Monday, March 10, 2008

Yoke-tastic!

Sweeeeeeet!

The body of my fair isle yoke sweater is finished, and it is perfect! I decided it block it before knitting button bands, collar, and sleeves, because I wanted to be sure I didn't need to make some modifications to the sizing -- it was starting to look suspiciously boxy and I had visions of "steeking" the two fronts or of picking up my button bands 4 or 5 stitches in from the edges -- but this was perhaps the first time in my knitting career that blocking worked like magic to fix all those flaws I was nervous about! I wet-blocked it and pulled it quite tight in the vertical direction, fixing length issues while pulling in the width, and it actually worked! It's hard to see the individual stitches, but blocking also puffed them up so that it's a little less obvious that this is the last of the pieces I began knitting (and therefore continued knitting) with inadvertently twisted purl rows.

Blocking, you rock my world.

Now on to the rest of the sweater! Seeing this beautiful result has definitely lit a fire under me to get the arms done -- but I think I'll make the button bands first -- might as well make the torso fit exactly right before I bother customizing the arm lengths!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous!

Horse 'n' Round said...

Fantastic! You're going to get so many ooo's and aah's over that when you wear it around town!

Anonymous said...

I absolutely love the colours. Love! I really like how the yoke and the body balance each other. It's going to be a really beautiful sweater! Congratulations!

Stefaneener said...

Oooooh. Can't wait to see the bands and finally the sleeves. Good thinking on the blocking and nice shaping, too.

knititch said...

it is awesome. i love it and i love your swift too.

Emily said...

That's really lovely. I'm really enjoying watching the progress on this.

Rachel said...

Very nice job on your sweater. That was smart to block it first. I'll have to remember that the next time I get around to blocking a sweater!

4thMidlandGuides said...

I LOVE this sweater. Do you have it posted as a free pattern? Beautiful!!

Jen said...

I don't have it posted. I did chart out the yoke patterns on the computer, though, so if you want I can email you a file.