Persistent Knitter

I’m going to continue to call this "The Nanny Sweater". The name of the sweater in the book is "Cable and Moss Stitch Jacket and Tunic".  Bleah. I prefer Dale’s bizarre names to that lengthy diatribe of a name even though it really is descriptive.

I might even start saying TNS instead of typing The Nanny Sweater. Consider yourself forewarned.

Here’s what I’m gonna make, and what I’m gonna make it with:

When The Nanny saw the yarn, she said  "I like the color even better in person!".  It’s always a bit worriesome to order yarn off the internet. You’re never quite sure what color you might get.

So, to begin - I copied the pattern out of the book to mangle. I need to make the sweater slightly smaller around. The pattern says the small-medium size is 48" across.  Yowsa. I could wear that!  My nanny is much more petite than I am.  Given that my gauge is usually larger than what pattern calls for, I will assume it would come out even larger than 48" and fit Mike.

Needles?

It calls for 4mm, 3.75mm and 3.25mm needles. Given that it’s knit flat I can be less picky on the length of needle required.   I think I actually have all the needles I need for this project! Don’t quote me on that, I reserve the right to buy more needles on a whim.

To Gauge or Not to Gauge

This is new yarn to me.  I won’t be knitting in the round, so a gauge swatch just might be useful.  Maybe. I’m still undecided.  I will probably do a swatch, just so I can get a feel for the fabric it makes.

Also, there are NO charts. It’s a cable pattern, and NO charts.  That is just sick and wrong.  I really prefer charts.  I’m a very visual person that way.  I spent some time charting the design from the pattern.  I also looked around at some software that might do it for me.  In the end I decided doing it myself inside Excel would be easiest and give me the most control.  I found a really cool knitters’ font here.

I started out typing out the pattern going kpkpkp and so on. Then I reversed right side rows; and swapped knits and purls on wrong side rows.  Into the spreadsheet, use the font, tidy it up, and about 2 hours later, nifty neato chart!  In a way it’s like knitting the pattern without knitting it. For instance, I didn’t realize that the cables weren’t just plain cables. One side of it is in moss stitch. If you closely at the picture you can kind of see this.  It’s very obvious looking at the chart though.  I like obvious :)