Knitting and Knitting or Purling and Purling

It's time again to give an update on my knitting projects.  This week I worked on two of them. 

I completed the front of my dark rose sweater. Here's a shot:




Also, I'm almost done the other sleeve; I have about 5-6" left to do. With any luck I'll finish that tomorrow, then I'll start on the other front. That's the last major piece, so I'm really happy. There's still quite a bit to do, though, including some stuff I haven't done before, like a button band. Thank God for the internet and Youtube.

I wanted to point out something very cool about this sweater pattern. Two things, actually:

• First, it's called Garter and Cable sweater. This confused me at first. I knew that Garter stitch was all knitting and since I couldn't see where in the pattern the "all knitting" was, I figured I was missing something. It didn't dawn on me until I was about 10" into the back of the sweater that Garter stitch can also be all purling. (because purling is the opposite of knitting). Duh! That's cool, right?

• The second thing is that both the ribs and the cables are backed or surrounded by garter stitch. If you click on the photo above, you should be able to see that. That means those stitches will be knitted, or in this case purled, on both sides. With me so far? Since the right sides of the ribs and cables are all knitting, that means the backsides are purled. Right? So if the backsides of the ribbing, cables and garter stitches are all purling....every second row in the sweater is all purling!!! That's far simpler than "traditional" ribbing and cabling, where the front side and back side are a combination of knitting and purling. If you've ever knitted such a sweater you'll know that at first the pattern is grueling to follow, but once you "see" the pattern it's much easier; the backside is often just the opposite of the front. The design/method on this sweater makes that whole pattern learning process so much easier and every second row a breeze.   I love this sweater!!

The other things I was working on is a cowl.
 

 

Remember my blue scarf that was too short to make into a double loop cowl (from Bernat). Well, I tried again with the white Bernat Boa yarn I had. I guess I really need to check my gauge using this yarn because it, too, came up short by about 8" even though I followed the pattern exactly...garter stitch and number of stitches. It still works as a cowl, sort of, more like a neck muffler. I'm going to leave it for now, but it wouldn't take that much time to rip it out and redo on larger needles.  Something to think about....

That's it for this week.

Next week, I'll give you an update on my temperature scarf, which is going to have many more blue rows. Brrrrrr...it's frickin' cold here.

Needlework Tuesday is hosted by Heather over at Books and Quilts.