Sunday, November 9, 2008

Grey Gansey


Grey Gansey
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures
I must say that I love knitting on Monday nights. It's great for my ego. A number of the women there seem very surprised with "how much I get done" in the week. At the same time, I'm just amazed at how many projects I see them come in with! I suppose I look at it from the perspective of knowing just how much knitting time I missed, rather than how much I managed to squeak in (which is usually quite a bit).

For instance, this afternoon I finished up another knit gift for my family. This one will move on to my nephew and hopefully be good for two years. I was aiming for a 2/3 size, but as you can see on my daughter, I think I hit closer to 3T (and maybe 3/4). At any rate the cuffs can be rolled up and a chunky look is going to be quite cute with this particular design.


Despite of the fact that I don't understand why you want to bother with minimal shaping on the sleeves, I did end up doing some. In the end I put six short rows in, each one short 8 stitches of the previous row. That makes the top of the sleeve just over one inch longer than the bottom. I'm not sure it makes a huge difference, but it made me feel smart and creative--so that's good enough! It also matches the sweatshirt I was using as my template.

I'm not certain this sweater is actually a gansey. I had a hard time understanding if it was the shape, or the cabling that made a gansey (or perhaps both). No cables here--just double-moss stitch. But is has a very attractive, blocky shape that seems to match all the ganseys I was able to find in my research. I still like the name better this way. It's much more elegant than "grey sweater".

I need to find a couple of "made with love" tags that I can put into things I am making for gifts now. This one needs one, and I need to mail one to my mother so she can (please, Mom?) tack it into the sweater I left there to be given at Christmas time. I'm also thinking of including a small bottle of Eucalan or Kookaburra wash. With as lovely and as special as these gifts are, I'd like to see them last a long time.

And even if they don't, I really had a lot of fun making them!

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