Blog post #50: taken out by others

Welcome to Woolly Mammoths blog post #50. I'm sorry my Olympic coverage dissapeared. Last Thursday was the deadline for one of the two top conferences in cryptography (unsurprisingly named CRYPTO). After that I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend with my friend. Instead, I scheduled job interviews for this Thursday and Friday 3000 miles away from my current position. As my job talk wasn't finished and I had a lot of grading to do, let's just say I was busy.

I still found some time to work on Zippy, the Olympic Sweater. I recieved my Pirate Blue zipper in record time, knit the sleeves and collar, and seamed. These were all new experiences, and they actually turned out quite well. However, this sweater isn't going to be wearable unless I either rip almost half of it or knit some extra bits and steek.

Behold, the shoulder. Looking at this shoulder one might say to oneself "self, this looks like a slightly long armhole." One would be right. I harboured some suspicions about this while I was knitting, but I had decided to knit this sweater according to the pattern. (Frankly, the pattern has nothing to it besides the set-in-sleeve-shaping, so why bother paying $16 for it otherwise?) I checked the armscye when I knit it and thought it was too long (specified in cm). I checked the sleeve cap when I knit it and thought it was too long (specified in rows). They fit very well together, but they don't work as a shoulder. Because this sweater has narrow sleeves, the long armhole goes rather far down my arm, and effectively ties it to my side. Fixing this is a bit involved, and I can't really face it right now. Instead, I'm just going to post a warning: If you want to knit the York sweater pattern from Noro Knits, do not knit the sleeve shaping as written (it's very similar for all the sizes). Frankly, this leaves very little to the pattern, but DO NOT knit the sleeve shaping as written. Hopefully that warning will show up to dissuade anyone else from this one. (I search for the patterns I'm going to knit on the net, so I assume others do as well.)

As for the yarn, Karaoke (colour: New Blues) is really nice stuff. It's softer and flufflier after washing, it has great drape and a nice subtle sheen, and it bleeds like someone with a stab wound to the aorta. Since the colours are very, very saturated and vivid in the skien, I'm very happy about this; the sweater ended up brightly coloured but not shine-in-the-dark coloured, if you take my meaning. If you're unhappy with the irregularity of the Silk Garden striping patterns, you'll really like this. I had to work pretty hard to get mine to be at all un-matching.

My Olympic results are thus as follows: nice try, but just like those poor cross-country skiiers taken out when other people fell down on the job. At least I am confirmed in thinking that I know what the heck I'm doing, even though I should have no reason at all for knowing these things. Anyone need a 22" #3 sweater zipper in Pirate Blue?