Why Is This Man Smiling?

Lo Tech Just Before the Zipper

Over the weekend I got Lo Tech most of the way done. All those pieces combined to make a whole sweater. I am always pleasantly surprised when it comes together. This sweater is simple in design and yarn, but that means that there aren't too many places to hide flaws. John kindly agreed to model it so that I could show it off a little bit. He looks good in it, don't you think? If only I could get him to think that cardigans were okay garments. He doesn't really think of them as fashion statements.

Those of you who are familiar with Lo Tech will notice that I have made a few changes. The first change is that I eliminated the hood and replaced it with a K1 P1 collar that matches the ribbing at the cuffs and around the base of the sweater. It's kind of silly, but I'm sort of proud of myself where this collar is concerned. I just picked up the number of stitches that "felt right" -- in this case roughly three out of every four. I know it's not earthshatteringly exciting, but if you would like to, you can see a closeup of the collar here.

But that's not the only thing that I changed. I also decided to go full steam ahead with the zipper instead of buttons. Initially, I was just going to pick up stitches and create a little ribbed edge. But then I remembered Claudia's use of applied I-cord to create a good zipper mounting edge for her Rogue and started to read about applying I-cord to edges.

With help from instructions at the Knitting-And site, as well as Bonne Marie's Tektalk on Applied I-cord I got to work on applying edges to the front's of Lo Tech. Because I couldn't find any pictoral discussions that gave me a visual "how to get started" I took a bunch of shots along the way with the intention of creating such a resource (mostly, I must admit, for myself, because I am sure I will forget how to do it the next time I want to and will need a reminder). Hopefully I will have that up later in the week. I just didn't have enough time to code it up tonight.

However, I can give you an idea of what it looks like on the sweater. To take a look at the edging at the neck line of the sweater you can click here. To see how it looks near the bottom ribbing, click here.

What's left? Well, first, I need to find the perfect zipper. I bought a couple over the weekend, but I don't think either is really going to work out for this sweater. I'm probably going to be checking out Zipper Stop (just imagine me holding up a sweater arm trying to match the sweater to the zipper color swatch card for a good low tech laugh). I'm also going to try to figure out how to implement the excellent idea that Alison at Quantum Tea recommended. Instead of eliminating the pockets, I want to find a way to attach them to the inside of the sweater -- that way, dad can carry some goodies with him when he's out jogging (keys, MP3 player) but they won't get filled with sawdust when he's working in his workshop. The only problem for me is that I really want the attachment to be invisible. I like the way the sweater looks simple and clean from the outside and don't want any extra seams breaking it up.

Looks like I'll have something to think about while I'm waiting for that zipper to arrive.