Oh thank god the December Knitty finally came out. I was so ready to be rid of that Suss Cousins thingy on the cover. I’m pretty well convinced that it can’t stay up on a regular person’s shoulders. Which is to say, a regular person who does not invest in much wardrobe tape.
On first glance, I’m kind-of interested in the winter issue’s Emerald and not much else. Not that Knitty is high on my priority list. I am so ridiculously pants-peeingly happy about the winter ’06 Interweave that I don’t give a damn if nobody in the world writes a new knitting pattern in 2007. There are a good 5 projects in there that I’d knit with great contentment.
In fact, I couldn’t resist casting on this one, the Nantucket Jacket.
Fellow Nantucket Jacketeers, take note! The pattern photography on the jacket is obscuring some important details. First, the Nantucket Jacket is a mere 22? long. That’s a really lame length. I’ll be lengthening mine to at least 24?, so that it has some hope of overlapping the top of my jeans.
Second, in lieu of sensible waist-shaping, there are some serious seed-stitch godets. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think that godets and peplums belong on a sweater. I’m going to cast on 11 seed stitches there, and decrease gently to 3 at the waist.
Third, this sweater is a cabled worsted-weight sweater, but it looks dainty. This is because it is being modeled by the Interweave Amazon. Now, I love the Interweave Amazon and I miss her terribly when she is not on the cover of Interweave. But look, I’m 5’3? and I don’t want to put a ton of effort into an elegant cabled sweater only to discover that it wears like a cinderblock. I did some math, and if I knit the 46? sweater with a dk-weight yarn on #5 (3.75mm) needles, I’ll get something in the range of 38?. This gives me enough ease to wear a not-skintight shirt underneath.
Oh yeah, and I’m losing the scalloped edges. Just can’t do scallops.
ETA: I’d just like to point out that this sweater, also from the Winter ’06 Interweave, would look adorable in Leesh’s homespun. I’m pointing this out in part so that Leesh will be compelled to make herself an entire sweater in her yarn, and in part because their recommended yarn is one of Colinette’s. Colinette yarns are expensive because they are dyed in a bathtub in Wales using pigments extracted from the blood of orphans and various endangered species. I think that most Colinette yarn I’ve seen in person is not really that great-looking. For example, “Tagliatelli” totally looks like a bolus of artfully space-dyed tapeworm.