Thursday, August 19, 2010

Shrug it off

As promised, here are the details of my latest finished project! (I love how the light in this picture makes it look like the sweater is the Holy Grail or something, haha).
I had two skeins of Seacolors wool from my Mom that I wanted to use for a sweater. Last time my Mom gifted me some of this yarn it became the modified Cloud Bolero by Ysolda. While I'm normally not a huge fan of shrugs I decided it might be useful to have in my wardrobe and it seemed like a good solution to the "how to get a sweater-ish item out of two skeins of yarn" problem.
So here it is- a heavily modified version of the Textured Circle Shrug by Stefanie Japel. While there are a lot of things I like about the original (namely the neck and the ribbing details) my yarn limitations required some big changes.
The most noticeable difference is that I removed all the reverse-stockinette texture. I never liked it that much to begin with so that was an easy change. It was harder to say goodbye to the 1x1 ribbing sections but ribbing eats up yarn like the dickens, so that was a no-go. I also knew I wasn't going to be able to achieve the same length so I shaped the front with short rows to try to get as much bust coverage from the yarn and some length in the back, without using up yarn on the neck.
This project was very free-form, I knit until I decided I wanted short-rows, then I added some in, then I knit some more. I kept my eye on the ball of yarn to try to figure out when I should start the border and cast-off. Then I decided I could add some length to the arms (and improve the shaping with decreases) so I ripped the arms back and knit them out again.

I'm not totally in love with this project, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm not a shrug-lover in the first place, or if it's because the modifications make it a little odd. At least my stash-busting adventures have continued, and I'm hoping that once cool weather rolls in I'll find this to be a useful little sweater.

2 comments:

  1. The shrug is cute and I think it is very stylish. Sometimes we can be too critical of the things that we make, perhaps that's human nature, but I'm sure many people would agree that you did a lovely job and would be amazed that you were able to construct it from merely 2 skeins of yarn.

    Too bad I couldn't find a follow button as I'd certainly follow your blog or blogs (Like your travel blog also...nice photos btw). I don't subscribe via e-mail to blogs as the thought of over 400 e-messages bombarding my in-basket daily makes me break out in a cold sweat of sheer panic.

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  2. Hi A.P. Thanks for the comment, I hadn't thought about the difference between following and subscribing. I went ahead and added a gadget to make it easier to follow, thanks for the suggestion!

    As for the sweater, you're right, we are always most critical of ourselves. I think the main issue though is that the shrug is just not my style so I'll probably never wear it. Anyone want a shrug?

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