Wednesday, May 5, 2010

A Gaggle Of Garter

The north-bound Geese have been flying overhead lately, making me think of the term 'gaggle of Geese'. I've decided that it's a good label for my 'all-garter-all-the-time' Tomten.

I am closing in on the end though. Last night I finished torque-free, sleeve number two and managed to complete the first of the finishing - the edging along both fronts and the collar. In garter stitch, naturally.

That means there are just three - but three big - details left, before I can call it complete.

The first is all those ends.
Should you ever decided to knit a Tomten Jacket, use just one yarn. My multi- yarn Tomten, knit from leftovers means a 'gaggle' of ends to be woven in.

Next will be the sewing of the sleeve seams, with their unusual connection to the body. Because of it's very narrow fronts, when Tomten is folded in half, back to fronts, 14 attached-to-nothing stitches are left to form the underarm.
The instructions say to sew those 14 stitches to the first 14 garter ridges of the sleeve. Leave it to Elizabeth to put an interesting twist on construction.

Last will be the zipper. Yes, I know, it doesn't need to be last but I have to work up to it.
I don't do zippers often so as I find them hard to do and the my attempts are not always successful often look crappy.

My hope is to accomplish these completion points quickly. I'm tired of listening to the knitterly equivalent of honking geese and want to see the end of this gaggle.

9 comments:

Sandra said...

at least you can take solace in knowing how beautiful it is.
But yeah, all those ends... rough.

Laurie said...

It's going to be a beautiful sweater in spite of the evil ends to be woven and the zipper. I've never tried sewing in a zipper...

Sel and Poivre said...

I have to say ends or no I think the finished result will be worth the extra effort! The striping of the varied colours enhances the squared lines of the jacket!

Anne Campbell said...

It's really good-looking. I'm trying to decide what to knit for a baby boy, and I might be tempted by this in one of Meg's self-striping colorways. Zippers do scare me, too, though. Hmmm...

LaurieM said...

An idea for next time (if there ever is such a thing)would be to just splice the colors together and let the changes fall where they may. It would save sewing in the ends and if the colors ended up un-even, just call it a feature!

Also, I always understood that sort of sleeve construction to be called a modified drop-shoulder.

Anonymous said...

oooh, can't wait to see the FO!

Anonymous said...

oooh, can't wait to see the FO!

Sigrun said...

Have you ever tried knitting in the ends as you go along? In garter stitch you could only do this on a right-side row. (Depending on gauge) about 15 -20 sts before you need the new yarn, put the end of the new yarn behind the work and knit over, uner, over, under it till you need to drop the old yarn. Then knit with the new yarn and go over/under the end of the old yarn. Sewing in ends is not my favorite activity either.

Sigrun said...

OK I just read what I wrote, and that doesn't work on the second row (back side), so it would give you only 1/2 the ends to darn in. In stockinette st, it can be done on both sides.