The project that started it all

Well, not really, but it is the project that catalyzed the creation of my blog. I started knitting again about a year ago, and promptly made the mistake of buying enough yarn to make several sweaters, before I was ready to really start them. I am not a stasher; I don't like having a bunch of projects laying around that I'm not working on. So, it was a bad idea to buy yarn for 3 sweaters all at once because it was on sale. Ah, well. Momentary insanity strikes everyone, I suppose. But anyway. I bought a collection of wool-ease worsted weight in three shades of rose, a color that I usually don't wear a lot of but have really been enjoying of late. (I love it when my taste changes and suddenly opens up whole new vistas of color to explore...)
The problem was that I bought this yarn without a specific idea of what to do with it. This is a bad idea, because it means that I am not really ready to start working on it, and that it will sit around and build up guilt for long periods of time before I actually use it.

It's been a year now, and I am finally getting back around to thinking about these sweaters. I knew I wanted a cowl-neck, but other than that I've been having a hard time coming up with anything that wasn't just boring stockinette the whole way. I liked the idea of wide ribbing, as I really liked the way that came out on my first sweater (I'll post about that someday, maybe). But I didn't want all ribbing, and I wanted something special to stand out about it. When I saw the post on Vanessa's blog about the cable sweater, I got that vague feeling in the back of my brain that means it's onto something and I should think more about this project. I love the cable across the shoulders, though I think that the rest of it is a bit much for this particular sweater. I have nothing against drowning in cables, but with three different colors and a big collar, that many cables would just be too much going on at once. But the one across the shoulders...

Whenever I have an idea developing, I head for the Walker books. I can sit for hours and just flip through all her different stitch patterns, waiting for one to jump out at me. This time, it was the staghorn cable. It's fairly delicate, not too complicated, and also not just your standard cable. I want this project to move quickly; I'm not likely to want to prolong knitting with a partly acrylic yarn, and I just finished a long project. So, I wanted something simple. Staghorn it is.



Since I want the whole sweater to focus on the cable, I decided to make the cable band first, and knit up and down from it to create the rest of the sweater. I've also never done a sweater from the middle, so I thought it would be a fun thing to try. So, I started out with the cable band, and then added the neck this morning:



So far, so good! I'm looking forward to splitting off the sleeves tomorrow, and then it will be quick ribbing all the way down. I'm also working on writing up a sort of pattern (more a set of guidelines than stitch-by-stitch directions at this point), that I'll make available when I finish. Yay for cables!