Ruthless Knitting

I managed to finish the body of the Fana pullover on Tuesday, and yesterday I blocked it and sewed and cut the steeks.

I was a little nervous about this stage, and not just because it involved cutting my knitting. No, I was nervous because I had come up with a plan for wasting the least possible amount of yarn on the neckline by doing decreases in the steek. In developing this plan, I made reference to neither my own experiences nor trusty knitting books. I just sorta flew by the seat of my pants. Then, shortly before it was time to cut the steeks, I started to doubt that the plan was going to work out. The steek was frighteningly bulgy, and it distorted the rows all around it. I began to wonder if, when I cut the steek, the bulgy, distorted part would just . . . sit there . . . rather than opening up into the shape of a crewneck. The stakes were high, since if my logic was faulty, 7″ worth of sweater would be ruined — a blow from which the trusty Fana pullover, already short on yarn, was unlikely to recover.

I subjected David to a long explanation of my steek logic, complete with numerous hasty sketches, near the end of which he said, “I still don’t understand the purpose of a steek.” (I maybe could have explained a little more slowly and clearly.) Eventually, I filled him in enough that he was able to agree that my steek reasoning was probably — but not definitely — sound. With this meager reassurance, I plowed ahead. Thankfully, everything came out fine.

After the picture up there was taken, I picked up stitches around one armhole in white and knit the first three rows, but then my progress lurched to a halt. A few days earlier, when it had become clear that I was definitely going to run out of yarn, I ordered some white ShibuiKnits Merino Kid from Knit/Purl as a substitute for the white Izu. On Tuesday I learned, to my great disappointment, that not only does Knit/Purl not have white Merino Kid, white Merino Kid does not actually exist. That it, it is not produced by ShibuiKnits, and it was only listed on the Knit/Purl website by accident.

This news came as something of a disappointment. It turns out, however, that Knit/Purl has something even better: they have the discontinued ShibuiKnits Izu itself, in just the ivory color I need. So now I am waiting for it to arrive before I work on the sleeves, since there’s a small chance that the dye lots will not match and I will want to blend the two whites together over both sleeves to minimize any color discontinuity.

While I wait, I have yet another sweater to work on. Or, more properly speaking, a shirt. Believe it or not, this will be the fifth design in my Fall/Winter 2007 collection. For this top, I’m combining Zephyr’s laceweight wool/silk with Interlacements Tokyo, another 50/50 wool/silk, in the Wave and Box Stitch pattern, like so:

I’m going to make a simple boatneck T-topper* in two pieces knit from the bottom up, with garter stitch borders on the bottom, on the short-sleeve edges, and at the neck. I’ve done about 3″, and the teensy, curly strip of knitting looks promising.

I’ve never knit a T-topper before, and I can’t be sure it will be a flattering style, but even if it turns out to be a disaster, it will be a very soft and very colorful disaster.

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*I can’t find a picture of a T-topper on the Internet, and I’m not sure if the term is widespread or something that Maggie Righetti made up. I got it from her fabulous reference Sweater Design in Plain English. Basically, a T-topper is a T-shirt constructed in two pieces, front and back identical. Each piece looks like a capital T, with the trunk of the T for the body and the top of the T for the arms. The sleeves end up being dropped a bit off the shoulders and are perhaps a teensy bit dolman-ish in that bunchy-under-the-arms way. I think it’s the sort of thing that Janet on Three’s Company would have worn. So, yeah, wish me luck with that.