Update on Bada Bing

I’ll bet you forgot that I was knitting this cherry red sweater… I cast on way back in late June when local cherries were in season.  I turned my attention away from it for Sock Summit and it took a while to get it back.  Then I worked on it pretty consistently for a while until I cast off the waist stitches.  That was a few weeks ago.  Here is its current state:

This is supposed to be a v-neck; I followed the instructions on The Incredible, Custom-fit Raglan Sweater page.  I didn’t make it very deep, though, and as a result, it doesn’t really look like a v-neck at all.  I’ll just make the neckband stitches (which are picked up later) pretty narrow.

At this point, I’m ready to pick up the arm stitches (still live on cables) and knit the sleeves down.  I’ll have to keep careful track of my decreases so I can replicate them on the other sleeve.  I didn’t keep very careful track of my decreases/increases in the body because I wouldn’t have to replicate them.  (There is a little bit of waist shaping in the body.)

There is a tiny edging in contrast color (a nice medium gray which doesn’t display very well in this photo) at the waist which I’ll repeat at the wrists and neckband.  We decided to make the edges in seed stitch so they won’t roll but also won’t pull in drastically like ribbing can do.  Here’s a closeup of the waist band:What else can I say about this project?  Oh, I bought new needles to knit it.  When working on my swatches, I realized that I fought with this yarn (which is Berroco Peruvia, a heavy worsted single) when using my pointy Knit Picks needles – and I didn’t fight with it when using my blunter Addi Turbos.  (I was working a circular swatch using 2 circulars, and I only had one set of size 9 tips for my Knit Picks cables so I supplemented with an old Addi that hadn’t seen much use in a long time.)  It made a huge difference in the snagging department.  My longest size 9 Addi was only 24”, so I ordered needles in two longer sizes (32” and 40”).  I’m happy to report that Addi has vastly improved their cable flexibility since the old days (when I was easily wooed to the Knit Picks needles partly for that reason).I think this is going to be a Christmas gift, so there’s not a huge rush, but just typing up this post makes me want to get back to it!  Thicker yarn really does knit up more quickly than sock yarn!  (I hear your “duh” from NE, K!)

Next update will be about spinning.