Ain't Bad

I have three active projects on the needles right now. Active being the operative word, as I'd be afraid to count how many are hibernating.

First is a sock design for the Circles sock club. We are unforgivably behind on this. Once we've completed 6 designs, I will restructure this to fit with life realities. Anyway, I have two designs in the works simultaneously, as the first design was an absolute failure for its intended yarn (Blackberry Ridge Kaleidoscope sport weight.) I was working on a twisted stitch pattern, but the busy-ness of the colorways made it a lot of work for nothing. The prototype was done on a relatively low-contrast colorway and you could sort of see it, but the pattern test knitter's colorway was far more vibrant with a wider range of colors and the stitch work just disappeared. Back to the drawing board for that yarn. And off to seek a new yarn for the design. Oh, easy. Shelridge Heathers. Now to adjust for the gauge......


Elsewhere on the needles is this:



I started at the collar. Well, actually, the collar was an accident of fate. I was swatching - to see how to use up one skein of hand dyed wool - and ending up with a fabric that looked like a collar, so I decided it was one and kept on knitting. I don't know what the sleeves or button plackets will look like, yet. I'm currently working on the peplum which is made with a diagonal slip stitch ribbing that leans in the opposite direction on each side and meets up with straight ribbing at the center back.






You can see from the front that I need to back up and make an adjustment where in the peplum. At the waist, I went from two strands to one and used a smaller needles. The plackets will end at the bottom of the waist. And I knew that I would need to increase the number of stitches in the peplum, so I started putting in gussets. But I think it's too big of a gap at the top. So, I'll go and do some increases on the first row, then put the gussets in for the hip shaping.

I'm going to stop here. Two out of three.....