Tatania Pieces

These are the pieces for my Tatania sweater. I keep wanting to spell that as "Titania," like in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I can't help but wonder if that's what the designer had in mind, and just got her Shakespeare references wrong.

The yarn is Ella Rae Classic, which I got on sale at Webs. I'm fairly pleased with the way it knit up; the colors are a lot of fun and the color changes are short enough that it doesn't really do any weird pooling. Having the red in there is nice because it mitigates the purple and pink a little bit; it's not just Barbie colors. My only complaint with the yarn is that it has some little bleached spots in some places where the color changed.

The pattern drove me nuts when I got to the shoulder shaping. It was supposed to tell me to increase at the shoulder, but the pattern said decrease. I could not figure out what I had done wrong until I went through the Ravelry project gallery and found someone put the correction in her project notes. I think I'll put it in the pattern notes, too, so that the next knitter might find it a bit more easily.

My biggest complaint is the way the horizontal ribbing scrunches up. This isn't evident in the pattern's model, because the woman is standing with her hands strategically placed to block the problem from view. I'm going to block the heck out of it and hope that helps it somewhat, although I'm not expecting 100% success. I also think that I may sew some seam binding or something slightly thick along the inside of the front at the bottom of the ribbing, so that at least the stockinette in the bottom of the first horizontal won't roll.

Speaking of finishing, I have a bit of a confession to make. I've never actually seamed a garment. I tried once and gave up, deciding to instead use a sewing machine to sew up the sweater vest I made for my grandfather. However, this sweater is supposed to be so fitted that I don't want the bulkier seams I think I might get from a machine, so I think I may need to do this one the traditional way. Unfortunately, there is only about a month until the end of the semester, so I have papers exams galore to look forward to. I don't have time to sit down and figure out seaming. The only reason I have time for knitting is because I can do it little bits at a time, and because I justify it as a method of distressing. The seaming is more likely to cause stress, rather than alleviate it. I think this one may get stored until I have more time on my hands to figure it out. *Sigh* By the time I get this finished, it will be too warm to wear it…but at least I'll have a reason to look forward to next winter! Hopefully I'll actually get around to seaming it before then…