Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Poker Sweater

Been working on Cottage Creations, Babies & Bears Sweater for Grown-ups. I apologize for the poor color on my second photo. I couldn't get it to appear in the proper shade. It's been fun making this sweater since I can still play poker while I knit. I'll do anything to put some of those poker players on tilt. No, casino's do not allow knitting needles. They are considered a weapon. This is pub - tournament poker and sometimes the players over deliberate their move to the point of distraction. I needed something to keep a calm non-caring poker face and Zen knitting is it. I love the way this pattern starts at the cuff and knits up the sleeve. There are a number of circular knitting needle lengths required to complete each half of the sweater. The longest was 36". This is required for holding all the stitches from the front, side and back on one needle. I played with making this in two colors. It took a bit to get the right combination of rows but I did rather luck out. The one thing I did not do was mark every 10 or so rows to keep count for ease of matching the right sleeve length to the left. I was reminded by a dear friend to go to the inside with the purl bumps and count those. They are so much easier. Even doing that, I lost count and had to resort to using a marking yarn by dipping under each 10th row. I am so intrigued by this design that I only waited a day or two after completing the left side to start on the cuff for the right side of my "poker" sweater. (Gee, I wonder how it got that name?) I was rather concerned I'd wait too long to continue and would totally loose interest in completing my poker sweater. I've only taken a short break to knit a couple of fidget scarves, which still need to be blocked.