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01/03/2006

haven

In the summer of 2004, I started my most expensive and courageous project to date, Haven, from Rowan's Denim People book, knit with 20(!!!) balls of Rowan denim, as usual purchased from Jannette.

That summer, I was teaching test prep and working at my test prep center 40 hours a week, and spent the rest of my time knitting and watching baseball (2004 turned out to be a good time to watch that many Red Sox games!). The back of Haven took me a month to finish, with 240 rows and 3 cables throughout. Working cables with denim yarn can be Painful, especially when you've really never done cables before. And that denim yarn has no stretch! With the back completed, I moved on to one of the fronts, which moved a bit more quickly with only one cable and much less width, but when school started up again I just didn't have the time and put Haven aside.

Somehow, by this past spring, I finished the two fronts. One of the front's cables is Not Centered, but I noticed too late into it and there was no way I was going to reknit any of those cables, so it stayed. I could have moved on to the sleeves from there, but wanted to finish the collar first so I could throw all those pieces into the wash, watch them shrink, and be inspired to finish those sleeves. I worked on that collar a little over the summer, and finished it...last week! Yay! I threw all the pieces into the dryer and was left with these:





The finished pile of fronts, back, and collar; a close-up of the collar; a close-up of some cables on the back.

I am almost done with the first sleeve, and will wash it and try to set it in before starting the second one. Something felt strange about the sleeve cap and the armhole shaping for the fronts and back. On the front and back, there's at least 8 inches above where I first had to bind off for the armhole, but I don't see how the sleevecap will be more than 5. I have looked at other patterns and seen that the one number being higher than the second is fine, and I've set in sleeves before so it kiiiind of makes sense, but this discrepancy seems like too much. I don't know what I'll do if that sleeve doesn't fit - reworking sleeve shaping is scary enough without having to take into account the denim shrinking! At least I'll know what's going on within the next day or two.

17:25 Posted in haven | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this