Strange Magic

My many digressions to the contrary, I have been working on the Frog Prince.  Today I'm going to show you where the rubber meets the road, in terms of making it a sweater.  Up until this point, the thing was a (fairly cool-looking) combination of steeked rectangles and a collar.  Here you can see the next steps:

I picked up 342 stitches from the bottom of the hem on the front, up over the shoulder, and down the other side to the back hem.  The number of stitches is not pertinent, other than to make you feel sorry for me.  I just worked a stitch through three out of every four rows, as is my usual unscientific habit. Then I settled in for a long winter of plain black stockinette.  This was interrupted by some moderately interesting stuff, notably:

Binding off some stitches at the shoulder, only to pick them up again on the next pass, and add increases to them all, forming gathers at the sleeve cap.  Then I did some short row shaping in the hip area, bound off a bunch of the 342 stitches to create side seams, and pressed on with what was left to create a sleeve, decreasing as I went.  At the end of that, I drank some wine, and then started all over again for the other side/sleeve combo.  I'll admit, it was a dull bit of work.  You would think at some point that I would process the following information:  Knitting a whole sweater means that you must actually knit the whole sweater, rather than leaving the yarn out at night and hoping the elves will come and do all the heavy lifting,  Night after night, the elves' failed to show, their union being in the pockets of the perpetually angry and unfair Knitting Gods. 

So knit it I did, finding other things to post about while that process unfolded.  Thank you, Gentle Readers, for your patience - as ever, it greatly exceeds my own.  Finally the clouds parted, the angels sang, and the Day Of Blocking dawned:

Binding off some stitches at the shoulder, only to pick them up again on the next pass, and add increases to them all, forming gathers at the sleeve cap.  Then I did some short row shaping in the hip area, bound off a bunch of the 342 stitches to create side seams, and pressed on with what was left to create a sleeve, decreasing as I went.  At the end of that, I drank some wine, and then started all over again for the other side/sleeve combo.  I'll admit, it was a dull bit of work.  You would think at some point that I would process the following information:  Knitting a whole sweater means that you must actually knit the whole sweater, rather than leaving the yarn out at night and hoping the elves will come and do all the heavy lifting,  Night after night, the elves' failed to show, their union being in the pockets of the perpetually angry and unfair Knitting Gods. 

So knit it I did, finding other things to post about while that process unfolded.  Thank you, Gentle Readers, for your patience - as ever, it greatly exceeds my own.  Finally the clouds parted, the angels sang, and the Day Of Blocking dawned:

Binding off some stitches at the shoulder, only to pick them up again on the next pass, and add increases to them all, forming gathers at the sleeve cap.  Then I did some short row shaping in the hip area, bound off a bunch of the 342 stitches to create side seams, and pressed on with what was left to create a sleeve, decreasing as I went.  At the end of that, I drank some wine, and then started all over again for the other side/sleeve combo.  I'll admit, it was a dull bit of work.  You would think at some point that I would process the following information:  Knitting a whole sweater means that you must actually knit the whole sweater, rather than leaving the yarn out at night and hoping the elves will come and do all the heavy lifting,  Night after night, the elves' failed to show, their union being in the pockets of the perpetually angry and unfair Knitting Gods. 

So knit it I did, finding other things to post about while that process unfolded.  Thank you, Gentle Readers, for your patience - as ever, it greatly exceeds my own.  Finally the clouds parted, the angels sang, and the Day Of Blocking dawned:

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.