Red and Everything

In Love with Red
yarn: Elann Limited Edition Tremolo
needles: US #2

I finished my first fairisle sweater. The motif design came from a quick scribble on paper and then some playing around on the excel.

The knitting didn't take me as long as I'd expected. The yarn was slightly splitty, but the resulting fabric was so worth it for being really soft against skin.

Initially I just wanted to try a fairisle style sweater with regular neckline. I then became more and more in love with the sweater and wanted it to look a bit more feminine to unifiy how busy of the colorwork had become. I ended up with an idea of a wider neckline with folded down ribbing and split at the side.

The only drama was the motif was centered with the division of two adjacent motifs in the middle when the sleeves joined the body. After about 2 inches of work I tried it on and was not pleased. Took some pictures with a motif as the center and preferred it much more. So two days of work ripped back. The body and sleeves are rejoined with the a motif centered correctly.

I can't say enough about how I love seamless construction. I'd use them whenever I can.
This sweater was knitted in round both body and sleeves with no shaping. The 4x4 ribbings were 1.5", then the motif began. Each motif was 21 sts, with body I did 14 repeats of that, and with each sleeve, it was 5 repeats of that. Then they joined and immediately begin the raglan decrease for about 3.75 inches (had to plan a little ahead of time of where motif was going to join and end at neckline.) The raglan decrease was made by placing a marker at each of the 4 points where sleeves joined the body, and decrease 1 st at either side of the marker every other round (8 sts decreased every decrease round.) Just make sure the st decrease is the one either before or after the st that's right next to the marker that way you get neater raglan lines (i.e do k2tog before marker, and ssk after marker if they're k stithces.) On the last row of motif (I think it was dec 4 sts within each motif repeat.) Then knitted one round in main color and made some decrease there. Then the 4x4 ribbing of neckline began, I split it at the side of front right raglan line, and CO extra 4 sts for overlap for button. After the split, the neck was worked back and forth instead of round with no further decrease. I think the ribbing was about 6.5-7 inches.


Some printmaking too...

Lately I also got into monotype after a colleague showed me printing from gelatin. I was too lazy to cook up the gelatin, so I used rubber block for block printing and print with that. I'm having a blast. It's a real nice break from painting. It feels so free (I take painting way more seriously sometimes that it drives myself crazy thatI'm never statisfy with my work.) I've been churning out all these monotypes and it brought back memories of college years in printmaking classes. Honestly, I never liked printamking because it's so restrictive in process and result. Being a painter, I much prefer being able to respond to what I have just put down on my canvas instead of a process that goes from point A to point B in a linear way and then you print and you finally see the result, and usually they're so disappointing. That process to me always felt so removed. Monotype, on the other hand, allows more editing and responsiveness.

So I used the motif I made for "In Love with Red" for some of the latest monotype.

I think I'm gonna do more of it this weekend.