Cascade Weekender

Holy knitting needles Batman, it's a finished object!  

So I made another Weekender.  You'll perhaps remember that this is my second go at this pattern, my first attempt in 2021 ended badly for me but well for Ponchik, who fit the finished sweater well and wore it happily until this past fall when it got a bit too short.  (I have a ball of yarn left and am debating whether to unravel and knit longer or just call it quits, since she is happily wearing my pink Everyday Sweater these days.  I never was happy with the fit on the pink one, so I'm glad she's wearing it!  Waste not, want not).

But about this Weekender.  I'm starting to wonder if the sizing on Andrea's patterns is a little...um...off.  I know like 12,000 people have made this pattern, and that many people can't be wrong, but seriously, I've got gauge twice on this pattern, sized up on this version, went up a needle size, and still didn't quite get the iteration I was expecting.  And I've noticed that many of her round yoke necklines end up really wide on folks like me with narrow shoulders but beefy upper arms.  But maybe that's a knitting math/sizing issue on my part, I dunno.  (That's why I buy patterns, though!  Because I don't want to do all that math!)  

That said, I do like this sweater and will happily wear it.  

Details: I bought some Cascade 220 worsted on sale last spring with this pattern in mind.  I've never worked with Cascade before, even though I've heard all sorts of things about it, good and bad.  I would buy it again--it has a nice feeling in the hands while knitting, and it blocked out very nicely.  The color is more complex than it looks like in the photos, with flecks of blue throughout.  It has also been cloudy and rainy this week, so the light hasn't been the best for photos.  Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here.

For sizing.  I got gauge on a size 7 needle, but ended up knitting the body on a size 8 because I was so nervous about the size.  I knit a size 44, hoping that with the 8 needle, it would come out around 46" for about 8" of positive ease.  Slightly less than recommended, but I generally find less volume on top is better for me.  It's a good thing I went with the 8, because this came out exactly at 44, but that's fine.  I made the body 12" from the underarm, so shorter than the pattern length, but longer than my usual; I'm finding this year that 11-12" is a happier spot for me, particularly on a boxy thing like the Weekender.

For the sleeves, I ended up knitting one three times before I got what I wanted.  The first iteration was far too small, the second looked weird, and the third was golden.  Between sleeves 2-3 I decided to wet block the body to make the stitch pick up easier, and also on the recommendation of another knitter who noted that this style of sweater is harder to gauge sleeve length without blocking.  Absolutely the right call!  I cast on 64 stitches instead of 60 and am quite happy with the sleeve fit at the head, so that was also the right call.  My decreases were different: 2 stitches every 12 rows x 7, then 2 stitches every 6 rows x 3, then one row, and then ribbing.  Ribbing done on a size 6.  (Although on the tubular cast on for the hem, I did the tubular on a size 6, the rest of the ribbing on a 7, and switched to 8 at the body).  

I kitchenered the front neckline as directed, but just did a cast off in rib pattern for the back.  Not sure which one I prefer, although the front neckline was a bit of a pain.  I also did the knitting equivalent of a forward shoulder adjustement, since so many of my sewn blouses of this type have benefitted from it.  I knit the front 1/2" shorter and the back 1/2" longer, and that seems about right.  I possibly could have done short rows on the front neckline to shape it slightly, but this works.  

Okay, so that's it!  I finally finished the body on my blue Lightweight Pullover and am working on the sleeves (oh, Sleeve Island...) but since the end is in sight, I'm determined to soldier on.  The color is hard to capture--it's a pretty teal-y kind of blue.

I've got an Alpenglow all swatched and ready to go but have told myself I can't cast it on until the blue one is done.  And yes, I realize that knitting another of Andrea's patterns when I'm a little iffy on the sizing is maybe the height of insanity, but I love the pattern and want to try mosaic knitting, so hopefully it works!  

I went through all my yarn a few weeks ago to wind skeins and organize it again after almost a year of shoving the unusued balls from various projects into the bins.  I'm glad I did it, as it helped me map out the next few sweaters I want to make.  I also frogged my Cypress pullover as I've gained weight in the past year and it just didn't fit right.  I was never happy with the neckline anyway.  So much yarn, so little time!

Marking Time

Philip would have been 16 this year, and I find that the way I hold his memory has changed these past few years.  At first, I held my grief so tightly in my fist, afraid to let it go lest I forget somehow.  That letting it go would mean letting him go.  And then there was grieving a lot of other things in my life that felt hard to move away from.  I suppose the past couple of years have been about prising my fist open and letting in light and air, and finding that I don't need to keep it clenched like that to hold Philip near.  I still miss him, and wonder what might have been if he had lived, and I'll always love him, but it doesn't suck the air out of me the way it used to.  At least not most of the time.  Maybe that is acceptance.  

The Christmas season has just begun here, as we celebrate on the Julian calendar, so we are only three days in.  It's a busy time, with a birthday, two namesdays, and two major church feasts, plus another namesday coming close on the heels of it all, so we've got a lot on this month.  I'm trying to pace myself as best I can, which is one reason why I didn't do my annual year-end post.  Another reason is that I continue to pull back from online engagement of most types, as I find it doesn't serve me well.  A blogger I've read for a number of years who is at a similar age and stage to me wrote recently that much more of her middle-aged processing is internal and she finds she has less she wants to share.  That resonated with me. 

Maybe I'm just tired of the "move fast and break things" mindset of our age. I prefer "be still and mend things." With that in mind, my making is much slower these days. After the veritable flood of stress-sewing in 2021 and early 2022, I find I can hardly persuade myself to get my machine out to do even minor repairs lately. I've been using needle and thread whenever I can just to avoid it. And there are the inevitable body changes of middle age that have pushed my closet into flux. Again. I'm working hard to be okay with it all. So it goes. At least there's ThredUp and Ebay for thrifting. And my knitting needles are always occupied.

I'm supposed to give a few lectures on communism and the Soviets to the seniors at my kids' school in a few weeks and have been poking away at what I want to say since late summer.  And there's the two-part presentation I gave to the 4th graders on Russia last year that the teacher has asked me to give again this year sometime.  I gave a lecture to the 6th graders on medieval sacred music up to about 800 AD in the fall, and plan to do a second part on polyphonal medieval music sometime this spring, God-willing.  The first part covered the development of music in the Western and Eastern Christian churches, so I had to cover quite a bit of ground in 40 minutes' time.  Maybe I'll post the broad outlines of the music lectures here some time.  

So, my apologies for being somewhat AWOL here for a while.  I'm not really sure how many people still care to read what I have to say, but I'm glad for those of you who are still along for the ride.  Happy Christmas and New Year!