Subtract one stripe...

Five or six years ago, whenever the pattern first came out, I made the Mission Falls Kinki jacket from their In Living Colour book out of stash. My yarn came mostly from a failed sweater that my husband had frogged for me. He's the master frogger in our house. I'd never seen the original Kinki until a week ago, when an enormous box of trunk show models showed up at my LYS, String Theory Yarn Company in Glen Ellyn, IL. Then things got interesting.

See, when I'd first looked at the what I came to call my Stash Jacket pattern, I thought, nope, way too big. The pattern is for one size that's 52" around. I thought that would look hilarious on the short person that I am. Turns out I was right:

The sleeves flow about four inches longer than my hand. The sweater reaches my knees. It's a lovely jacket in person:

For my version, I removed one stripe from each of the mitred square patterns, large and small. My stashie is the one in blues. Here's what a difference one stripe makes:


And this is after years of wear and, since it's cotton, growth. I knitted the sleeves originally to 3/4 length, assuming they'd grow, and sure enough now they're wrist length. My stashie is my all-time favorite sweater, one I wear all seasons and which I've even slept under in cold hotel rooms, since it's also my fave travel sweater. I've taught stash jacket classes many times -- last time at the Baskets of Yarn winter retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains -- because it's just an excellent way to understand the difference gauge makes. A few stitches here and there and, phew, it's a different size completely.

Stashie was probably my first experience altering a pattern to fit. Lately I've been making sweaters that can be altered to fit while I knit. The first one was the Sahara, designed by Wendy Bernard for Stitch Diva. I knit it to fit Rachel, trying it on her twice in North Carolina before finishing it back home in Illinois. Now I'm making one out of Knit One Crochet Too's Ty Dy for me and display at String Theory.

You start out with a provisional cast-on at the shoulders and knit down to the back underarm before placing those stitches on a holder (Denise needles as the perfect stitch holders, anyone?). Then you pick up each shoulder from the provisional cast-on and knit down the fronts to the underarms. Then you put fronts and back together on one needle. See all the possibilities for alterations as you go? Length of armhole. Length from armhole to waist decreases. How many waist decreases. Then increases for hip. Wendy's assumption for fit was that her Sahara would have zero ease, which looks wonderful on Rachel:

who is 25 and can wear tight.

Can't show you a finished Sahara for moi yet, having begun it only four days ago, but here are progress pix. I've just begun waist decreases.

I'm liking the way the Ty Dy stripe is working. Since south of the underarms, the whole thing is knitted as one piece, there's no problem matching stripes. I'm not sure why, since I'm not a perfectionist, but I really like stripes to match at the seams. Hey, no seams, no problem.

More on this altering-as-you-knit idea in upcoming blogs, since its my current fascination.