New Projects

Here is a dawn view of the back yard on a not so crisp October morn. We are having a fairly warm fall this year. Notice that everything is still green, since we don't get fall color here until around Thanksgiving.

I finished off the grey sweater so it was time to ponder a new project. The new sweater will be a color called "Ranch Red', sort of a barny red color. I planned a cardigan with cable panels up the fronts, and since there seemed no point in knitting the narrow little panels on either side of the cable panel on the machine, I am knitting the whole fronts by hand and the sleeves and back on the machine. I find that I can pretty much match the gauges that I get on the bulky machine when I knit by hand. To find a cable panel to use, I consulted my 1971 volume by Barbara Walker.

I chose this panel, except that the center pattern calls for twisted stitches on the design edge, and since I am not a fan of twisted stitches, I changed that.

I like to type out the instructions for cables onto an Excel spreadsheet so that I always know where I am in the pattern. I mark the knitting every 20 rows with a safety pin, and the spreadsheet goes up to about row 150 for a center panel. I haven't gotten very far yet, but it is looking good so far. I add about two stitches for every cable right after the ribbing to account for the pulling in of the cables. I later decrease these extra stitches right before binding off for the neck.

The Jaywalker socks are going very slowly because I haven't been knitting on them much. I have the pattern going now though so the pace should pick up from here. Or not.