i know how long you have been waiting for this! the bottom ribbing seemed to take forever, and even now, i still haven’t put the straps on it yet but i did block it last night and it turned out great.

ignore the bad choice of colors on the model, please.

pattern: glampyre’s tubular camisole

yarn: debbie bliss cotton cashmere in dusty rose (lavendar) – 4 balls

needles: US3 (ribbing) and US6 (body) 24″ aluminum circs

as you can see, i tried it on last night without the straps and it fit perfectly! maybe just a little loose, but that was before i gave it a hot water bath and threw it in the dryer. now it looks like it’s going to fit just right. tonight, i’ll put on the straps and i think that i may even wear it tomorrow to the point so the spiders can see it. this is the first knitted garment i have made besides the one skein wonder which is also a pattern from glampyre and i love it! it’s nice to knit things that you can wear and not just drape over your shoulders on a cold day.

i do have one thing to say, and i hope that it doesn’t piss anyone off, to THOSE WHO TEST KNIT THIS PATTERN, did you tell stefanie that her pattern had errors? i saw a couple of bloggers who knit this and said it was easy and great.. i even saw someone show it off on craftster. but when i went to make one myself, i found more than one pattern error. when i questioned the craftster knitter about hers, she said that she just increased and decreased in order to make the pattern work. DID YOU EVEN TELL STEFANIE THAT?! because i had the guts to write her and tell her that her pattern had errors, and lo and behold, SHE FIXED THEM! poor stef, if only her test knitters had told her so.

i find that this is a problem with the patterns on knitty. you find an error, like lisa and i did with the crusoe sock, and you know TONS of other knitters have made this sock, yet the pattern was never corrected on the website. knitty has a rule that you are supposed to write the pattern creator and let them know, and i did, but the pattern creator never wrote me back. what to do then? my guess is that anyone wanting to do a pattern from knitty should visit their BBS before attempting the project to see if the posters have pointed out any errors. ok, that’s the end of my rant. what should i knit next?

###

i decided that i was knitting too many things for other people and nothing for myself so it was time to rectify that. i bought the tubular camisole pattern from glampyre after seeing what carrioke and knit and tonic had done with it. so cute! i had yet to make myself some sort of wearable garment (the one skein wonder doesn’t count) so i figured that if i got this thing going now, i might be able to wear it with a jacket in the fall.

i’m finally remembering to take pictures in the daylight!

i had three false starts on this project. my first one, i casted-on, started knitting and realized the pattern was incorrect. luckily, stefanie remedied the situation fairly quickly and i tried again on monday. at which point, i dropped a stitch on the first row and did all of the repeats wrong. *sigh* this is why there are a bagillion stitch markers here. i realized that the pattern called for 29 repeats of k3p3 ribbing so as i casted-on i placed a stitch marker every 6 stitches until i had 29 repeats. perfect! requires almost no counting. i’ll leave in the markers for another two rows until i can actually see the ribbing pattern and then, sayonara.

this is also the first project where i’m using a bunch of new techniques. i decided to read some of the tips in stitch ‘n bitch nation and found out that if you dip your circular needles in boiling water for a few seconds, it takes out that wild, snakelike quality that i hate. works!! i also used a new cast-on method (for me, at least), the knitted cast-on. possibly not the best method for ribbing but i was sick of running out of yarn using the long-tail method (when i say that i actually casted-on three times for this project, it’s more like six because three other times i ran out of yarn because of the damn long-tail cast-on method. grrrrr..) i think that it will still look good but maybe i’ll try the cable cast-on next time.

AND i learned a new way to hold my yarn from the stitch ‘n bitch nation book. by wrapping the yarn once around my two middle fingers, there’s enough tension to knit with and i’m not cramping up my hands trying to hold the yarn (i knit continental, so this is a great new method for me.) brilliant! this is also the first project that i actually swatched AND bought enough yarn for!

swatchin’ and washin’

i swatched the yarn up and figured out that i’ll need to use US6s for the body and US3s for the ribbing to get gauge and actually have something that fits me. the swatch came to the gauge the pattern called for (20 st/24 rows over 4″ sq) after a quick warm water soak and a tumble in the dryer. the fabric is even softer! it’s going to be nice once it’s all knitted up.

and that’s about all the knitting content i have today and for a while. no progress shots for clapotis or cabled socks as i’m not big on taking pictures of one extra inch of fabric. you’ll just have to imagine they are getting bigger. you can use your imagination, right?

###