August 05, 2002

I finished the back of my pink and orange sweater in cotton while trying out some things I've never done before:

1) The first rows of the sweater are in 1/1 ribbing, so I cast on my stitches using the tubular cast-on method in the main yarn. It's so neat! It's invisible, and blends in perfectly with the ribbing. (And doesn't the word "tubular" bring back memories of big hair bands and neon-pink pants? I remember the word "tubular" being used to describe something as "cool" back in the 80s when I was in highschool. Yes, I'm that old. Yikes!)

2) The shoulders on this sweater are sloped, but I didn't want to do a diagonal bind-off and then sew the shoulder seams together. I wanted to leave the stitches on holders so I could do a seam bind-off, like I do for sweaters with straight shoulders. To achieve this, I decided to work darts for the shoulders, turning my work at certain points every two rows. It worked! The shoulders are gradually slanted, and there are no steps or holes to show for it. I left the stitches on stitch holders, and I'll bind them off together with the shoulder stitches of the other side of the sweater to make a nice-looking seam. I've never created sloped shoulders this way before, so let's see how it looks when the shoulder seams are joined together.

Offing on a tangent, I visited my local Phildar yarn store (er, again) and bought some beautiful new yarn called "Giboulees" so I can make myself a sweater for fall. The yarn has just been debuted by Phildar and I can't wait to work with it! Can you stand the suspense?

* For reference purposes, the tubular cast-on method using the main yarn for 1/1 ribbing is described in Katharina Buss' Big Book Knitting.

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