Blocking hides a multitude of sins

Or so I hope. The gansey is done, and it's drying in the craft room. DP said that if it doesn't fit my dad, he'll take it, so it will have a good home regardless :)

Yargh

I'm still plugging away on the gansey, but it's tough...it means I can't really make anything else, because I have to save all of my energy for it. I'm halfway through the second sleeve, and then I just need to do the neck and block the thing, but it's wearing on my psyche.

I tried to knit socks on the bus, but I found that when I got home my hands and arms were tired, and they didn't want to stay up til midnight making a sweater. So, I just read pattern books and curse every second away from the sweater.

I'm using today to make puff pastry. I'm going to make an apricot frangipani tart for Thanksgiving (DP's idea) and I figured I'd make an extra batch of it to use for a Pithiviers for Christmas. DP was actually woken up by the deep sighs I was making as I tried to roll out the dough :)

I really really want to make the Dolomite socks for my brother for Christmas, but I don't think I'll have time. We've all enjoyed watching the Dolemite movies, and our fantasy football league is named after a phrase in Avenging Disco Godfather. Sigh.

Hopefully I'll get myself in gear and get some more pics up. Now to roll my dough.

Finally, some pics

Finally, I found the usb cord for the camera! Here's a pic of the gansey (I'm a bit further now, since I have the shoulder straps done:



And a closeup of the ill-fated initials:



My hope is that the blobbyness will block out.

Here's my niece's watchcap, made with STR Walking on the Wild Tide:



It's blurry, but this is the picture with the color as close to real life as I could get.

Now that I've finished the shoulder straps, I'm going to have to finish the arms. My plan is to work the arms separately to the definition ridge, then Magic Loop them two at a time through the stockinette and cuff ribbing, to make sure they're the same size. I'm going to use the pattern I started with, the triangles pointing to each other, but then at the bicep on each side, stop the cables and insert an anchor (my dad was in the navy). After the anchor, I'll go back to the cabling. I'm also thinking of adding some diamonds or more chevrons, because it would be too boring to just be the strap pattern.

There's got to be...

A way to keep my shoulders from cramping up. I don't know what that is, but there's got to be a way!

I'm moving along on the gansey. I finished the front and back, and I started on the shoulder straps last night. I wish that I had a set of US4 dpns, because using a 47" US4 is getting old fast.

I also had to spend all of Saturday changing the purl columns back to knits. I realized that while a traditional gansey is fitted, my dad might not prefer it that way. The cables are a lot subtler, but still neat, and the size is right. It took me half of Sunday to come up with the design for the shoulder straps, and in the end I went with something simple:

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Triangles of purls with 4 stitch cable crossings every 8 rows. I'm liking how it looks, and I think it matches the body.