Audrey A-Long

Moment of Truth

Audrey in Blue

Well folks, I no longer have to feel guilty about not finishing the project for the knit-a-long that I hosted. Here she is, my Audrey in Night Sky (a color Rowan discontinued last year).

I made the small size and pretty much followed the instructions to the letter. I did 18 lace pattern repeats for the neckline -- originally I had 19, but that made for too much gapping at the neck, so I ripped it out, removed a repeat and put it all back in place. Now I'm much happier and have a sweater I can actually wear to work.

One word about the application of the lace. It puzzled me a great deal the first time I did it, and then I got an excellent recommendation from an excellent rabbit as to how to think about the problem.

At least for the small sized garment, the back and front contribute about twice as much length to the perimter of the top opening as do the sleeves. This means that we can do a little basic algebra to get where we need to go:

sleeve top distance = x
back and front distance = 2x

perimeter = 2(x + 2x) = 2(3X) = 6X

6X = 18 lace units so...

x = 3 lace units

now we can go back to the sleeve and the back and fronts...

sleeve top = x, so 3 lace units per sleeve top
back and front = 2x, so 6 lace units have to span each of those.

So when I pinned the lace down to the top, I just made sure that there were 6 lace units over the back, 3 over the first sleeve, 6 lace units over the front and 3 over the remaining sleeve.

For me, it all added up to a nice little victory dance and even a few nice compliments from my husband.

And now I can claim my very own label. Woohoo!

Chrisanthi's Audrey

I'm doing a stand-in post for Chrisanthi who recently finished her Audrey:

Chrisanthi hasn't had the chance to wear her yet; she writes: "I made her using a wool/alpaca blend on size 3mm needles. The weather here has been too hot to wear a sweater but they've forcast snow for the weekend."

Just so you all know, "here" is Greece for Chrisanthi. So we now have a Greek Audrey to add to our finished list!

As someone who is sitting amidst a great deal of snow, here's hoping that Chrisanthi got a little cool weather to enjoy her sweater in, but not too much snow.