Shearer Step Seven - Collar Shaping

'Started this part of the project very early last Saturday morning with the house still quiet, a fresh pot of coffee and a big poodle curled up at my feet...bliss!

My goals - beyond making a hole for the head and neck of course...

• Avoid cables crossing close to the collar edges making choke-like puckers around the collar or worse, partial, half crossed cables.
• Decrease to edges that lend themselves to the 2x2 rib that will progress upwards from that point.
• Make nicely terminated, and visually complete cables at the shoulders to border the planned saddles. 

I worked out the bulk of the approach on one back shoulder...

4 hours to sort out that 4 inches of knitting.

That was okay - the rest should fly from there! The second back did sail along, as did the first front.

But the last....most tantalizing...close to the finish line...only 20 minutes more...front panel took...

4 runs over 4 evenings to get right. 

Rushing always takes longer. When will I ever learn?

In fairness this part of the exercise has shown me just how much I have learnt over the past few years of, some non knitters would say, "manic" knitting. (Anyway "rushing" is more about human nature than knitting!)

Sweater Front atop Sweater Back showing two different collar lines

I'm very pleased with the results.

• The net effect does visual justice to the time and care I took at the bottom edge.
• I think I've set things up so the collar will nicely "flow" from the cables on the body.
• The termination at the shoulder edge of all the elements either side of the collar is such that the saddle shoulder is unnecessary. (Good thing because despite fiddling with a variety of treatments for that element they all just struck me as too busy to nicely bisect front and back and flow into the cabled sleeves.)

After 4 weeks of strictly monogamous knitting and 3 1/2 weeks before my "deadline" I'm off to block these two big pieces to 23 1/4"wide x 27"long.

Tonight and tomorrow I need to graft the shoulders and see if I can't get the visual affect to be one of having the elements flow continuously up and over the shoulders. (I'll ultimately run a reinforcing something-or-other on the backside of each graft for stability) and put in the collar.

Beloved gets on another plane tomorrow night. My hope would be I could pull something with a finished collar over his his before that so I can confidently knit and  install the sleeves while he's away over the next 7 days, finalizing only length upon his return! He's been here and gone a couple of times over the last week after returning from Asia ten days ago. I'm getting good at taking measurements while he sleeps off jet lag!

Have a great weekend! Thanks for dropping by