First Came the Hat

Then came the sweater...

My winter break is about to come to an end.  As far as I can tell, next semester may just continue the rocky trend but with different issues. Meanwhile, I'd finished a sweater, and sewn a pair of pants to go with it, a rather fulfilling few weeks preceding the storm.

I was inspired by a hat I made before Christmas.  It was the last of the 4 hats from 2 skeins of Cascade Heritage 150 series.  For the hat, yarn was held double. A fun and quick project and the idea just somehow came to me.  It was deisgned with graduated ribbing in contrast with graduated textured horizontal bands.

yarn: Cascade Heritage 150, held double, total 230 yards

needles: US 2 and 3

I really digged the hat.  In fact, Paul really liked it too.  I think he's gonna take it from me.  Good thing I want to make another anyway.

The sweater took the same concept and the front closure added to the asymmetry. It was knitted flat in one piece from bottom up, joined sleeves at underarm, then raglan decreases and a funnel neck to top it off.

I finished it last week, but I was unhappy with the neckline being slightly loose after blocking. So I ripped back the neck, added 2 more decrease rows, and used smaller needles for the neck. Now I'm very happy with the result. The one thing I wish I had done was to knit the cuff area in smaller needle as well, which I will add into the pattern that is mostly written.  I didn't want the sleeves to be snug like regular sweater, so there was no shaping, the sleeves were straight from cuff up to underarm in same pattern to keep it more modern looking.  But I think smaller needles may just make it a bit better.

yarn: Cascade 220 Heather, color 8012 Doeskin Heather, 1250 yards

needles: US #4, #6

While the sweater was blocking on Friday, I cleaned and re-organized my storage area. What a mess it was. I'm really terrible at house keeping stuff.  But honestly, I just don't care.  I like the way I live. But even that mess started to disgust me.

Glad I re-organized. I found some green stretchy broadcloth fabric in the ever growing fabric stash, and I thought it would make a nice fitted pants to go with the sweater. I used the pattern drafted few months ago. I knew if I kept the same seam allowance at 5/8" the stretchy material would make the pants feel a bit loose.  So I added wider seam allowance when I serged the seams.

The pants came out nearly perfect, according to my not too critical self.  But I think I'll change the shape of pockets next time, as they don't sit right somehow.  Overall, I perfer the way pockets sit on a pair of jeans.  It could easily be that I just wear jeans all the time so I'm more used to that style of pockets.

I'm still trying to improve my sewing skills as things tend to look unsightly sometimes on the inside of garments.  It's getting better. This time, I actually didn't make too many mistakes that required ripping the seams.  This really helped with my serger confidence.

Very happy with the hat, the sweater and the pants.  Paul not only liked the hat, he too thought the sweater was a winner.  He's very supportive of what I'm into, but he is always honest about what he thinks of the results.  This is one of the rare occasions that we both love the projects.