Anyway, over Thanksgiving break, I bought the yarn and then on the eve of the new year, I cast on for the epic project.  The sweater in question?  Venezia.

Certainly a much easier project than the one I knit last semester right?  Haha.  I kid.

I haven’t worked on it for like a month… but I did about 8 rounds last night and I think I can commit to doing a little bit each day.  Want to see the progress?

Isn’t sooooo pretty that you want to eat it up?  I know.  Me too.  Last semester, I spoke of the sweater as a hot affair.  Venezia doesn’t lend itself to such wanton adjectives.

No.  Venezia is a state of mind.  It’s my escape.  My daily vacation… away from my frustrating students and …. everything.  It’s the land far far away where it’s just me, some wool and a pattern that requires me to look at the chart every 8 stitches or so.  Grrr.

lets call this photo “artsy” instead of blurry.

This project was an ever constant source of both pride and annoyance in my life for a long 4 months. When I started her, I joked about how she was this hot affair that I could not put down – an affair that I was sneaking in to meetings and squeezing into quick moments in the corner and between social engagements. Well, the scandalous affair is over. We’ve made it official (but not Facebook official. I don’t need my former high school classmates and distant family thinking differently of me).

I’m officially in love with this sweater. And it’s real love. The kind of love that you curl up with on a cold fall evening. The kind of love that you enjoy showing off and bragging about to your best friends. The kind of love that doesn’t care if you’re wearing your holiday best or making a run to the pharmacy without a bra on. The kind of love that survives it’s turmoils and frustrations, only to come out better on the other side. In 50 years, I’ll invite you to the anniversary party.

What I like:

• The color. There were a few weeks where I hated it (I’d been looking at it long enough), but I just cannot go wrong with green.
• The cost. I used some Patons Classic Merino – 6 balls at 5 bucks each makes this a nice, huge affordable piece of knitting.
• The drape and usefulness. A few weeks ago, I bought an open cardigan from Target to throw on when I’m chilled or running outside for a quick bit. Now, I reach for the cardigan I made.
• The addition of the buttons. So I can close it if I want to.
• That my knitting group loved it. And I may have even inspired someone else to knit one. That’s always the test in my book. Usually, I’m the one following someone.

What I don’t like:

• The errata. So confusing.
• The spacing of the sleeve holes. They’re too far apart in my book. And I don’t think I’m the only one who experienced this, you can see similar on other ravelry projects. Here’s a photo to illustrate. The back is just too wide



• I don’t like the way that people don’t believe I actually knit it (kidding).
• I don’t like the sleeve caps. I ended up cutting mine short (I only short rowed 2/3 the stitches) but placing them were written.
• I also had issues with the way that the seed stitch triangles were on the front of the sleeve. I ended up decreasing my front triangles at a rate 1.5 times faster than the triangle on the back side.

Lots of technical stuff and tips after the jump, including more on the buttons (in case you too want true love):

1. I think Angela (designer) has the first part of of the zig zag chart worked as ribbing the first bit. I didn’t do this and it turned out just fine/perfectly nice.
2. The zig zag charts have the seed stitch part up against the double braided chart. If you reverse them so that you have reverse stockinette stitch closest to the braid, you’ll be able to use reverse ss instead of seed stitch on the infamous seed stitch arm triangles. Which may or may not be a nice change.
3. The errata is really, really confusing. In terms of the charts. Just work them so that row 6 of the double braided chart with be worked in the same row as Row 13 (or 1) of the zig zag charts and row 6 of the huge reversible cable. I didn’t really follow the rest of the errata because I didn’t really follow the rest of the pattern because the sparse instructions had me more or less flying solo anyway.
4. Block this big. You won’t regret it.
5. How I did my sleeves: I did the short rows as written until I was working into the bottom/underside double braided chart and then I just went right to working the piece in the round. My decreases went like this: First decrease round (only front), next decrease round (1 in the back, 1 in the front), – and repeated until I had 4 (ish. could be 3, could be 5) sts left on the front seed stitch triangle. Then I worked 1 in front, 1 in back until the front triangle was completely gone and then I worked the double decreases only in the back until that triangle was completely gone.
6. I shortened the sleeves. No particular reason other than that was the length of the Target sweater referenced above.
7. I added buttons on the inside of the right front. You can see them in the photo below. You can see where/how I button the first button in this photo.  The second button goes into a similar hole, also created where the large cable crosses, but further across the front.

So, it’s Thanksgiving break and everything. And so I’m all trying really, really hard to get my two remaining sleeves on the Aran Wrap Cardigan to a point where they can be knit, rather mindlessly once school and chaos starts again.

