Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

This autumn has turned out to be a rather busy season, mostly full of cleaning and organizing and not nearly enough raw knitting. Part of the cleaning and organizing involved looking around at what was on the needles. There were definitely projects that were only a few hours shy of completion. One of them was this little sweater. This was the project for Joan Shrouder's "Set-in Sleeves Simplified" class, which I took at STITCHES South back in April. Happily, Joan will be at STITCHES South 2010 and will be teaching this class all day Sunday. The homework for class involved knitting the bottom rectangle of the cardigan. Because I've become enamoured of it, I used Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen's method for a tubular cast-on. I arrived in class with an inch of 1x1 ribbing and several inches of plain stockinette. Over the course of the 6-hour class, Joan shows you how to shape the armhole and neck. Since the sweater is small, there is time to knit it...

Saturday started off early again, but this time I found a better parking space on the top deck. And I remembered to bring my lunch. On the downside, I only had about five hours of sleep. I am not used to being sleep deprived. But, heh, I figured I would keep myself going off the excitement and adrenaline. For Saturday I had signed up for Joan Schrouder's Set-in Sleeves Simplified class. This was based on recommendations from Benjamin Levisay, Rick Mondragon, and Whit Robbins. When Benjamin and Rick had been out here in October, I had mentioned my fondness for Lucy Neatby and other knitting technicians. I was told in that case, I should definitely take a class with Joan. I already felt pretty comfortable with Elizabeth Zimmermann's and Barbara Walker's approaches to seamless knitting, so I wasn't sure how much I was going to learn in the class. But I have found that you almost always learn something , even if it wasn't what you expected. First off, Joan ...