Tank top, finished!

(pictures before the weaving in, as evidenced by the long flyaway in the left picture. Also note Andy's shadow, taking the picture)

Finished last week sometime! The sewing-up was actually kinda fun, once I got into it, though it took longer than I'd hoped. It came out pretty well fitted, overall - I'm glad I made the Small instead of the Medium, even though it was supposed to have 5" negative gauge. Either my gauge loosened up or (more likely) the cotton-acrylic blend stretched a bit. It's easy to find flaws with it, of course - my cables aren't symmetric, the design doesn't have any shaping to the back so it's kinda baggy, and of course, a tank top in worsted-weight is a tad heavy.

But overall I'm happy with it. Yay, first big project, done! and wearable! Let's see what Sasha thinks!

hmm, what is this thing? Oh, of course, it's a cat bed!

Begin Travelling Cable Pattern

Here I will attempt to document the cabled tank top that I mentioned in a previous post. This tank top has been halfway around the world with me (and all I need is to seam it up now - someone, please, make me do it!)

It was cast on in a tent on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens in the rain (pardon the wonky picture, 2 nights camping in the rain and one's hair is not at its best...). The back was straight stockinette and knit up reasonably fast:


And, then, as mentioned before, I learned to cable for the front on a flight to AZ. I didn't have the camera on the flight, but here's a shot of a finished strap:








It languished as two straps connected by a couple of rows for a while...

And then I packed it up and took it to Japan on a business trip! Let me say, a 10-hour plane ride each way is a great incentive to for getting knitting done!

Here we are near the beginning of the flight over...




And after the flight, in the hotel in Japan. See the progress! I wasn't sure whether it was sizing out OK, so I overlaid it on a tank top I had brought with me...


I have more Japan (and Japan knitting!) stories, but on the tank top, the end of the story is... finished on the plane ride back! I don't have a picture, but I had to break into a 4th skein of yarn for about the last 2 inches, and I hadn't wound that one into a ball. Since I was jammed in the window seat next to an old-ish Japanese gentleman who only got up twice (on a 9-hour-flight!), I didn't really have space to wind it, so just tried to unravel from the hank as I went. Of course, I ended up with a huge tangle, and the last two inches of tank top involved sotto voce swearing, yanking out about 2 feet at a time, and probably confusing the heck out of my seatmate. In total, I watched something like 9 movies and knit a whole bunch (including on the trains to and from Tokyo) - knitting is definitely a great travelling hobby! And I was quite amused that part of the instructions was, indeed, "begin travelling cable pattern" :)
PS - if anyone has any idea why the cable on the right (actually a cable-needle-to-front cable, as the tank is knit from the top down) seems to have a lot more dimpling than the one on the left (needle-to-back), let me know. I'm sure my tension is off in some way. I like the look of the needle-to-back one better...

Quick note from Phoenix

So, I made a fairly last-minute trip to Phoenix (Chandler, to be exact) for work, and wanted to note that a direct flight from PDX to PHX was exactly the right amount of time to knit one (1) tank top strap from the Cabled Tank Top that I am working on from the Spring/Summer KnitSimple magazine. Mind you, this was my first ever cabling, so I was pretty proud to initiate it at takeoff, squashed in a middle seat between a couple of rather grumpy seeming folks.

It's so cool how the cable emerges - after the first one I was convinced that I had done something wrong, but pressed on, and it all became clear. What most knitting books don't seem to show is how the fabric really is doubled around the cable, and how much the width pulls in compared to an equivalent number of plain stitches.

Pictures later - I didn't bring the camera on this trip! I'm flying back tomorrow afternoon, and expect to have the second strap done and be working the front body by the end of the flight!

Edited to add a the picture from the magazine - this is what I've been working on, but in glacier blue "2nd time cotton". Ain't the cable nifty?