Finished (Sort Of)

When last we left our Vogue lace trimmed bolero (in June), she looked like this:

Now she is finished.



Sort of.

Finished, in that, if I wanted to wear her to Stitches Midwest this weekend, I could scotch tape the ends to the inside (don't tell me you've never thought about it) and get away with it.



This sweater was done in pieces, and they were small pieces, with fiddley shaping. It's a good thing I decided to "sew as you go" half the pieces together in June, otherwise I would have taken a lot more oomph for me to pick up this project again and figure out where I was. The biggest hurdle to get over was knitting the 3 miles of lace that went around the outer edge. But once I got going on that, I really enjoyed it. I would totally make another version of this sweater, but I would do it all in once piece, a bottom up raglan, and skip the sewing together of all of the pieces.



It was also a trick to figure out the tension of sewing the lace all around to the body. There were so many different curves and angles to go around, that just when I would figure out a good ratio of stitches on the body to stitches on the garter lace to sew to, it would change. High-school-math-teacher -voices in my head chanting things about concave and convex curves didn't help.

I was all the way around, except for the lower back, when I tried it on.



Big time gaping at the back neck. If I had long hair to cover it up, I wouldn't have worried about it. But I ripped it all back up one side, and tightened it up around the neck.



Here's the back.



The yarn is awesome. Rowan Cash Cotton DK. I loved, loved, loved, this yarn and want to use it again. This is a really pretty and feminine sweater. There are a couple of things that are bothering me about it though, and I'm thinking if I fixed those, it might change it from nice, into fabulous.

The length of the sleeves isn't very flattering on me. I could rip off the lace and knit down to make it just below the elbow length. (If I'm cold enough to put on a sweater, I'm cold enough for it to have an elbow-length sleeve.) And, I have one ball of yarn left over. I got this idea after seeing Anita's beautiful child's bolero.

Another thing: the back is flaring out a little. I didn't get the tension quite right on the back and I could pull it in a little. And if I ripped the lace off the lower back, I could also fix this seam, where I joined the lace, which I didn't have the foresight to hide at the side seam. It's on the back, so I can't see it, but I know its lurking back there.


I might also add a few tiny buttons to the front, so I could keep it closed if I want to.

I'm going to put it aside for a few days and let these ideas marinate.