With Kalani‘s input, I decided to knit the sleeve caps mostly as directed. I say mostly because I figured out that what was really, really bugging me most about the sleeves, was the elongated seed stitch triangle on the front of the sleeve (the decreases of which, we figured, was what pulled the sleeve cap to the correct location.

I decided to place 75% of the sleeve decreases in the front panel until the point where the triangle disappears (and then put the rest in the back seed stitch panel). This way, the triangle is shortened. I’m not even that sure if I like it right now. But I’m pretty sure I do.

Hello.  Please, don’t mind the self-boob-grabbing.

See? Small triangle of seed stitch.

Here’s what the back looks like:

Please ignore the bump created by the bunching of my short sleeve.

Anyway… so I’m liking this, I’m pretty sure.

And today, I spent most of the day working on the other sleeve. I wanted to get the short-rowing and decreasing out the way while the first sleeve was still fresh in my mind. So… I got to work.

And I decided not to let myself try it on for as long as I could stand: it would be like a reward once I finished the decreasing. The Two Towers was on TV (it’s perfect for knitting-backdrop) and I just kept right on knitting.

Finally, as my hands started to cramp, I went to try on the sweater. Curses.

I did all of my decreases on the wrong seed stitch panel.

URgh.

Seriously?

Luckily, I only really have to frog back to the beginning of the decreases. Not the whole sleeve/sleeve cap shaping. Still. WAY more ripping back than I ever wanted to do with this sweater. And I just want this beast to be DONE.

*A big mistake I’m living with: The first two times I cabled the huge cable pattern in this sweater… I messed up the crossings. Rather than fix it, I’ve been crossing those cables differently each time.

I’ve made some progress. In fact, everything is pretty much done except for the sleeves. The delay? The time and attention needed to pick up sts (in pattern) and maintain concentration to do a sleeve cap. Today/this weekend, I was going to have the time to do this exact thing.

And then I hit a road block.

Allow me to explain. So, if you’ll remember, this pattern is basically a beautiful, amazing rectangle with sleeves. Here’s a photo that illustrates this well.

Hokay. So, I picked up the sts and began the sleeve. The problem (at least how I’m perceiving the directions) is that the sleeve cap is being placed in a really, really strange place.

The directions (unless I’m completely off base – and if I am, please someone tell me) indicate that you should knit the purple row, and then short row, yellow, green then blue and continue in that manner. This puts the big, wide cable in the middle of the sleeve cap – definitely a good thing…

But when you put the cardigan on… here’s where the short rows end up:

Now… I know I haven’t actually made a sleeve cap before. But I feel like my American Apparel shirt nicely illustrates the way the sleeve cap should be. Don’t you think?

Here. Wander and look at these sleeves. I’ll wait.

I feel like I want to move the sleeve cap so that it goes like this:

It makes sense to me. But then I’m only partially confident that I can keep the large cable from getting wonkey. Because that would mean that when you look as the sleeve flat… the short rows would go like this:

And that also seems kind of wonkey.

Now, I’ll grant you that this isn’t your traditional cardigan pattern.  The fronts hang/are pulled across the front.  I still just don’t think that I should put the sleeve caps across the back…  And I think that if I moved the sleeve cap… some of the wonkeyness in the sleeves could be fixed.

So.  The choice seems to be:  Make the cable across the back a little wonkey where it meets the sleeves*(see note below) or… make the sleeves a little wonkey.  What do you think?

****  NOTE:  I made a mistake in making the cable across the back/fronts.  The big cable isn’t at the right pattern row where the sleeve holes are:  it’s supposed to be after the cable cross (and entering like 7 rows of work even) and not about to go into the cable cross.  I kind of think that the fact that it’s entering the cable cross might actually help make it look less wonkey if I move the sleeve cap.

When I opened the door to my apartment, an errant ball of green yarn instantly caught my eye.

I gasped aloud. I. Could. Knit.

And a heavenly choir sang down from on high.

I had a block of about 4+ hours where I could knit, uninterrupted, and without any guilt about what else I could be doing. Life is good. And knit, I did.

I worked on my Aran Wrap Cardigan and made significant progress.  Before I started, I was an inch below that sleeve hole.

I still love this project… and now that we’ve picked up our affair again, it’s like we were never apart.  Now I just have mile to knit and then the other armhole… and then a few more miles for the right side… and then some more miles for the skirty part…  Whooooo.  I’m in for the long haul, I guess.