On the boards

Hi LuLu,
One of our wonderfully encouraging readers commented on how fast I'm proceeding. Trust me, I'm no speed-knitter. In fact, I'm an English-style "thrower," and we all know that the Continental-style "pickers" are the queens and kings of speed.

No, the answers are (a) mostly stripes--just knit or purl an entire row, no picking up or setting down as with your Long-Leaf intarsia, and (b) Size 9 and 10.5 needles, and knitting with two and three (and on the sleeves, FOUR!) strands at a time. So the key is BIG stitches.

In truth, though, I'm wasting no time, not I letting myself work on any other knitting projects (of which I always seem to have three or four going at a time). It's strictly the R&J coat, whenever I can squeeze in a few minutes of knitting.

The two front bodice pieces are now "on the boards" (the ironing board, that is). They're still on the needle because the shoulders will be joined using the 3-needle bind-off. You can see my preferred method of blocking wool, pieces pinned to the size and shape I want, and then pressed with a damp pressing cloth so everything is steamed into place.

Fortunately, the front pieces decrease at the center edge, so there was less knitting than the back bodice. That sped up the intarsia. Now just the second sleeve remains.

The second sleeve, at 180 stitches around...now THAT part IS going slowly. It's a lot of stitches! And on these big #10.5 needles, it just isn't possible to knit as fast as on smaller needles. If I never had to stop to adjust the stitches on the needle or shake out more yarn, I could knit a row in 3-5 minutes (about 1 stitch/second). But it's more realistically taking 10 minutes per row. I have about 120 rows to go, and 17 days until Kaffe comes to town, so I'll need to carve out about an hour/day for knitting. Oops, I forgot--I also need to sew the pieces together, somewhere in there...