FO: The Hourglass Sweater

Here I am in the gallery, listening to my headphones in the window and looking whistfully down at the darkening street below. Keen-eyed spotters will notice that I am wearing a new sweater.

I cannot recommend The Hourglass Sweater highly enough to anyone who is attempting to calm themselves during a period of emotional upheaval. Hours of repetitive round and round stocking stitch, a few simple increases and decreases to keep track of and a delicious yarn have made this my self-healing knitting project of choice. It has come everywhere with me during the past few weeks and has been lifted from its bag during any moment when I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think what else to do or couldn’t face what I was meant to be doing. The sublime angora yarn (80% extra fine merino, 20% angora) that I got in a sale a few months ago is going to shed fibres everywhere and pill horribly, but it is incredibly soft and I am optimistic that people will not be able to resist stroking me as I mischievously prance around looking like a naughty deer in my soft little fleece.

I love it.

I do need to aggressively block the hem as – in spite of taking great care with it – I appear to have sewn this in a most erratic manner so that it resembles a Pringle or a Curly Wurly in its final shaping. Hopefully pins, water, and a period of rest beside my nice hot radiator will force it flat. If anyone else is making this sweater bottom up as I did, the way forward with the massive bottom seam is to use a provisional cast-on and to k2tog all the way around with the unzipped cast on row and the 5th row after the turning row. I lack the skills to articulate this technique clearly, but there is an excellent tutorial for a picot-hem edge here that sort of explains what I mean.

The finishing of the sweater necessitated some very 1970s action in Gallery 10, as I whipped out my ironing board and got down to my domestic seaming tasks in full view of passersby. We had around 15 visitors today during the day and all of them were treated to the spectacle of Awesome Ironing.

I wonder if this counts as Extreme Ironing?

3 Responses to FO: The Hourglass Sweater

  1. Pingback: The Domestic Soundscape » Blog Archive » Equipment WIN/FAIL

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