Thursday, November 02, 2006

A Red Letter / Red Sweater Day

This is all Anne's fault. And maybe a little bit mine, after waxing rhapsodic over her red Malabrigo, if I remember correctly. Red something or other, that's for sure.



From the stash: nine balls of vintage Columbia Minerva Reverie, a mohair/orlon blend that surely must date back to the Sixties, in the most lovely "hey-sailor" red. [Two other yarns of equal quality and lesser quantity and similar carbon-dating, saved for other projects.]

Five balls of Crystal Palace Waikiki, bought a couple of weeks ago because I thought I only had half a dozen balls of assorted red mohair, instead of fifteen.

What to do?

This, which is actually the start of the second back, in our old friend Feather and Fan:



And this, the back and the start of the [first] sleeve, in profile:



And this, showing how I merged the two edges and phased out the two-stitch garter border:



So what is it going to be when it grows up? A shrug or cocoon; the plan is to join it at the convex edges and embellish some or all of them with really cool buttons from Benno's Buttons in Dallas or The Ribbon Gardner here in Arlington. Which I will probably acquire tomorrow. I'm either taking two hours of PT tomorrow afternoon, or the whole day off. I'll decide once I get to work this morning.

The goal? To wear this to the dance tomorrow night, blocked or otherwise, in the hope that Brother Abacus will be in attendance and will say, "Oh my goodness, m'dear, that's lovely, and so are you! May I have this dance?"

Postscript since posting everything above this paragraph on my own blog before leaving for work this morning: I have finished all my decreases on the second sleeve and am about half-done joining the convex edges in the back. After dinner I'll finish the sewing-up and then join the sleeve and work it on a short circ until it's the same length as the first one (where I've run out of Waikiki).

And then begins the delicate task of knitting two sleeves with three balls of yarn, without losing my mind. I bought every hank of the Waikiki that she had, and I don't want to make the phone calls to see if there's any more of it in the Greater Dallas area. So the length of the sleeves is entirely dependent upon how far I can get this impressively non-elastic yarn to stretch.

3 comments:

Chris said...

I just LOVE the way that feater and fan looks - it's going to be a very beautiful sweater!!!!!

Fiberjoy said...

Very elegant.

Tell us the news: was Br Abacus in attendance tonight? Did he dance with you? :-)

Lynn said...

Brother Abacus was AWOL last night, but my good friend Brother Sushi [stricly platonic, sorry sisters, no romance there]came to dinner and used his tools which I had borrowed to attach the last four legs for my sofa table, which is still sunny-side-down on my dining room table with the bottom shelf yet to be attached. And then he rode shotgun with me to the dance, where I promptly pulled something just behind my right knee while line-dancing. It's still a bit tender this morning.

There is a dinner dance in Cowtown [Fort Worth for you non-locals] next Saturday night. That's Brother Abacus' bailiwick. I'm still hopeful. And this sweater/shrug will definitely be finished by then.

I hit four LYS's yesterday while doing other errands. Lots of Waikiki, none of it red. Though I did spot some lovely teal that will do quite nicely for my next stash-busting project.