what size am I, anyway?
I have written before about my Metropole, but I know it's been a few months. Long story short, I'm knitting myself a coat from the new Mason-Dixon book. It never would have occurred to me to do such a thing, except that I tried on the sample coat at the book signing last fall, and it was amazing. I've been plugging away ever since.
It's actually fairly quick to knit. The yarn is bulky (I'm using some Cascade 109 Tweed that I got from Webs) and the stitch is fairly easy to knit mindlessly. My biggest issue seems to be size. Since it's bulky, subtle gauge differences change the garment enormously. I've done quite a bit of knitting, measuring, washing and blocking what's been knit, and then ripping it back. The main problem may be that I'm convinced that I will fit into a size small, since that is what I tried on. Whatever I knit continues to be too small for me. huh.
In any case, I'm moving ahead, and started the first sleeve over the weekend. One fun thing about this coat is that there are contrasting stripes on the cuffs and collar. I tried 3 different color combinations before I settled on this one. I am ending up with some orange handspun (from Hope Spinnery roving), Cascade 109 Tweed in a charcoal gray color and some Lamb's Pride that I'm recycling from a half-finished hat.
Last night at my knitting group I thought I'd tempt fate and make the sleeves an inch longer than specified before I started increasing. (I have longer arms than most, since I'm tall.) The sleeve was 13" when I went home, and I was frustrated at how it was just too small to fit around my arm. Maybe I could stretch it and make it fit?? This morning I wised up, realizing that I don't want a skin tight winter coat, and tore back to where I was supposed to start increasing. Sometimes I'm too big for my britches, or too big for my coat in this case. Perhaps following the pattern (and realizing what my measurements are) would be a good idea in the future...
5 comments:
wow eliza! is that seed? its so evenly knit and looks so fine but you said bulky yarn right? looks great.
Alison
The fabric looks beautiful! And that much seed stitch would definitely make me want to knit the smaller size ;)
Looks like Linen Stitch to me! Which I think might be even slower than Seed...It is gorgeous though - color combo is unusual and very interesting. This all will be worth the aggravation.
EBSB
Oh, how frustrating! It does look gorgeous, though. I love the color combination and the neat texture.
I had to rip the sleeves back a whole bunch of times. The armholes are too big, I realized after ripping back 6-7 times. I sewed it all together after the 10th frog, and hoped for the best. no good; going to have to re-do the whole thing from the armhole decrease up.
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