May 18, 2005
Ljace Kofta, coming along
I put this on "hold" for a long while, but I've just recently gotten back to it. Don't quite know how I get so sidetracked, but it seems to be a fact of life. The last time I blogged about this was in July and August of 2004. In fact, that's the last time I blogged at all!
This sweater is the "Ljace Kofta" from A Gathering of Lace, designed by Joan Schrouder. I'm modifying the design a bit, partly to accommodate a slightly different gauge, and also because I wanted to fiddle with the shoulder, armscye, and sleeve shaping, hoping for a better fit in the large size I'm making.
Photo is the full sweater, front and back, laid out on my bed. Stitches for the neckline and armholes are holding on threads. The shoulders have been three-needle bound-off. Next come the sleeves (picked up and worked down from the top), and the neckband. And then I'll be done! Hopefully before the next millennium!
Here's a detail of one corner, including the knitted-in picot hem.
I tried the sweater on, and was quite pleased with how it fits. I have good directions for proceeding with the sleeves: this involves picking up stitches along the straight portion of the armscye, then knitting back and forth, picking up additional stitches on the angled portion, one per row, and then joining when I get to the underarm stitches, and knitting the sleeves in the round. Hopefully this will go relatively quickly. I seem to be somewhat resistant, however. I think I know what I'm doing, and have meant to try this out for some time now. Kinda funny how hard it is sometimes to get up the nerve to try a new technique, even when it sounds simple, and even when you've been knitting as long as I have!
Here's another photo: this a detail of the short-row dart that I worked just before starting the lace yoke of the sweater. I really like the way it blended in. You can see that the line of the yoke is diagonal. The short rows are just underneath that line. I'm very pleased with how my sweaters fit with these darts. I try to work them into just about every sweater that I knit now.
Hopefully blogging about this will get me focused on the project and I'll make quick progress. We'll see!