Last night, I went to Claddagh Yarns for a talk by Narangkar Glover (maker of the Knitters Graph Paper Journal) about color theory and knitting. Without giving it a moment’s thought, I wore dark jeans, black oxfords and a black-and-ivory striped tee. But I at least I was knitting with purple yarn!

You may be wondering what’s become of my Tag Team Sweater Project sweater since Seattle, and though it looks barely changed, there’s been a fair amount of knitting. On the way home from Seattle, I picked up stitches for the buttonhole band. (The pattern gives actual stitch counts between buttonholes, and I approve of the placement, so I wasn’t worried about calculating spacing.) Picking up 3 stitches for every 4 rows, as indicated, I wound up with about 56% of the prescribed number of stitches. Like: whoa, major discrepancy. Although I couldn’t explain it (we stuck to the pattern length, and our row gauge might be different but not that different), it was clear that if my stitch count was so far off from the pattern’s, I wouldn’t be able to use its stitch counts for the buttonholes, so I had to abort that mission. Back home, over the course of a few different sittings, I redid the pick-up several times. I knitted one whole band to completion to prove to myself that it was way too short. Ripped it out and picked up higher and higher ratios of stitches before realizing the problem was exactly what I had expected on day one: the selvage stitches.

Trillium has a selvage treatment called Wrapped Chain Selvage (which is called Twisted Stitch Selvage in Slade). Anna and I debated whether or not to do it — I feared it would eventually complicate my life, but she wanted to try it, and you know I do like to try new things so I was persuaded. Then I sort of forgot it was there. With normal stockinette, there’s the usual running thread between every edge stitch and the one next to it, and you pick up stitches in the gaps between those threads. With WCS/TSS, each gap is two rows tall, with the corresponding running threads being twisted around each other, tight enough that you might not notice it’s out of the ordinary. So instead of picking up stitches in each gap, you pick up one in a gap, then plunge the tip of your needle between those two twisted strands and pick up a stitch from there. Oy. At least I finally figured it out, and the bands were short work after that.

So all I have left now is the sleeves, which I’m downsizing from the pattern. Think I can get through them in a weekend?

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IN DRAMATIC WEBSHOP NEWS, the hotly anticipated Cable Fashion Drama is back in stock! This slender-but-jam-packed Japanese pattern book generated a waiting list as long as my arm — I’ve never seen anything like it. But the waiting list people have all been alerted to its presence, so it’s time for you to have a crack at the stack. You can order your copy right here.

Also freshly restocked: Japanese thread snips and row counters, Bento Bags in large natural linen, and two other waiting list items: the Indian rosewood crochet hook in size H and the bone DPNs in smaller sizes, US2 and US3. And might I suggest a tasty treat to go with?

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Happy weekend, y’all. What are you doing while I knit my sleeves?

If you were tooling past the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue WA on Saturday evening, on whatever highway that is, you may have seen some strange women jumping up and down on the 4th-floor terrace — in the rain. That would have been Anna and me. As I mentioned, Kathy Cadigan did us the great honor of shooting these photos of us in our Tag Team Sweater Project sweaters. The sweaters themselves left a little bit to be desired. As you can see, my Trillium is currently a cap-sleeved number with no button bands or neck edging, while Anna’s Lila is a sultry, off-the-shoulder sort of thing. Very Flashdance. Still, we were wearing them, so they are technically sweaters. And although we didn’t finish them in time for the shoot, we had a ton of fun.

But let’s talk about this yoke for a minute. The true brilliance of the whole project became clear the moment I was knitting a yoke without having had to knit the whole big rectangle that precedes it. And I’m sort of glad I botched that first sleeve and skipped ahead, because this method of working the yoke upwards from provisionally cast-on sleeve stitches is brilliant. Apart from that little trick, the only modification I made to the yoke was with regard to the number of nupps involved. The pattern calls for basically a solid stream of them in the center of the chevrons. I decided to cut that in half and knitted only the ones at the peaks and valleys, omitting the ones in between. I’m in love with the circular yoke approach — in love with how well this fits my shoulders! — but am a little puzzled by the multiple sets of short rows worked in stages up the back, rather than just at the neckline. All that extra fabric is giving the sweater a little bit of a hunchback, but I’m trusting that it will work out in the blocking.

We had joked at the beginning of all this about whether we’d be great friends or arch enemies in the end. It’s not the end, of course, but it’s definitely been a great bonding experience between knitters. If we’ve learned a lesson, it’s that tag-team knitting is a fantastic idea, just as long as you don’t saddle it with an unrealistic deadline.

For the rest, stay tuned here and to @karentempler and @toltyarnandwool. And there are more photos and thoughts on Anna’s blog today as well.

p.s. There are a few more copies of the new Taproot in the shop — the one with the gorgeous Carrie Bostick Hoge shawl pattern. And you’ll also find a handful of XL bentos in red ticking. Assuming you act fast.

p.p.s. Those poor old ballet flats are officially OUT of the closet — so shabby!

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All photos by Kathy Cadigan