I Dream of Jeanie with the Silver Stole

My Jeanie: Jaggerspun sport-weight Zephyr wool-silk yarn in a very light gray with a a metallic silver carry.

Here she is in all her glory:

The stole was designed for a thinner yarn than I chose, so I dropped the two side cables and used 4 intertwining cables for the mid-section instead of 6, for a stole of about the same width as the original design. I knit the length according to instructions. My Jeanie blocked to 20.5" x 82" (not counting fringe), about perfect for width and a good foot longer than specified by the design.

Jeanie was fun to knit, with the interesting exchange cables and the drop stitches and the edge stitches knit through the back loop. The pattern took longer to learn than usual, however. It just took time to figure out what the chart was trying to do.

One of the fun things about the design is dropping the stitches, both in the midst of knitting and at the very end. Here's the stole with the big ladders undropped:

And then dropped:

And another blocking picture:

The other thing I changed was to carry the exchange cables down into a fringe instead of finishing with a plain cable knit sideways. I like the way this worked with the overall design, and I also like the way it looks when the stole is worn.

Top-Down Hanover

This is my top-down adaptation of Jean Frost's Hanover sweater from her Jackets book.

I re-drafted the sweater so it was top-down and suited the Peace Fleece I wanted to use. I added bust darts and waist shaping to suit my figure.

I also re-drafted the leaf motif for the waist and sleeves. Unfortunately, the top-down version really didn't yield the same result, so I ripped out the bottom of the body and sleeves and re-knit them bottom-up.

Grafting the leaf motif-bottom onto the top-down top in shadow rib was a bit hair-raising, but I managed to do it without mishap.

When I first look at something I've grafted, I can always see the line, but I eventually forget that it's there and never notice it when I'm washing or wearing the sweater.

I finished my Hanover the first week of May and have been squabbling with 16-year-old Matisse over who gets to wear it when, but I haven't gotten around to putting the zipper in yet.

It'll be so awesome with a zipper.