Starsky

A proper knitting post. I really need to photograph a bunch of my projects. My pet peeve is photos people take of stuff they knit but they’re not wearing it. I want to see how it fits and flows. Although I guess a photo of sweater on the floor is better than no photo at all which is where I am now since self-shot photos are not my forte. I have a pile of knitted items that need to be documented. Maybe next month with all the house guests descending upon me.

The finished* sweater is the Starsky pattern that is free from Knitty. A lot of starts and stops on this one. I used the Debbie Bliss Silk Alpaca yarn from an earlier scratched sweater. Here’s a blog post and you can see I struggled. After awhile I realized it might not be the pattern but the yarn. It’s a drapey yarn that needs more than a straight stockinet stitch.

After a short hunt I decided on the Starsky and it was a perfect fit… except one thing. Yarn quantity. This is where it gets a bit fuzzy due to the timeline. I bought the yarn in June 2007. I’m guessing I didn’t start the Starsky pattern until a year later. I had Cece pick up a few more balls for me when she was at webs awhile back (like maybe two years ago). She searched and searched to get the same dye lot for the balls but ended up with Aran instead of DK I think. So the project sat for a long while until I stumbled upon the same yarn at the local yarn store in Chatham NY one spring while visiting Emilia. A year later on the next visit, I brought the project and bought three balls figuring I only needed two with the help of the ladies in the store. Frustrating considering the yarn was on sale for maybe $5/ball at Webs and was over $9/ball at the yarn store. If only. Started back up on the project only to discover that two balls was not enough and even with the third ball I was short. It went back into the black hole of unfinished projects that have me stumped. And then this fall I pulled it out determined to finish it one way or another. In the end I ended up holding two strands of the dk together and knit the belt first and sew up all the seams. Then I just kept knitting the collar until I ran out of yarn. I wanted a nice full comfy collar. And it worked out wonderful. That part did at least.

Which brings me to the * part. Aren’t all sweaters quasi-finished when first worn? The issue is the sweater isn’t quite done. I’ve woven in all the ends and it’s all knit. Only part missing is the belt loops which shouldn’t take much time and I have a little bit of yarn from the scraps that I should be able to coble. I need to press the thing as the ribbing on the front needs to be stretched out a bit. The reason I didn’t go all the way to the end? The #&*$ armpits. This is yet another sweater where it is tight in the armpits. Don’t know why. My arms are not that big. And I don’t think I’m seaming incorrectly.

Monday I wore the sweater to work to test it out to see if maybe wearing it would stretch the armpits out. I’m undecided. I can’t figure out if 1) I just got used to having a rubber band around my arm pits, 2) I learned not to move so the circulation would be cut off, or 3) the sweater actually did grow some from wearing.

Is there an easy fix to making the armpits bigger? I really don’t think there is. And I’ve looked. I don’t know what to do, short of ripping out half the seams, ripping out the entire collar, tinking back the top of the sleeves and reknitting the tops to be wider and then tinking back the core and starting the arm holes lower. And all this with no extra yarn. Is this a sweater I will wear even though it doesn’t quite fit right? Or should I go back and do it right? I don’t know. So until I can get a decent picture, I’m keeping this one in the closet and seeing how often I wear it (with nothing more than a tank underneath as that’s all there is room for). These pictures were the best I could do. Better ones later hopefully.