As the sands through the Hourglass...

I finished up the body of Hourglass Sweater over the weekend. I toyed with the idea of adding a bit to the length, but I ran into a weird tape measure paradox. I'm hoping to wear this at least early in the fall, so I made a larger size, and I was thinking I might want it to be longer to serve as an interim maternity kind of sweater. The body length is written as 15 3/4". When I measured from my armpit to where I thought I wanted the sweater to end, I got something ridiculous like 18". But when I got the bright idea to measure a sweater that has about the same length as I'd like for this one, I got 15" from armpit to the bottom. huh. So I just went with the original length. Here it is so far:

Here's a closeup of the increase/decrease "seam." It's kind of bugging me. I did the increases and decreases as stated in the pattern (ssk/k2tog and kf&b), and I feel like it looks unspeakably sloppy. This might be my execution, or I might prefer less visible increases. I don't feel that the decreases look as bad. I guess this is where a seam would be on a not-in-the-round sweater, so it probably doesn't matter. Any thoughts?


I like this pattern. I am a bit nervous about the sweater's fit, since the book includes a great photo of the sweater laying flat on something, but not one of someone actually WEARING the sweater. (Knitting book pet peeve #427: Skip the artsy crap and show someone wearing the sweater so I can see the length, hang, ease, etc.) We'll see. I'm excited to be using up quite a bit of my impulse sale-buy tan yarn, with the added bonus of getting a sweater at the end.

Annie, that's really interesting! I'll let you know Sept. 1 :)

Reading: Mansfield Park. Rachel, I haven't read Anne of Green Gables in ages! I have to dig out my copy.

Writing: Revision this week.

Cooking: I made the Doughnut Muffins yesterday. Mmmmmmmm.... They are pretty easy to make and just fantastic. Tender crumb, lightly spiced, and the cinnamon sugar really makes you feel like you're eating a doughnut. I'm curious how these would be made in mini muffin pans. Maybe even more doughnutty. Anyway, Matt loved them. He's used to my whole grain-fruity-reduced fat muffins, which he likes okay, but he thought these were delicious. They are particularly nice with a cup of coffee. Notes: I only got 21 muffins out of this, not 24, using a 1/2 cup measure. I originally got 18, but did some batter reorganization and managed to create 3 more. Also, I was a little mad that I had over 1/2 cup of melted butter left at the end. What do they do in the original recipe, soak the muffins in butter? I brushed pretty liberally and didn't even use half. I would definitely only melt one stick of butter next time, and probably reduce the cinnamon sugar by 1/3 or so as well.