Metamorphosis

Something about getting Salt Peanuts finished in such a relatively short period of time got me feeling intensely guilty about the fact that my Audrey sweater has been languishing in a heap on top of some books in a bookcase. That hardly seemed elegant or dignfied, so I have decided that I can't get started on Butterfly until I give Audrey a chance to have her own starring role.

I think my stumbling block with getting this sweater completed is that the front and the back are the same and you have to knit two sleeves. At some level, Audrey is like sleeve hell times two. And my attention span is a relatively short one, so knitting the exact same thing twice, two times in the same top just tends to leave me bored. But I think there's been a long enough gap now. I started knitting the second front/back piece on Sunday morning and I'm now 20 rows away from binding off.

Audrey Transformation

I've been going back and forth on the "to block or not to block" question. Most of the time I think ribbing should be left alone to do it's own thing, but I decided to not leave well enough alone on this occasion, as you can see in the picture above.

Why? Well, to be frank, I wasn't pleased with the stitch conformation in the knit stitches next to purl stitches in the ribbing, and I feel that a good blocking will help ameliorate that problem. I also didn't think that it would be much of a treat to seam together the pieces if they were all as compressed as the piece I am currently working on. Finally, I am just curious to see how the Calmer blocks out. It has enough elasticity that I think that even with a little blocking the ribbing will be pretty stretchy.

And, I just like seeing the curvy lines of the ribbing when the piece is stretched out.

Early on after this sweater was published in Rowan #35, a lot of people seemed to think that the dart increases and decreases were unattractive, myself included. But after seeing a few of the sweaters get completed on the Audrey blog I became convinced that my first impressions might not have been the correct ones.

Darts and Increases

I rather like what I see in the picture above. I now think that they are a neat design element instead of being unattractive and crude.

I am also enjoying my Calmer experience. Calmer thinks that my Denise needles are AddiTurbos. Hopefully this combination of speed and smoothness will help me power on through to project completion.

P.S. Check this out... it's an official Audrey Hepburn stamp issued by the US Postal Service. I think I am going to need to get some of these to send out labels to the Audrey finishers!