A Bluestocking Knits

Beth says, "I’ve finished the yoke it’s blocked and on gauge – hurray! Half way up the 1st sleeve and like you, wondering if I’m liking how big the cuff is.  No pictures yet – I hope to post something this week.  I’ve just had one of those weeks where everything hits at once."

Fern says, "Not much to report from me although there’s a gauge swatch in my near future. I took a class a few weeks ago about knitting to fit properly and part two is in two weeks. At this one we come in with gauge swatches for projects we plan to make and we’ll get a little help in tweaking the pattern as necessary to fit us specifically. So I’ll be knitting a gauge swatch for the swing jacket. Who knows, I may be casting on before month-end."

Shelagh writes wearily, "This is remarkable, but true, my yarn is still backordered."

Here is another view of the Interweave Knits Swing Jacket —

this photo is from Two Swans Yarn.

This week, I reworked the right side, which I decided not long ago that I’d somehow miscaluculated, ending up with an armhole that was much longer than the second one.  While I was knitting, I finished listening to an audiobook I’d impulsively picked up at the library,

an excellent reading of the novel by "Poirot" himself, David Suchet.  His own voice is quite unlike that which he adopts as Poirot (I once saw an interview in which he declined to come out of character, as it took him so long to get back into it), a rather calm, rich baritone instead of Poirot’s soft, almost whispery tenor, and the voices he uses for the other characters, including the women, are equally varied and effortless — except, I must say, that for Col. Race, Poirot’s sidekick for this particular novel, who has I thought an extremely annoying upper-class-twit voice ("Bwing hew to the smoking woom immediately!") that only distracted from the easy brilliance of the others.  I’d read this book before, many years ago, but am much more familiar with the delightful 1978 movie with Peter Ustinov as Poirot — was rather disconcerted for a while at how much had been changed for the movie, but not terribly surprised, as I’m sure it’s difficult to pack that much story into two hours — the audio version runs to eight and a half!  Many of the characters in the book were dropped entirely, such as Mrs. Allerton and her son Tim, and others, like Rosalie Otterbourne and Miss Bowers, were merged with lesser characters to streamline the story.  I think that Suchet’s Poirot is brilliant, though, and so I am equally happy with this audio version (except, as I’ve said, Col. Race, which to Suchet’s credit didn’t even sound like him!).

But the swing jacket, that’s what I was talking about.  I worked the first sleeve yesterday — yes, you read that right.  I cast on for it Saturday night while David and I watched "National Treasure" — I had to pull it out, though, as I was so busy watching Sean Bean — excuse me, I mean paying attention to the complex storyline, that I accidentally picked up the long tail I’d left for sewing up the sleeve later, and began knitting with that, so I had to start again.  Being stockinette, it goes very quickly, even with the cap shaping.

I pinned everything together this morning for a fitting.  The weather has been very grey these past few weeks, and so I wandered around the house rather gloomily, trailing long streamers of yarn like a madwoman.  The gloom, I hasten to add, is due to the weather, not the swing jacket, which is coming along nicely.

This is the sleeve width as written for the 44 in./112 cm size.  The sizing I think is not terribly generous — this is five inches of ease on me.  The garment tends to hang open about 5 inches or so, just as in the IK photos, which means that most of the ease, as might be expected in a swing jacket, is towards the back.

The shape of the sleeve is somewhat deceptive.  It looks fairly straight when laid flat, as below, but on an arm the weight of the knitted piece make the bell shape much more obvious, as you can see in the photo above. 

If the weather stays this dull, I might even get to wear the jacket before autumn!

Beth has been having computer problems, so she hasn’t blogged for a while, but has been using the time to swatch — "I’ve finally gotten pretty close to gauge – I should probably be doing that needle switch off thing that you are doing to get it perfect, but I’m far too lazy and forgetful.  I liked Suse’s idea to start with the yoke since it’s the smallest piece, so that’s where I’m at right now.  Hope to have some pictures soon!"

Suse writes, "Nary a thing to show off.  Son #3 requested a handknitted jumper as it’s coming up for winter here.  Why do the children’s needs automatically come before the mother’s?  I don’t know, all I know is that I have temporarily abandoned Pearl Buck (sadly) and have done the back and two sleeves of a 7 year old’s jumper.  In a very similar colour to my Pearl Buck, so at least we’ll match when I finish both."

Again with the social life chez Bluestocking!  It’s making my head spin.  We had a cousin’s wedding on Saturday — Laura was the bridesmaid.  This photo, from when she was trying on dresses, is especially poignant for me, as the dress made me aware of how fast she is growing up, and the way she is sitting shows how much she is still six.

So, well, I didn’t get much knitting done this weekend!