Finished the reversible cable scarf (and a hat with the leftover yarn), so now the only WIPs are a pair of Jaywalker socks in Socks That Rock and this sweater:
Pattern: Poker, from Jaeger JM05
Yarn: Karabella Magrite, in a delicious off-black.
The pattern is great; the look is very Audrey/Jackie retro, and should go well with the light grey wide-leg trousers I just bought for spring! I love the standup turtleneck, and I hope I can replicate that look here. The textured zig-zag is almost rhythmic once you do a few repeats, and it's easy to catch errors in progress. The rolled hems keep it from being too stuffy, but it's still dressy enough (especially in a merino/cashmere blend!) for a variety of settings. The 3/4 sleeve is, of course, perfect.
This yarn is decadent, and I've been wanting to make this sweater for years. It took making a yarn inventory spreadsheet and spending a morning going through my pattern books with the spreadsheet open to see that I had a perfect yarn in my stash for the project! The benefits of organization ...
Of course, as is my wont, I've modified the pattern in several ways:
1. Body knit in the round
I like knitting in the round, both bottom-up and top-down. Notwithstanding how Bonne Marie rhapsodizes about mattress stitching, I don't enjoy it. It is fast and easy, but I'd rather just knit and incorporate shaping etc. with decreases and short rows.
2. Sleeves knit flat, but then attached to body at arm decreases
In making the Ariann I was uncomfortable with how stressed the sleeve stitches were when I attached the knit-in-the-round sleeves to the body to knit the yoke. The first few rows really bothered me, although of course they turned out fine. But I thought on this one that I would knit the sleeves flat (which also enabled me to knit them in parallel, since I only have one set of size 8 dpns!). That will mean some mattress stitching on the sleeves in addition to sewing up the underarm armholes, but I think it's worth it to avoid the stress I felt like I was putting on the stitches.
3. Knit yoke in the round
I really like this technique; I like raglan shaping, and I like knitting in the round, so this works well for me.
4. Shortening the armholes
As I mentioned with the Ariann, I am about an inch shorter than average from chest to shoulder. This means with raglan shaping that I have to redo the math for the decreases. Thus far I did a couple of rows of double decreases right under the arm (after doing the 5-stitch bind off on each side that the pattern required), then about 10 rows of single decreases on each row, and now I'm doing single decreases every other row. I figure that I have about 14-16 more rows on the yoke to get to the right measurement, and I should just about hit the decreases correctly.
Should be finished soon ...