Simple Knitted Bodice

I have been plugging away on my Simple Knitted Bodice, by Stitch Diva Studios. I've been rooting for this sweater since before it was released, but it seems to be taking quite awhile to get into. Well, I'm finally at the first trying on point. I moved the bodice onto Knitpicks' Options cables and on it went. By the way, I can't tell you how cool those cables are. I'm very impressed. I really didn't want to transfer the stitches onto yarn.

The yarn is Madil Eden 100% bamboo, and it is so lovely. It's been a bit of a pain with swatching because it shrank each time in the wash, but that's it's nature, so who can blame it (besides me, after swatching 1 1/2 months, but who's bitter?) This yarn is soft and drapes beautifully. I like the way it feels against my fingers as I work with my bamboo needles. It does split a bit, but I've gotten used to that.

So I admit that I'm not positive where to go from here. I'm not sure how it's supposed to fit me at this point. Lorena? Silvia? Thoughts? It obviously fits around my arms and body, but it seems to me as though the darts should reach further under my arms at this point. It also seems that if I tried to move my arms out, I wouldn't have much room. I'd like the "V" to be lower as well, but don't want to make the body too wide. And, I'm tall, so it may need to be a bit longer. So my dilemna is that I agree with Lorena and Silvia that many of the pics I see of this sweater are too big and I don't want that. But, maybe I should keep up with the increases for another round or so. Are the darts supposed to meet under my arms at this point?

Eventually I think I will use a size 0 needle for the lace. Silvia affirmed my feeling that knitting it tighter would be better than looser, since most of the FOs come out a bit looser than I'd like.

In other knitting news, I finally taught myself the long-tail cast-on. As a child I learned a certain cast-on method which was dubbed by the SnB women as "the old lady cast-on". I couldn't have that. So, I've been learning other types. I since learned my method is actually called the "half hitch cast-on". SEEEEeee!? It really DOES have a name.

Unfortunately, the long-tail cast-on aggravated my thumb a bit and I wasn't able to knit for a couple days. (To be honest, the thumb problem probably had more to do with throwing children around in circles at work.) I realized during those couple days how dramatic it felt not to knit. It was very hard. But, I got some help from my acupuncturist yesterday, and now I'm happily knitting again.

Back to my knitting now...