What we have here are two sleeves and half a back that will need to be ripped out due to an obvious and very disfiguring mistake on my part. Ugh. Sorry for the crappy picture quality, it is very overcast in Virginia today. Also overcast? MY SOUL.

I am making the Ribbed Turtleneck from Hollywood Knits by Suss Cousins (it's the cover design). The entire sweater is done in K1 P1 rib in even numbers. This means you start with a knit stitch and end in a purl (relevant later).

Now, clever me, I thought, "I will do my increases and decreases 1-2 stitches away from the edge stitch, to allow myself a selvedge for seaming." Yes, I am so smart NOT. What I didn't think of was the fact that when you do seam, you eat up 1/2 of a stitch. Seaming a K stitch to a K stitch looks pretty. Seaming a K stitch to a P stitch? Nooooooot so much. And I got this far before "that feeling" (you know the one) prompted me to reach for "Sweater Design in Plain English" and open up to the ribbing section where my worst fears were confirmed..

OMG, DUH. On the bright side, I've been knitting on size 11 needles with chunky yarn, so it shouldn't take too long to get back on track.

And now for my mini-rant about the written directions for this pattern. They suck. The schematic is horrible too. A lot of looking at the pictures and guesswork are needed to figure out how to carry on. The best I can say is that I feel like I'm all smart now because I could look at the pattern and go, "WTF. Okaaaaaaay, I guess I'll do a tubular cast on so it'll look like the picture and *peers at directions some more* ktog and ssk for the decreases that I am apparently supposed to do on the first and last stitches but will not. Thanks for nothing, SUSS." And now the more experienced knitters are laughing at me, but hey. This is progress for the Yarn Abuser.

Bleh.

Well, one of my knitting dreams came true. My boyfriend made a knitting request. For a hat!

Immediately, knitting fantasies began to form. I knew just what I would do. Like, totally funky. A hat with random welts knitted into it to form a kind of scrunched look. Totally hot, right? And it would be a wild color. Maybe even Noro! And then I would have a PHOTOSHOOT. And he would look CUTE. And be GRATEFUL.

No. This is what I got.

"Please please please can I have just a black hat like the one I have nowwwwwwwww?"

"Aw man, I have to pose? Why. Why do I have to pose? I'm not posing."

"Yeahthanksforthehatcanwegobackin?"

I started out with the directions found in Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, in that I cast on for the adult large beanie hat. I did the turn line after 2" instead of 3" because I am lazy and Monkey King was making faces like this at me during fittings:

His face is gonna freeze that way. When I pour liquid nitrogen on it.

I continued straight through to the decrease part, and then I realized the decreases called for would not look like the original hat so I had to change it up. Oh, and the yarn is Sirdar Country Style, which is a washable wool/acrylic blend and is very soft.

Here's what the top ended up looking like. Pretty ordinary.

So there we go. Maybe now Monkey King will stop asking me to knit him things like dick warmers (he doesn't know they really exist) and gloves that are only fingertips or whatever other retarded things he thinks of when I'm knitting and not paying enough attention to him BECAUSE HE CRUSHED MY DREAMS OF A COOL HAT AND PHOTOSHOOT.

I still love him though. Really hard with my fists.

I am truly overwhelmed by the positive comments left by all you wonderful people! I am grateful to everyone who took time out of their day to leave me a nice comment. You made me smile. A lot. You gave me wrinkles. (Kidding, totally kidding. The wrinkles were already there.)

Some more notes on the sweater (I'm sorry, I promise I will get it out of my system and we can all move on), but it seemed like the shaping was really interesting to some people, so here's how I did it:

I cast on with zero ease for the body. I am excited that I finally know what zero ease looks like. The arms are a bit roomier because I am sensitive about my jiggly underarms. I mean, you can't exactly suck those in.

This sweater was worked in the round on two circular needles. The main reason for doing so was so that I could try the sweater on while I was working on it, without having to take it off said needles. Which I did, about every inch or so. Paranoia, thy name is Kim. Also, I threaded a lifeline about every two inches. So basically my first name is Paranoia, my middle name is in Extremis. But in this case it turned out the sweater was out to get me, as I frequently decreased too much (um, I think I am skinnier than I am, apparently. Vain, much?), and would have to rip back.

