Jenni had wanted to know about seeing the finished Bianca Jacket. Last week I would have said it should be done for March. I was hoping that I would be able to complete the jacket this week.
However, the jacket did not want to go that smoothly. In the above photo I had 14 rows of the second chart left to do on the yoke as well as a garter band down the fronts and along the bottom. See that small pile of yarn next to the sleeve. That is the yarn that I had to complete that task. It was not going to be done.
Since the yarn was discontinued, I considered finding a yarn on ravelry to do the band. As I searched at people's stashes, I began wondering if the finished jacket would look like I ran out of yarn and I just used something else. If I had worked in the second colour earlier so the different colour band was tied in it would work. I needed a different plan.
One of the reasons that I might have run out of yarn was that I added a pattern repeat (11 sts), distributed mostly through the chest before the yoke starts. The reason being I needed something between a 38" and 46.5" size that this pattern calls for. Taking the stitches off the needle and trying the jacket on, the pattern has a lot of ease and I can get rid of that pattern repeat. Another area that more yarn could be found would be the sleeves.
The cuff of the sleeves is knitted with a 5 mm needle, the stockinette of the body and sleeves with a 4.5 mm needle and the yoke with a 4 mm needle. To me the lace of the sleeves looks too loose with the 5 mm also the cuff is huge. There is no tapering or angles in the sleeve shape - stockinette on 55 sts to the underarm shaping. If I knit the cuff with the 4.5 mm needle using only 4 (instead of 5) pattern repeats then increase the stitch count after it will give me more than enough yarn. This method does require me to reknit the sleeves though. However, I think in the long run it will give me a better jacket. So instead of knitting the cuff with 55 stitches I am knitting it with 46 stitches - 4 pattern repeats plus 2 selvedge stitches to make the seaming easier. Once the cuff is done I will gradually add in the extra 9 stitches.
That is my current plan - the downside is that my mind was already on the next project and this Scotian silk is calling ( a gauge swatch has already been knitted and is drying).
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