Friday, July 14, 2006

Finished!

Custom Frances colorway:



Back with just a little Coral:



One-day sleeve:


I can't say I enjoyed wearing this for pictures today. It's hot! Definitely not the time for a wool jacket.
Finishing this was hard, once I realized I messed up the colors, I really lost steam. Now that it's done, though, I'm thrilled. I even mostly enjoyed making this. I knitted the second sleeve in just over one day. I wanted it done!

Things I learned in this project:
1. I-cord should be knitted with size 7 or 8 needles.
2. Begin knitting the body several ridges into the stripes, and when the body is finished and sewed up, knit the remaining 6 stripes and main color on as the collar to avoid a seam at the back of the neck.
3. No matter how badly you mess this up, you can recover.
4. Skip the slip stitches at the top of the garment (i.e. sleeve caps, collar). I ran this thing through my sewing machine, and was better able to match the ridges along the shoulder than when I tried hand sewing it. Because the slipped stitches were there, I had to have a larger seam allowance. This means I knitted two or three stitches per row for nothing. Ditto for the sleeves. Machine sewing with tiny seam allowances would have been fine with me.
5. I took the advice of others and shortened the sleeves by knitting-on 10 fewer stitches than the directions called for for the small. I'm happy with the length. Just be sure to make note of that on your pattern so that when you do short rows on the second half of the sleeve, you start at the right stitch.

10 comments:

amy! said...

The slipped stitches at the shoulders are intended to give you a decorative shoulder hem. So, if you don't care about them, skip them, if you want the detail, make sure to keep them and hem them appropriately.

Becky said...

Great work Frances!! And how fun to have a custom colorway. Hope it cools off soon so you can wear it.

Ana Petrova said...

Frances, great job and the colors worked out well.

So what is your next Falkenberg project?

فرانسيس said...

My husband got me a Ballerina for my birthday. I'm getting ready to move to Jordan, and I'm looking for long-term knitting projects, and I think this will be one of the two I have room to pack.

Anonymous said...

absolutely beautiful! congratulations. It's great that
you have another Hanne to look
forward to.

Denise/CT said...

Beautiful! I love the colorway. Thanks for sharing all your toils with us, and all the different shots and poses! How lucky to look forward to another HF for a long term project. What color are you doing the Ballerina in? Good Luck with your move.

فرانسيس said...

Thanks for the good wishes and compliments.
I have the Ballerian in the mostly black and a little sage color way. I can't remember the number. He even chose the colors. I would have picked something different, but one I saw the yarn, I realized he had chosen well! (as usual)

Merete said...

Great job. You've been a very fast knitter. I still have one sleeve to go. It's very warm here in Denmark too, so the knitting must wait.

Ana Petrova said...

What size did you knit?
And what size needle did you use?

فرانسيس said...

I knitted the small on US size 2.