Spilling my guts - Amy Herzog Designs

I shouldn’t have been surprised that you wanted to see the inside of the ladybug hat, since I always want to see inside others’ colorwork. But it never even crossed my mind. Here’s the inside of the hat:

Those are some really long floats, right there. And some fairly tight knitting, too. It’s not pulling or anything, but when I do the sweater I definitely need to loosen up a bit.

Now, the color piece is folded up to make the brim of the hat–at some point you turn your work and the WS of the work becomes the RS. So none of these floats will be up against any skin, and in fact if blocking doesn’t fully take care of the curl I might even tack it into place. Thus, the 9-stitch floats in parts of the work are totally okay for the hat. I’m not sure they will be in a sweater, though–what’s the prevailing wisdom? The gauge is 8 stitches to one inch. An inch of float doesn’t seem that long to me, but this is only my second colorwork project. Thoughts?

I really need to just cast on for some socks when I finish the hat tonight, because I’m a little skittish about this sweater. There’s the float issue, and when I read through the pattern today I noticed that the armholes are machine-stitched and then steeked. (!!!)

I have never steeked before. It’s my one irrational knitting fear. So, this project will be good for me, and I really enjoy fair isle, but I might need a little confidence-building first. And I haven’t knit Jaywalkers yet, and there’s that beautiful CTH sock yarn that Marlena gifted me this holiday season.

…What? Avoiding? Of course not. I’m a Knitter, truly.

(Well, maybe I’m avoiding just a teeeeensy bit.)

2 thoughts on “Spilling my guts”

Marlena

February 1, 2007

Oh my god. I am SO GLAD that you get to steek first so I can ask you all the gory details whenever I get around to it.

I’ve never done such a complicated fair isle, so my hint may be worthless, but I’ve never noticed my carried yarn peeking through. First of all, I use both colors in the same hand. I’ve tried to do the “color in each hand” thing, but it never works out, slows me down, and makes me frustrated. So I have both strands of yarn hanging on the right. I always pull the contrast color from the top, and the main color from the bottom. It helps to keep the yarn separate. If I have a spot with long floats, I drop the cc so it’s on the bottom, use the mc which is now on the top, and then bring the cc back up. Maybe I’ve just been lucky that it’s worked so far though. I’m doing some mittens now, I’ll let you know how it goes.

cari

February 1, 2007

I was going to say it, but Marlena beat me to it. That should take care of the floats that are long enough to snag baby fingers. Otherwise, you could tack them down after the fact. When I’m weaving in ends on baby fruit caps, I weave them over the center of longer floats to do just that.

2 thoughts on “Spilling my guts”

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