Latvian News

Hello Zimmermaniacs!

I have two orders of business: a picture of a new(ish) finished project and a proposal for you all. They're all very much "in the spirit of EZ," though I realize that they they're not exactly EZ designs or concepts.

A picture:

This is Joyce Williams' "Morocco" sweater/jacket from her book "Latvian Dreams," (2000, Schoolhouse Press). It took me far too long to knit (my own fault, I was working on other things, and I knit one of the sleeves to almost full length before I realized that I was decreasing at the wrong rate.) But it's a great sweater at any rate.

In an unusual for me, I basically followed this pattern from the book. Well, I changed the neck shaping a lot, added a collar, and I did the hem in my own way--at the very end and in one long mitered piece--but aside from that it was very by the book.

The yarn is "Old Mill Yarn's" Domy Heather which I knit at 9.5 stitches per inch. It's finer than jumper weight shetland, which is nice because I'm skinny, and this way the sweater is just "comfortably oversized" rather than obscenely oversized.

And now the announcement:

I'm designing and knitting a new sweater. This isn't news in and of itself, but rather than doing so in isolation, I'm sharing the pattern with the internet (that means you!) as I go. The sweater uses 3 charts (and variations thereon) of the more than 250 different charts from the Latvian Dreams book, and I'm writing up instructions including a bunch of different design and style options as I knit. The current version of the chart and design resources is here and I'm blogging the pattern as I go in a special tag of my blog, tychoish.com. There's a pattern and a group on ravelry if that's more your speed.

There's no set start date, but the more distance lead you let me get the better you'll be able to learn from my mistakes. I'm using the same yarn that I used for the Morocco sweater, but you could use whatever you have on hand In proper EZ style, the key number for the sweater is 340 and it's possible to tweak things to get a full range of sizes.

I'd love to have you (all) join me on this project and have you tell your friends about the project if you think they might be interested. This is going to be really fun, and I can't wait to see what you all come up with.

"Knit on, with hope and confidence..."