that amount of time.

Modifications/Design Notes
I thought I'd try something a little different, so I added short rows along the bottom of the whole sweater to give it a little cut-away action. I started wrapping and turning at six stitches from each front edge, then repeated at twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, and so on, until I'd done a couple of w&ts that would show up at the back. I didn't go all the way to the center of the back with them. In the flat picture, it looks like this would give me a little bit curved edge on the back. When I wear it, the edge looks almost straight. I have to imagine that this thing would ride up something fierce if I didn't add a lot of shaping to it.

The original Anthropologie capelet had short sleeves, but I thought my version would look better with at least an elbow-length sleeve. I knit twenty rows down on the sleeve, increased nine stitches evenly across the width, then knit another six or seven rows and a four-row garter border. Why'd I knit the arms flat? No needle suitable for knitting them in the round. I tried with the Boyes, but the stitches looked so bad that I had to unravel all of that sleeve and start over.

What else is different? I kept it stockinette-side out. There's no ribbing. The increases are kfb instead of yarnovers. It's not really an AIC. I keep trying to make it, and I keep making something else.

When I hugged the bride's father, he said, "Long time no see! Showing more chest than I remember!" Thanks, bride's father! That's just the kind of compliment a girl loves to hear. Realizing that I'd knit a perfect boob frame, I scrambled to find a way to make it more modest. As it turns out, the stitches on the front edge are so loose that one can easily thread the tie cords through them and lace up the sweater. The bride's stepdaughters suggested this modification. Thanks, bride's stepdaughters! I might crochet some loops to the fronts to make it easier to do this in the future.

Conclusion
There is one picture of the sweater and the dress together under the blinding rays of the unforgiving sun. Guess what? I don't have that picture with me. Guess what else? The colors of the sweater and the dress don't match under intense light. The two look like they were meant to go together under most other lighting, though, so the little sweater's still going to be permanently paired with the dress.

I'm sorry I don't have more FO pictures, but I didn't make time to take them so now I don't have them and I don't want to wait until I take more to post about the project because I just want to move on, you know?

If I'd known it was going to be ninety degrees last Saturday, and if I'd known that other women were going to be less dressy than I am on a typical Tuesday at work, I might not have bothered making this sweater. I put a lot of pressure on myself to finish it on time, and knitting under pressure makes me stressy.

And bitchy, the Woman. Don't forget bitchy. Where were my hours of soothing ear massages? Replaced by your screechings of 'Buddy, for Christ's sake! Shut your pie-hole! Don't get fur on that! Stop f$*king with the dog! JeeSUS!' I am distraught, the Woman. - Buddy the Cat

I'm sorry, Buddy. I know I wasn't pleasant to deal with last week.

I'm sorry as well, the woman. Sorry for what your attitude forced me to do on the bedroom carpet. You know that I have a nervous stomach. - BtC

Well, given that response, perhaps it wasn't worth it. But I don't know. Bird's been my friend since the fifth grade, and that's worth working hard to look a little snazzy. I'm so happy for her.


Bird and I have had some grand adventures in our time. Our nicknames alone would make great titles for children's stories. "Bird and Banana Beseige the Burger King" or "Bird and Banana Beleaguer the Bovines". No, not cow tipping, because that'd be cruel, and Bird and I would never have done anything purposely to hurt those cows. We loved them. Besides, cows don't necessarily sleep standing up. They spring to their feet pretty quickly when a camera flash goes off in their faces, though. And then, startled and confused, they pee. For several minutes. I don't know exactly how long, because we were chased back to our car by a ranch-hand shouting at us in Portuguese before they'd finished. I need to track down the pictures and find the time to tell the stories, but that's for another day.


Now I can get back to my NaKniSweMo project, Ingenue. I finished the yoke last night and I'm on the upper body and sleeves. Ahhh. Little needles and round after round of stockinette. Oh, how I've missed you.