A Nice Light Topic
Thaddeus suggested that I take pictures of the flowers in the back of our house. He figured I could discuss how they fit in with color wheel theory or something.
I’ll Just Show Flowers
We have a bank of some kind of evergreen that “separates” our house from the houses behind it. Twined throughout these evergreens, Thaddeus has three vines growing. The lovely orange honeysuckle, on which we sometimes see hummingbirds feeding. And then two different colors of clematis…the one not shown is a lighter violet which goes well with both the deeper purple and the orange of the honeysuckle.
Current Knitting
I got another chunk of work done on the Aran pullover this past weekend.
This equates to about 20 inches. I’m kind of annoyed with this project. I didn’t really want to design a sweater from scratch, so I used the basic proportions and stitch counts from one of the sweaters in the The Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting
I started with the largest man’s sweater in the guide, which makes a 25.25 inch width back, and then added another 1.5 inches worth of stitches to give the sweater more ease. Even with the extra stitches, it appears that the back will block out to about 24 inches, which will be about 4 inches less wide around than I had hoped.
I’ve decided that I am going to add a design element to this sweater. Instead of shaping for the armholes, I’m going to knit the back and front as if I was doing a drop-shoulder…or no shaping. Then, I’m going to knit two additional panels of 2 inches each, that will only be the length of the body up to the armhole opening.
This will both give me some set in sleeve shaping, as well as correct the missing four inches of girth that I had hoped for. Something like this.
Current Reading
As part of my “Summer Off Reading Series,” I just finished a most wonderfully written book, called The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
This is an older book, originally published in 1940, and then gained renewed acclaim when Oprah put it on her list (which usually isn’t a good thing, as far as I’m concerned). In this case, the book is an exquisitely written story, written from multiple characters’ perspectives. If you love good character definition, I have read none better.
Your sweater looks wonderful!
How do you pronounce “clematis”? I have been told by gardening aficionados that the proper pronunciation is “CLEM-uh-tiss” but I’ve never heard anyone in real life say it other than “cle-MAT-iss”.
Purty flowers, lovely sweater.
P.S. clearly it is your ignorance of the color wheel and color theory that has you punting on the discussion…;)
Beautiful, manly, beautifully worked sweater, Mr Joey.
I am fairly certain the pronunciation is CLEMatis. No one wants to look like a rube when talking about flowers, that’s for sure.
Oh, yeah, what about Carol’s inference? I seem to recall your ignorance of color theory is quite remarked-upon.
By “experts”, even.
I did that once with an aran. It worked well. I was once told that within each area of cabling you need to add an extra stitch for every five that you needed to get gauge in stocking stitch. So if your yarn usually knits at 5 stitches to the inch, you’ll need to allow for 6 stitches to the inch over the cabled area. Don’t know if this helps.
stunning colours on your flowers 🙂
and btw, I envy your sweater. I’m currently knitting a cabled sweater for my brother’s birthday that doesn’t look nearly as good as yours!
The flowers are beautiful. You know I never trust people that don’t like flowers (yes there are some – too much trouble in the garden or too messy in the house) or don’t love animals.
Hey, I have those two vines at my house as well.
The coral honeysuckle on my arbor, while the clematis grows out of an old wine barrel. However, my clematis seems to shrivel and die in the heat of Texas, while yours looks lovely.
You knitted that much Aran in a weekend – wow! That would take my Mum AGES ! She loves your work!
Will you join the straps as you go, Joe? Or will that mean too much wool in your lap in summer?
Eldronius, clematis like to keep their roots cool while having their “head” in the sun; one way of doing this is to mulch with rocks or stones, to shade that part of the soil.
Nice sweater.
If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend McCullers’ “The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe”.