Monday, March 31, 2008

spring is bolero season

At least it is in New Haven, where the springlike temperatures are hovering in the high 30s. I started work on this last spring, finished knitting all the pieces and then left it for ages because I was too afraid of seaming. Luckily, I needed something to keep my shoulders warm at a friend's wedding, so I picked up my yarn needle and my courage.

Turns out, I didn't need to be afraid. With the knitty tutorial on seaming at my side, no sleeve could stand in my way. I'm not going to lie: I even enjoyed seaming. I think my hang-up in the past was that seaming took a long time and still looked bad. Now that it looks decent (even though it still takes a long time) and results in a finished product that I can wear, I love seaming!

The yarn is Rowan Scottish Tweed Aran, and if it's scratchier than I might like, it is definitely versatile: I wore the bolero to the wedding, and to Easter, and to class today. I knit the picot edging during an entertaining conference call with EW and CH, so I've told myself that my mistakes aren't super noticeable.

I was so inspired by learning to seam that I worked my way through the seams on another unfinished piece this past weekend. And then I learned about blocking superwash wool. Apparently, I'm not the first to learn this the hard way. (last two are ravelry links; sign up for an invite!) Full story to come.

(For those of you who think about such things, that picture is from EW's lovely house in Oakland. You should all be so lucky as to visit her.)

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Bolero!!

I'm glad that Hannah has finally learned to finish her sweaters--this way, when the rest of us who have not yet ventured into that territory need help or are frustrated with seaming, we can turn to her for help.

Way to pave the way HEB!

Churchma said...

This is exquisite! Great job! I've always found the final assembly scary too - and too often I've rushed through it and done a bad job. I recently discovered something called "mattress stitch" which works better than other method I tried because it's easier to see exactly where you are putting the stitches on both pieces.