You, doin' that thing you do...

Yesterday I kind of sort of broke my "no casting on" thing. But here's the good part: I didn't cast on for a new garment! Not at all!

I did something I never, ever do:



I knit a swatch. For real. (However, I seem to have taken a picture of the wrong side of it. That's the back side.)

It's for the Sakuracon project, which uses the Candy Blue Cotton-Ease you see here. I couldn't fall asleep on Wednesday night, so I started thinking about what will be my big winter term project and how I could tweak it. And then I had the brainstorm of "oh, hey, the shaping in the front is similar to that of a bolero jacket! I bet I could alter a bolero pattern and get the shape I want!" And I pondered if that meant I had to buy a bolero pattern, but then! Then I remembered that in Rowan 35, which I already have, there's the Iris bolero. Bingo. Precisely what I needed.

So what's the swatch, then? This is the armhole and front slope shaping. I made the armhole deeper and moved the decreases to fit in 2x2 ribbing (which I learned from Audrey).

And as someone who never swatches, I'm actually pretty pleased with how it's worked out. I've been tweaking the pattern and figuring out things as I go along (when to start the short rows on the front pieces, etc.), and I'm feeling really good about this project in general. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I think that I'm going to be able to pull it off.