hey look! more knitting!

I've been scheming for a while about making a striped seamless yoke sweater. Apparently its all stripes all the time around here. I think the stripes need to work their way though the system. There is no stopping the stripes. Hah! My thought is to make a seamless yoke sweater that has larger stripes on the bottom and smaller stripes in the yoke section. I'd also like to add some yarn-over holes and weave some ribbon through at the start of the yoke. I also want to try this out in kid size to see what I think. Mostly because it will take less long to knit and be less of a yarn commitment. Plus this idea might look garish on a grownup but easily be something that some cute kid could pull off.

Here are some quick sketches of what I'm talking about. It's harder to explain what I'm scheming about than I thought!



I got three colors of Cascade 220 superwash to try this out:



My current plan is to use the lightest green for the borders and only in the yoke. So the sweater would have larger alternating stripes of olive and blue, then the yoke would start with the lighter green and have thinner stripes of all three colors. I'm going to have to add an extra larger stipe in the back before I start the yoke, so that the neck shaping is in the right place and the sweater doesn't fit strangely. I could also add some neck shaping at the end , but I like when the seamless yoke sweaters have the rings of colors and patterns decending from the neckline. I realized that most seamless yoke sweaters have solid color bodies so you can hide the neck shaping below the yoke. I'll keep you posted on how that extra stripe will turn out. Here's where I'm at so far. I'm making a sweater that will hopefully fit a 1-2 year old, using Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns



In other exciting news the peonies are out. I picked some up from the flower cart / farm stand down the street. It's the most charming thing you can imagine. They basically have flowers out in a little cute cart all summer and a coffee can to collect the $3.50 per bouquet. What a deal! That buys you about 15 irises and 3 peonies that smell amazing! Of course there is inflation even here in the country. Last year the flowers were only $3.00.