Another FO

I finished the third baby item of the summer today. Whenever I go visit my mother, I always take the opportunity to go to the LYS near her work. Waco’s generally a nice town, but is sadly lacking in yarn shops. When I was there a few months ago, I found a cute pattern for a cabled hoodie, and I decided to do that for the third object, rather than a second one of the fair isle sweaters. The finishing on the pattern was a bit simplistic, I think to make it accessible to newer knitters, so I made some changes. If I’d read all the way through the finishing instructions first, I’d have made a couple more.

The pattern says to knit the five main sections (back, 2 fronts, 2 sleeves), then do the button and buttonhole bands on the two fronts, then pick up stitches on the fronts and back for the hood, then do a band along the front of the hood, then sew the seams. The hood is knit up to a certain length, then a third of the stitches are cast off on either side, and you continue on the middle third, then sew it to the cast off sides.

If I’d read through the finishing instructions first, I’d have done the button, buttonhole and hood bands as one piece. But I’d already finished the two front bands before I read through the hood instructions, and didn’t feel like frogging them. I did avoid seaming on the hood and to attach the hood band to the front bands (seaming is my least favourite part of knitting). I used this technique on a lace shawl to attach the outside edge to the middle section a few years ago. Instead of casting off the stitches on the two edges of the hood, when I got to that point, I knit to the last middle stitch and knit it together with the first edge stitch, then turned the work and knit back to the next edge and did the same thing, and just continued like that until I ran out of edge stitches. I did the same thing for the bands by picking up a few stitches on the top of the front bands when I started the hood band. Would have looked better if I’d done it all as one piece, but I think it looks better than sewing the seams.

And I found some really cute hippo buttons for it. 🙂

I’ve done a bit more work on the Twist & Shout jacket. After wearing it at work (where it’s freezing!) for about a week, I decided I didn’t like how the sleeves fit. They were too long, the arm hole was too big, and they were just generally sort of floppy. So I brought it back home, detached the sleeves, frogged them and re-knit them. I’d already done the smallest size of the pattern, so I had to wing it. I did them in the round (avoiding seaming, again!) using the Magic Loop technique, as I didn’t have any dpns in that needle size. It was the second time I’d tried it, but only the first since I got my knitpicks interchangeable circulars, and I really enjoyed the technique this time. The cable of these needles is much more flexible. I may never use dpns again!

Audition for Noises Off! tomorrow. Same director that did Little Shop. I get the feeling he doesn’t like me, because he has yet to learn my name. During the show he called me variously Donna, Margaret, You, and Nurse (I was in the dentist scene). Still, I’m interested in the show, and the worst that can happen is that I won’t get cast.