Last winter I knit a small rose brooch (Ravelry link) from some leftover Fyberspates yarn. Mum loved it, and made me promise to knit several for use as buttonholes and corsages for the wedding. I’ve been working on them on and off for ages, and today I finally finished them:
There’s no particular code regarding purple vs blue or pink vs blue hearts – there are enough for everyone at the top table, immediate family, and people giving readings. Everyone can just pick the one they like. (The background in that photo is the white board I bought to make a big seating plan – I’ll be keeping that after the wedding for knitting photography purposes!)
In non-wedding-related knitting, I cast on a couple of weeks ago for Cayman (Ravelry link). It was very much an impulse knit – it was the first day of the summer holidays, and I was sitting outside my favourite coffee shop in Stirling reading Yarn Forward magazine, and I thought, “That’s a nice sweater. It would be good to slip on in the evenings on honeymoon.” And luckily (or perhaps unluckily) McAree’s is right across the road from the coffee shop. And before I knew it, I’d purchased a whole bunch of Rowan Summer Tweed in a lovely pale sage green.
So I cast on, and promptly realised that the artful manner in which the model is slouching in a chair in the photo disguises the fact that the pattern has no shaping other than some ribbing. So I added some waist shaping. The ribbing also changed from a baby cable rib to plain rib after a couple of inches (I guess this would add a bit of shaping, but the ribbing starts below the natural waist), so I decided to make it all baby cable rib because I thought the transition looked weird in the photos. I also omitted the short-row shaping on the collar, because I didn’t want the collar to be so high at the back.
Here’s my progress so far:
I’m very happy with the fit and the shaping (if my swatch is not lying then it should gain a bit of ease when I wash it) and I think the weird ruffling around the collar will go away when the collar is properly sewn down at the front, sleeves are added, and it’s blocked. But I’m not happy with the ribbing. Because I’ve kept it all in baby cable rib, it pulls tighter than it should over the hips, leaving the split sides (which you can’t see in the photo) gaping and looking very unflattering across my belly!
The current plan: frog back to the stocking stitch portion, knit a couple more inches in stocking stitch, then switch to plain 3×2 rib (abandoning the baby cable rib altogether) and knit it a couple of inches longer than it currently is. A plain rib should have a bit more ease than the cable rib, but I’m wondering whether to stick in a more increases as well.
So I’m looking for advice, dear readers! What should I do with the bottom of this sweater to make it more flattering? Is my plan of a longer stocking stitch portion followed by plain rib a good one?
Could you get rid of the split sides? I’m thinking that any kind of ribbing will pull in so that it would be hard not to have the splits gaping a bit.
Love the flowers!
It might be worth blocking it before making any big decisions?
The buttonholes are great and so is the sweater.