Yey and Oy

Yey for





finished Pomatomus!

Oy for



Cherie Amour.

Knitting Pomatomus has put me permanently in love with both Cookie A.'s designs and Koigu KPPPM yarn. When knitting with it, it doesn't seem to feel too different than other sock yarns I've used, but wearing it...merino on feet is delicious.

Cherie Amour...urgh. It's such a beautiful, simple design. The design and I are cool with each other. However, the pattern and I are waging all-out war.

A sample, taken from my Ravelry notebook:

9/23, 12:30am -- Just had to rip out two day's worth of knitting because every single decrease was *backwards*. This was due to my stupid inability to pay attention to charts rather than anything being wrong with the pattern.

9/26 -- After about a billion restarts, I've got this going nicely again! It's not a bad pattern; I'm not really sure what my problem with it has been. Might be suddenly knitting on size 13 needles after doing socks for so long!

9/30 -- My goodness, this thing is a horror show. Right now I'd place the blame about 60/40 on me/the pattern...

I was briefly mollified over the weekend. Lulled, you might say:

10/6 -- Zipping right along! Finally, I feel confident about this thing.

Confident, yes. Still confident, in fact. But today I realized that confident little me got cocky and knit an entire sleeve without thinking of the fact that I resized the armhole. So confident little me got a sleeve measuring 14 inches across the top...for a 17-inch armhole.

Why is it that so many patterns assume that people with a 36" bust have arms that will fit in a 14" armhole? Or are sized for sleeves 18" long? I don't think of myself as big, but I am a broad-shouldered, longish-limbed woman. I nearly always end up having to buy a large in women's shirts and jackets because, even if it fits in all other respects, a medium will inevitably be too short in the sleeves or too tight across the back.

So along come patterns like Cherie Amour, or that ribbon-yarn tank top I knit a while back from a book of "hip" patterns and ended up having to rip out, that have measurements that I'm sure fit someone, but that someone is not me. And so I made adjustments, thinking myself clever and in tune with my knitting...and then I do something dumb like forget to resize the sleeve. The especially dumb thing in this case? 17" is an actual armhole measurement in a larger size of the Cherie Amour pattern. The directions are already there. If someone had been keeping score, I think this pattern would have trounced me a long time ago.

And that's the knitterly drama that's been going on in my life. I'll keep chugging along, but I think I'll give lace a rest after this.

Next up? Mirepoix Bodice from Interweave Knits fall '07. Currently eying a blue/grey/white/black theme. New stuff to tackle: large swatch of colorwork and *gulp* steeking!