knits, notes, etc.

Okay, maybe it's not quite so fiery in this cream-colored cotton ribbon yarn; but, it fits very well and compliments just about every outfit, from jeans to dresses. I wore it almost every day in Vegas. I'm not too happy with these photos, but since Hilary has mentioned my short-row craze, I just felt I had to get this post up asap. ^_^

Pattern Fiery bolero, by Debbie Bliss.
Source Interweave Knits Summer 2005.
Yarn Filatura di Crosa Giglio, 7 skeins.
Needles US 5 (3.75 mm) and US 3 (3.25 mm).
Start-to-end 1 Jul 2007 - 1 Aug 2007
Modifications Replaced all increase/decrease (bottom back, sleeve bottoms both back and front, bottom fronts) shaping with short-rows. Shaped collar to be wider and did not leave eyelets in short-row shaping. Grafted sleeve edges together (which was easy to do because of short-row shaping).

I mentioned before that I've used this yarn for another bolero. I really think I like this one, the Fiery bolero much more though. After all the modifications I made to it, it actually fits! But, really, why did I go to the trouble of making this such an exercise in short rows? I just did not like how using the cable-cast-on increases at the beginning of each row looked. And, I knew that when it came time to seam the edges, I would be very frustrated with the steps created by increasing in that manner. So, I wanted smooth edges to make seaming and picking up stitches (for the ribbed edging) easy.

How did I do it? The answer: Lots of stitch markers.

For the bottom back, instead of casting on b stitches and increasing n stitches at the beginning of each row to shape the bottom, I cast-on the total number of back stitches and placed markers to indicate the center b stitches and every n stitches to each end. I then knitted and purled back and forth to the markers, wrapping stitches or knitting stitches together as needed. (I actually use the yarn-over method for wrapping stitches... it's faster for me.)

For the sleeves, I pretty much did the same thing to shape the bottom edges. On the right side, I used the cable method to cast-on the total number of sleeve stitches and placed the markers every m stitches. (m, of course, is the number the pattern tells you to increase every row.) On the left side, I did the same thing, except that I purled the cable cast-on so that the front edges would be the same. When the sleeves were the length I wanted them to be, the stitch markers told me where I needed to wrap stitches. After I finished the short-row shaping, I switched to waste yarn and knitted a couple of rows before binding off. This made grafting the sleeve seam together much easier.

For the bottom fronts, I repeated what I did for the fronts of the sleeves. I placed the markers according to the number of stitches the pattern instructed me to increase every other row...

For the collar, I had to start from scratch. Since my row gauge was completely off, I could not pick up the number of stitches instructed. I simply recalculated what I needed for the k2p2 rib to work. I placed markers on each side of the back stitches, about 8 stitches apart, down to where the neck shaping ends on the front sides. This turned out to be about 5 markers on each side. I then knitted and purled back and forth, wrapping stitches and turning, and when it came time to knit the stitches together, I knitted or purled depending on the pattern.

In the end, the short-row shaping was the easy part. The difficulty, instead, was in making sure that the lengths of the back and the front aligned for seaming. For the first time, I couldn't rely on calculating the number of rows to knit from the gauge. I had to measure constantly to make sure the number of rows I needed to finish the short-row shaping would work.

My favorite part, when finishing this project, was seeing how perfectly the sleeve edges seamed together. I love grafting. You can even see the short-row shapings here.

Short-rows are one of those techniques that I have trouble "seeing" in projects until I am actually using it for shaping. Well, I had wanted to be more descriptive in this post. I think you can tell I rushed through it... Questions or comments are always welcome.