Monday, February 6, 2012

One Goal Too Many

I bit off more than I could chew knit.  Anxious to begin my first sweater of the year, I thought I might incorporate some of my 2012 goals - the one about knitting enough top-down sweaters to make top down an intuitive skill and the one about becoming familiar with the Contiguous Method and the one about becoming more creative.  All in the same sweater.  Yep.  My ambition sometimes knows no boundaries.

I would use this lovely yarn that has been languishing on my shelf for more than two years,
 

and maybe trim it out with this - that's the creative part -
and maybe do top-down and maybe even top-down contiguous.   You can see where this is going.  I choked.  The contiguous is not working for me with this yarn.  With the  loft and  hairy fuzz of this yarn, the increase-every-row aspect of the contiguous shoulder made the knitting look matted and tough. 

 
A tough-looking sweater knit with a  soft, lofty yarn was not one of my goals.  Time to start afresh.  Re-starting requires research.  Sunday evening was spent reading.  First these,

 

then these.
 
My vision is now a sweater that  incorporates only two goals - a creative, top-down.  That, I think,  is  manageable.    Especially since I now have a great gauge swatch.

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

I personally have a hard time incorporating more than two goals, so I'm glad you didn't drive yourself crazy before realizing you were stretching yourself. Good luck with the sweater!

Needles said...

I was wondering how the contiguous shoulder was going. I did a little playing with it around Christmas and just couldn't find my feet with it. I'll stick with Barbara Walkers Top Down method for now.

Sandra said...

I was looking at your picture of your reference books, and thinking to myslef "got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it." We think the same way when looking for inspiration!
I think the contiguous method needs a crisper more defined wool - I still want to try it as well, and get comfortable with it.