The Frogging of the Frog

In which I fail to make it look easy.  Not that any of you, Gentle Readers, thought it was easy anyway.  But apparently it's time for the other shoe to drop:

This would be the second time that I have frogged back the sleeve, which also requires removing the side shaping, and blah blah blah, it really sucks.

It's not that I got cocky.  I wasn't even a little bit overconfident.  In fact, I had begun to suspect that I was overdue for some kind of knuckle-rappery at the hands of the universe.  You see, I knew that this jacket was going to be trouble.  I managed to avoid making this pattern for more than a year because I knew it was gonna be Tricky.  And by "Tricky", I mean "Lock-yourself-in-a-dark-room, No-mommy's-not-drinking-alone-in-here" freaking complicated to figure out.  You see, the original Frog Prince wasn't even a sweater.  It was a boiled-wool jacket, with pieces of knitting appliquéd onto it.  It was a tailoring project that I set for myself one time, just to see if it could be done.  And it could.  And I was glad when I had done it. 

But then I wore it out in public, which, it turns out, is where they keep the Knitters.  Knitters have crossed rooms, crossed traffic, and crossed the boundaries of personal space to ask me about it.  And when I say "Ask", I mean "Gimme!  WANT!  Need-that-pattern-right-away-or-I-will-die-and-it-will-be-on-your-head-missy!"  Not wanting to be responsible for the demise of any fellow knitters (bad bit of Karmic debt, that), I eventually admitted to myself that I had to make a Frog Prince Pattern.  Which required that I make a Frog Prince Sweater.

So it's not the body knitting that has me flummoxed, but the shaping of the sleeves.  The original jacket had a set-in sleeve with a very traditional, high armscye and a saucy, gathered cap.  Fine for the body and drape of boiled wool, but not worth a damn for a knitted sweater.  No, the sweater needed a dolman sleeve in order to be cunningly worked in the direction I had in mind, while still incorporating the sassy gathered sleeve caps of the original. 

Nothing to it.  Until I realized that I have never knitted a dolman sleeve before.  The first version came out all Kimono.  The second was decidedly Batwing.  I have moderate hopes for the third incarnation, but I have to admit it feels like I'm starting to lose ground.  Remember back when I smugly proclaimed that the project was still full of promise because I hadn't jacked it up yet?  Well that ship has sailed, I'm sorry to say.  I'm quickly falling out of love with the Frog Prince.

Still, he's kinda cute.  Maybe just one more kiss.

 

Cutthroat

As I was working on the Frog Prince neck shaping, I realized that my dining room table had become kind of an interesting tableau: A snapshot of how I work.  Clockwise from upper left: My trusty gridlined Moleskine design notebook, which is never more than a foot away from me, even when I sleep (TMI?); Knitting chart, underneath workbag with stitch marker box (In which I would also keep cable needles, if I could ever find any); Pile of unperused mail (not germane to project - just part of the landscape); Actual work in progress; and blue painter's tape, without which I probably could not make sweaters (more about that in my book).

More waste yarn marking lines, adjacent to which I will machine-stitch the neck curve outline.  Notice that it's not exactly a curve at this point - that little corner formed by the intersection of the marking yarn will round out on its own.  More Pure Magic.

Here is the actual neckline stitching, with the marking lines removed.  You can also see that the original live stitches from the top of the knitted tube are all just held on spare yarn.  The live stitches on the left will become the shoulder seam.  Those on the right...well, see below:

Sacrificed for the greater good.  Here I have mercilessly hacked off a section of perfectly sound knitting, in order to make room for the wearer's head and neck.  Without doing this, there would be no neckline, making for extremely awkward wear.  Knitting is not for weenies.  

Lest you think me too callus for ruthlessly discarding pieces of my hard won knitting, I wanted to show you this:  The actual amount of wasted knitting = about 3 square inches.  Not a bad trade for never purling back on the wrong side of the knitting.  Have I mentioned it's Magic?  Pure Magic.
 

Speaking Mandarin (A Standing Collar is Born)

The Frog Prince progresses at a steady clip, probably because knowing that I need to stay ahead of the next blog post has added a whole new dimension of accountablilty to the process.  We who would otherwise lag behind, thank you.  In case I haven't explained it, my Cunning Plan is to make the Frog Prince available to you before my book tour begins, which is either optomistic or delusional; only time will tell.

In order to make a standing collar curve neatly around a human neck, it has to be made in the shape of an arc, like a rainbow, rather than a plain rectangle.  We could accomplish this shaping with decreases, but not without disrupting the stitch count and making the colorwork aspect UN-fun.  Instead, we'll cheat, capitalizing on the incredible properties of gauge, and the remarkable ability of wool to be shaped with steam.  For once, we are going to use these powers for good.  Thus Spoke The Queen.

After joining the shoulder seams with a three-needle bindoff, I pick up some stitches around the neckline, including those previously held on waste yarn across the back.  This step is the final disposition of all those live stitches that were held off at the top of the original knitted tube.  They are all neatly accounted for now.  Tricksy, no?

I place a couple of markers and create a new steek for the collar (we haven't come this far just to start purling, now!). I use a size 3 needle for the first 10 rows of the collar, a size 2 for the next ten, and a size 1 for the last 10.  Presto: an arc-shaped mandarin with no stitch count changes.
Then I knit a 30-row facing (the black part) for the collar, reversing the needle size changes every 10 rows, and bind it off.  Here I have marked the steek, which will be machine-stitched and cut, just as before.  I will spare you photos of that carnage, but do note that this step marks the last of all the steeking and cutting in the Frog Prince.  The Crowd Goes Wild.

After cutting the collar steek, I steam-block the collar to make the facing quit rolling.  Then I pin and stitch it over the cut neckline curve edges.  That is the main reason to face the collar: I want those cut edges covered.  I could alternatively do this with bias tape, but I like the extra body provided by the full facing.  A standing collar must, after all, stand, and two layers of fabric are better than one for that.

Here is the finished arc-shaped collar, complete with hidden neck curve edges.  It both fits a human neck and stands up, thanks to the combined powers of gauge and malleability.

In case you are wondering, no, it wasn't strictly necessary to make the collar at this stage of construction.  I could have waited until the very end just as well.  However, I decided that I would rather work the collar before the sweater had the added weight of sleeves.  Since part of the process requires swinging the whole garment around in little circles on size 1 needles, I elected to perform that feat before the sleeves were added.  YMMV.  

Join me for the next installment, in which sleeves grow sideways, cats and dogs live together, and things get a little bit weird. er.