December's Coming Up

     And so is the neckline of my Hurry-up Last Minute Sweater.  Time to pick the yarn for the hems.  I want a contrasting color, of course and, as Elizabeth Z suggests, I'll use a lighter weight yarn to make the hem.  A light worsted is most suitable for keeping the hem nice and trim.  Now to choose the color. 

       
     Here are the three candidates.  Looking at this photo I can already tell that the plain red is out;  it is just too predictable.   The other two are a toss up.  The top ball is Amber in Dancing Colors, and the ball at the bottom is OM organic merino (I know!  I really do need to find a way to get OM up on the website....well that story is another post).  I love rust and grey together, but then the softness of Om at my wrists and neck is most appealing.  Hmmmm.  What do you think?
     The shaping on this sweater is brilliant and most satisfying.  Watching the sleeve decreases converge toward the front neck is exciting and I can barely put the knitting down, racing toward the finish(ing) line.

 

       Notice the difference in the look of the decrease lines?  That's the effect called "tracking" and is caused by the yarn being a single, not plyed, strand.  You can see it also in the stockinette stitch, one side of the stitch standing out more than the other.  Some of that will block out along the decrease line, but most of it will remain in the body of the sweater.  That is just fine.  I was expecting it.  It's like an automatic texture stitch, and charmingly rustic looking, simply perfect for a sweater that is slated to become my go to for winter walks and picnics.
    At this point this is one hefty piece of knitting.  Not a project for the weak-wristed, I can tell you.  With it's neckline still wide open, it has a definite 80's retro kind of Flashdance thing going on.   But wait!  Add leggings and a belt?  C'est au courant!

      I definitely want to try to figure out this shaping in a lighter gauge.  What is the solution to this stitch/row gauge puzzle?  Elizabeth mentions in the Knitter's Almanac that in her own endeavors at such figuring, she ended up with a rather complicated version of this sweater.  I wonder if she wrote that down anywhere?  I dream that there are loads of pages of things that Elizabeth wrote that we'll see, if we're lucky, sometime in the future.  Now wouldn't that be grand?