Monday, March 26, 2007

Central Park and Apple Meringue


Central Park Hoodie ... the sleeves are blocking ...


... the hood is finished... [not cast off, rather left for grafting later once the ribbing is finished]



... everything I can seam and weave in at this stage has been done ...



...only picking up the stitches along the edge of the right & left fronts and the hood and knitting rib for a few inches to go ...

Can you see my problem? Click and enlarge if not ... oh yes. The picking up stitches knitty skill is sadly lacking here. I've been able to wing it with socks, but clearly winging it is just not going to cut it any longer.

So I must frog *sigh* You have no idea how long it took me to pick up the exact 150 stitches needed. Frog and consult the knitting tomes in my craft room for help in this area cos I suck at it!

I'm not quite ready to frog, and so I have put Central Park Hoodie down and continued with Earnshaw and Xboxing until I can face it.






In the meanwhile - Apple Meringue with ginger and brandy. There was not enough meringue, too much brandy, and I didn't cook the apples quite long enough. But it is utterly delish nevertheless and makes me feel all warm inside - just like my mum's
sherry trifle.




8 comments:

Anonymous said...

it's looking great so far - i'm excited to see the finished sweater! there's a good article here on picking up stitches if you need some help.. http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter04/FEATwin04TT.html
xo lilith

Twelfthknit said...

Keep the faith - you can do it ;0)
A blogroll ( as far as I understand it, anyway) is the list of blogs in my sidebar - mine is 'powered by Bloglines' and it updates blogs automatically when they jave been updated - hence the HUGE, and growing, list. I don't need to worry about missing things, 'cos all the work is done for me.
Does that help? I've had a glass of wine, so I fear it may not....
India

Flavaknits said...

I know what you mean about picking up stitches - my friend did the collar of her sweater 12 times before she was happy (and she still wasn't !)
Meringue looks gorgeous - can almost smell it - might try a wee bit baking this evening!

Anonymous said...

If you're getting holey bits sometimes picking up and knitting through the back of the stitch can help. But it's looking great so far !

Anonymous said...

Too much brandy?? Never!

Liz K. said...

Coming from a formerly sucky stitch-picker upper, here are two hints for picking up stitches neatly:

1 - make sure you are picking them up uniformly 00 in the same spot, with the same ratio. I always do a 3:4 ratio (I pick up 3 stitches for every 4 stitches on the body of the sweater). I often do not end up with exactly the number of stitches called for in the pattern.

2 - What size needle are you using for the picked up stitches? Perhaps if you used a needle one size smaller, just for picking up the stitches, you wouldn't get those holes.

I'll also second the suggestion to knit that first row TBL. And iron the daylights out of the edges before you pick up the stitches too.

I guess that's more than two hints...


Anyone who can make a pie that looks like that can do it!

rachel iufer said...

ah yes, the rib band. it was bothersome for me too. the other suggestions made here are all good ones. one other thing that i did for mine was to place a safety pins at every 25 stitch mark so that i could evenly place the stitches where they needed to be. it seemed to work out well.

best of luck!

Anonymous said...

Looking good! What yarn are you using? I love the color. Lori