Actual Knitting Content! (gasp!)

I know, I know ~ y'all thought I was fibbing when I said I was a knitter. Hardly a word about knitting in all this! So, just to prove I really do knit, there's this:

Our weather dropped a bit this week ~ down from 110 to merely 95, and today, so far, the low 80s. I can knit! And to celebrate that, do I finish any of my WIPs? Nope, I start something entirely new. In mohair and cashmere, of course, not practical cotton.

Because it was so hot, I was just cruising online for knitting patterns, and of course I checked out the Berroco website. Among several other patterns I grabbed, there was a perfect slouchy sweater in mohair (I'm thinking ahead to December, when it might actually be cool enough to wear this, of course). And so I downloaded the directions to "Mariel", printed it out, and put it away. Then I was cruising through my stash, and I found the wonderful wine colored mohair I'd gotten on Ebay not too long ago, and went "Ah Ha!". Whipped the pattern out, did a gauge, and scratched my head. No way I'm going to get 14 sts to 4 inches with this yarn and these needles. I checked Berroco again, to check out the yarn, and it looked very, very similar to the weight of the mohair I was using. So I looked at the pattern again, and discovered I'd completely missed some important info ~ they used two different yarns together to knit the pattern. Duh. (The second yarn used in the pattern is no longer made by Berroco, and they don't even have the yarn info online, so they didn't do the usual bright blue link for the yarn, and I just plain missed it.)

So I sat there for a bit, grabbed the scarf I'm making for my sister and knitted a few rows and then noticed that the wool/cashmere yarn I am using on my sister's scarf is a perfect match to the mohair I want to use for Mariel. Eureka!

So, I'm knitting this:


(That's Berroco's shot of the sweater, not mine, not me) I'm about a third of the way through the raglan decreases on the back, but I made some changes to the pattern. I didn't like the way the decreases were done on the body of this ~ it disrupted the flow of the K3P3 ribs. So, I instead just gradually made the K3P3 ribs into K3P2 ribs, after casting on 12 less stitches at the beginning. The pattern states the bottom edge would be 49 inches, and on me, that would be enormous. The pattern called for 24 stitches to be decreased before the bustline, and the decreases are all done 9 stitches in from the sides. I tried it, but it just destroyed the vertical flow of this sweater. So, I ripped back, eliminated 12 sts, and substituted the remaining 12 decreases in the P3 rib, and got the right number of stitches for the bustline. I'm much happier with this decrease, because it's completely unnoticeable.

I'm using 10 1/2s, with Mario Niccoli's Mantegna mohair and Elann's Baby Cashmere held together. It feels incredibly yummy! The mohair has random bits of color scattered throughout and it's much more subtle with the cashmere added. I hope to have pics of it tomorrow, so y'all can see the color. I really, really love it! (The light today is just impossible, or I'd have pics now)