Friday, June 27, 2008

Motivation

I guess nothing lights a fire under my butt like having a knitting deadline! Also, what Wendy always says is very true. If you are monogamous with your knitting projects, they get done fast. The knitting on the Leaf Kimono is finished:

Leaf Kimono Sleeves Blocking

That's both sleeves blocking. Please excuse the photos, the color is way off there (for some reason they look too orange?) because I took them at night. I did pin everything together and tried the top on before blocking to make sure I had enough length on the sleeves, and everything looked peachy. The magic numbers for me turned out to be 16 chart repeats, and casting on 57 stitches. I essentially made the sleeves for the next size up, and will just ease the extra inch or so in when I'm sewing the sleeves on to the front of the body. In retrospect, I probably could have just made the 40-inch size and been just fine. I got a little nervous about how it would look, so I did a quick mock-up before the sleeves finished drying. No pins, just laying out the pieces to make sure everything would fit.

Leaf Kimono Testing

Here you can see the difference between the color of the wet sleeves and the dry body. It looks like a top! Hooray! Unfortunately, I'm going to have to leave this behind for the weekend. We set up things to go visit Berlin this weekend, and our college friend managed to get her flight extended to Monday so she could come with us. It will be another jam-packed weekend like our trip to Munich, and definitely not the right conditions for fiddly finishing work. The seaming will take careful attention, which will have to wait until Tuesday. So it's back to the sock for me, except that I'm past the heel turn and almost finished with the gusset decreases, so I'm nervous. If I finish the sock, I won't have anything to knit. Can't have that happening, so last night I wound some of this yarn into a ball. It's the "polar morn" colorway, which isn't on that page. We'll see if I end up needing it.

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