Adelaide is complete!

I finally sewed the buttons on this Saturday at my knitting circle. One of my knittahs, Stephi, was kind enough to take some pictures for me (which turned out way better, of course, than any pictures I have taken, because she actually knows what she's doing with the camera). Thanks, Stephi!

Adelaide is a long jacket-style, shawl-collar sweater with bracelet-length sleeves and pockets with contrast trim that matches the collar and hem edging. It's knitted in what I think is a pretty innovative way: from the outside of the border inward, and then up from the bottom hem in one piece, with practically no seaming. The collar stitches are caught in as you knit up the body. I still need to tweak the pattern a bit and size it up for M-2X, but it's ready to go in size S if anyone wants to take a crack at it; just email me or ping me in Ravelry and I can send you the pattern.

After I get back I'll be boxing this up to send to Thee Accidental Dater...hoping it brings her warmth, if not reliable non-crazy companionship, during the cold East Coast winter.

Laverne 2

Having given away the first Laverne to my adorable sweater model, colleague and friend Lorrie D., I decided I wanted one for myself. So I made a white-on-white version, which you can see here. This one uses the modification provided in the pattern for longer short sleeves (the original Laverne has cap sleeves) and it also uses the same color for the body and ribbed trim.

I wore it this week and discovered two things: 1) Mohair REALLY keeps you warm, and 2) Fuzzy sweaters totally make your boobs look bigger. I guess that second one counts as more of a RE-discovery, though. Here's to ya, Jane Russell!

Adelaide will have buttons. And pockets!

Just so you all (that's right, I'm talking to all four of you who are reading this) know, Adelaide will be one of those sweaters that you can actually carry stuff around in. She'll have a couple of pockets in the front. Won't that be nice? It confounds me that I can leave the house fully dressed--sometimes wearing as many as four or five separate garments--and still have no place to put my car keys. My husband does not have this problem. Men's clothing tends to have pockets; women's clothing tends not to have pockets. Sucky!

I also found some very nice buttons for this sweater on Monday at Silk Road. Sometimes the buttons come first with a sweater; I have a stash of buttons scrounged from various junk shops and antique malls that I paw through as part of my design process. Other times, though, I get all the way to the end of the knitting process with no buttons, and then have to go hunting for something I like. That can be hard, either because I've just gone ahead and made buttonholes of an arbitrary size that whatever buttons I do get will need to fit through--or I've rashly worked up the garment without buttonholes, in which case I have to figure out whether to use snaps or a zipper or some other closure, and just use the buttons for show.

Buttons are definitely on my top-100 list of Inanimate Things I Like a Lot, though. And "finding just the right button for something I'm knitting (or may be knitting soon)" is definitely in the top 50 of Feelings I Like to Feel--lower than "mixing the perfect ratio of gin and tonic" and "coasting downhill on my bicycle on a sunny day" but just a bit higher than "decisively stapling the corner of a finished term paper."

Next up: Adelaide

Now on the needles: Adelaide, which will be a shawl-collared jacket in muted shades of pink and green. After the ultrafine mohair of Laverne, the chunky Araucania wool is a big switch. I experimented with a swatch of slipped-stitch color work for the body of the sweater, but the verdict from The Ladies this morning was that I should stick with plain stockinette and save the color changes for the garter stitch border. (Thanks, Ladies! Good advice, as always.) I'm just about ready to start working the short rows for the collar and the buttonholes nowl; first I have to double-check to see which side the buttons are supposed to go on--I can never remember that.


Special thanks to Jene for the sardine bowl...