Approximate (note below) shaping for the body was worked thus: Cast on, knit even for 3 inches, then every inch I decreased four stitches. Once at the beginning of the round, once at the opposite "seam," then again on the other side of that "seam," and once more at the very end of the row. I decreased until I reached the waist.

After the waist, I increased in this same manner (reversing the decreases to increases), every inch until the sweater reached to the bottom of my bra band. That's where I started the short row shaping for the bust, using the formula laid out in "Big Girl Knits."

**Again, though, I obsessively tried the sweater on after every. goddamn. inch. Because paranoid, remember? So sometimes I would do double decreases, or I would increase after only half an inch, or increase after an inch and a half. I mean, this is one custom CUSTOM fitted sweater. No rhyme or reason here.**

Arm shaping, same thing. Cast on, knit even for five inches, decrease, then increase, then increase some more. The important thing was to keep trying it on as I went. Even more important is to make note of every little thing you do, as you will repeat it on the other arm.

Whew. After all that, though, you can just pretty much follow the directions EZ lays out for you. Yay!

Again, thank you to everybody about the sweater. You rock!

Here it is, the sweater I have been toiling over.

But I think all the hard work has been worth it, no?

Ok, I am about to get all Wordy McWord on you.

Yarn: Jaeger Trinity (40% silk, 35% cotton, 25% polyamide fibre). I don't know how many balls I used, except that one ball got absolutely decimated when I had to rip out one of the many times I ripped. This yarn sticks to itself pretty well. Upon any sort of ripping or tinking, the yarn became very worn and fuzzy. And forget spit splicing. I had TONS of ends to weave in, which was not so much the fun. Also, for a yarn with no animal fiber, there was a lot of vegetable matter in this. Like, see that tree behind me in the picture? That tree saw this sweater and was all like, "I think I see my cousin in there."

The resulting fabric, after a full wet block, is soft without losing "body" and my gauge did not budge. I would use this yarn again, despite challenges during use.

Needles/Gauge: Susan Bates, size 3. The ball band for this yarn specified size 6 needles for a gauge of 22 stitches to 4 inches. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Now, I am a tight knitter, and I needed size 3 needles to get a gauge of 24 stitches to 4 inches. YMMV, of course.

Pattern: Heavily modified Elizabeth Zimmerman Seamless Saddle Shoulder. I used the "recipe" found in Knitting Without Tears. If you do not own this book, RUN to the bookstore and buy it right now.

I say "heavily modified" because the original recipe does not include any real waist shaping or arm shaping. Also, Zimmerman gives rather specific numbers and math to follow. As I knew that I would be making this sweater to follow my contours very closely, I didn't pay much mind to these numbers. I cast on what would fit around the starting points (waist and wrists) and decreased and increased as I went along. This is why this sweater took me two months and a lot of ripping out to knit.

A lot of details were fudged due to the carefree lack of planning I did in regards to the starting numbers. Most of it worked out, but if you look at the lines for the should shaping, you can see that they are way far apart. In the book, Zimmerman states that shoulder width is, on average, 14". I had, and still have no idea how to measure for shoulder width, (do you go to the shoulder knobs? The armpits? WTF?) so I went with that number. I think it's too far. Oh well.

Another modification was the inclusion of short row shaping for the bust. Every sweater I have knit up to now has not had short row shaping for this area. Every sweater up to now has been a failure, riding up in the back, stretching out in the front. In desperation, I picked up a copy of Big Girl Knits and read their awesome chapter on shaping and used it on this sweater. Even for math impaired me, the shaping section was laid out and broken down so simply that I could figure it out and apply it with ease. So you can be big in just one area and still benefit enormously from this book.

OK, one more picture.

That's me, all, "La, I am so tired of modeling." Also, I wanted to show how much the back of the sweater was NOT riding up or flaring out. ROCK!

A little sewing, a little blocking, and soon there will be a sweater.

Hopefully it will be fucking awesome okay. I'm pretty optimistic. Y'all. I learned magic loop for this. And I wrestled with the Kim Math (tm). AND KITCHENER STITCHING. Yes. I did. I did the kitchener. (It looks like poop, BUT STILL. I am all cross eyed from it and Monkey King is cowering in the corner from all my swearing.) Soooooooon!

In the meantime, here is a picture of me shopping in New York City.

Keep your cans of red paint still, that pelt be faux. Yo. Ok, I think that's a sign that it's time for bed now.