Too Much Flare
Joanna: You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?
Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Well, I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself.
Joanna: Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don't need 37 pieces of flair to do it.
[flips off Stan]
If I have to tell you what movie that's from, it's not worth the trouble.
I finished the button band on the purple and red jacket thing, soaked it, blocked it, and then confirmed my suspicions that there was just a bit too much flare at the bottom. Plus, it's too short, even though I made it about 1" longer than the pattern specified. But a jacket with a nipped waist that falls right above the hip on my kind of figure just isn't, well, flattering. I would constantly be tugging at it, and that's just no good.
(Check out my faux Gap picture. All you need is a big-ass snow drift in your front yard to use as a backdrop...)
Commence the frogging. I had to ribbit the whole buttonband, which wasn't so tragic considering the less-than-stellar job I did on the buttonholes. It was my first crack at one-row buttonholes, and I'm still figuring out how to make it so they're not really, really tight.
Here comes the part where I'm very glad I decided to do the body of the sweater in one piece. To lengthen it, I just removed the red garter from the bottom:
Then I ripped out the purple up to the appropriate place for the waist/hip shaping, picked up the live stitches, and now I'm on my way to knitting stockinette stitch down a few more inches to the hips, where I'll re-do the red garter for the border. (This isn't too unlike just doing a provisional cast-on, like for a lined hat, where you would go back and pick up live stitches once the main part is done, except in this case, I had to rip out some of the fabric first.) It would be neat if I could just graft the same garter band on instead of re-knitting the whole thing, but alas, that won't work. I saved the detached garter band, but it has more stitches than it should, now that I'm decreasing the flare factor. Also, I think the garter edge should have about 10% fewer stitches than the body of the sweater so that the border itself doesn't flare out, which I definitely noticed when I blocked it in the first place.
What's my deal with fixing sweaters at the bottom once they're ostensibly finished? It happened on my dad's Christmas sweater, too, only that was even more of an ordeal. One of these days I should just learn how to knit sweaters from the top-down (I know there are whole books on the subject; I just haven't read any...yet.) Any knitters out there with experience in various methods of construction have any thoughts? Hallooooooooo!
Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Well, I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself.
Joanna: Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don't need 37 pieces of flair to do it.
[flips off Stan]
If I have to tell you what movie that's from, it's not worth the trouble.
I finished the button band on the purple and red jacket thing, soaked it, blocked it, and then confirmed my suspicions that there was just a bit too much flare at the bottom. Plus, it's too short, even though I made it about 1" longer than the pattern specified. But a jacket with a nipped waist that falls right above the hip on my kind of figure just isn't, well, flattering. I would constantly be tugging at it, and that's just no good.
(Check out my faux Gap picture. All you need is a big-ass snow drift in your front yard to use as a backdrop...)
Commence the frogging. I had to ribbit the whole buttonband, which wasn't so tragic considering the less-than-stellar job I did on the buttonholes. It was my first crack at one-row buttonholes, and I'm still figuring out how to make it so they're not really, really tight.
Here comes the part where I'm very glad I decided to do the body of the sweater in one piece. To lengthen it, I just removed the red garter from the bottom:
Then I ripped out the purple up to the appropriate place for the waist/hip shaping, picked up the live stitches, and now I'm on my way to knitting stockinette stitch down a few more inches to the hips, where I'll re-do the red garter for the border. (This isn't too unlike just doing a provisional cast-on, like for a lined hat, where you would go back and pick up live stitches once the main part is done, except in this case, I had to rip out some of the fabric first.) It would be neat if I could just graft the same garter band on instead of re-knitting the whole thing, but alas, that won't work. I saved the detached garter band, but it has more stitches than it should, now that I'm decreasing the flare factor. Also, I think the garter edge should have about 10% fewer stitches than the body of the sweater so that the border itself doesn't flare out, which I definitely noticed when I blocked it in the first place.
What's my deal with fixing sweaters at the bottom once they're ostensibly finished? It happened on my dad's Christmas sweater, too, only that was even more of an ordeal. One of these days I should just learn how to knit sweaters from the top-down (I know there are whole books on the subject; I just haven't read any...yet.) Any knitters out there with experience in various methods of construction have any thoughts? Hallooooooooo!
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