Up to My Armpits

... in nubby, tweedy knitting.

I've been busily working on the Chanel-ish Cardigan in bulky-weight handspun. It doesn't look like much yet, but on the whole I think it's coming along fine. My gauge seems to be pretty much as predicted from the swatch I knit, which means the jacket will be more or less the size I'm aiming for, all good news.

The jacket is knit from the bottom up in one piece until it splits to make the armholes. I've just about reached the splitting point now. There are pockets knit in along the way -- you can see the pocket flaps in the photo. (To help sort out what you're looking at, other than a generally messy blob of knitting, the north of the jacket is the upper right of the picture.)

The pockets did pose a minor dilemma along the way. They are not anchored like patch pockets to the inside, but hang loose inside as separate pouches. I'm guessing this is to keep from interfering with the way the jacket hangs smoothly in the front. But it does mean that where each pockets is, there are three layers of fabric -- the jacket front itself, and two layers of pocket lining. With a bulky-weight yarn, I thought this would add up to quite a thick wad, which might in itself interfere with the smooth line of the jacket.

After pondering this for a while, I decided to make the pocket linings out of a lighter weight yarn to slim them down. Since the pockets are knit in instead of sewn on, that meant an interesting little challenge of changing stitch counts to match the width at the opening, but all worked out, thank goodness. Of course, there was not the ghost of a chance of finding a worsted-weight match for this crazy tri-colored marled handspun yarn. So I used a contrasting but (I hope) sympathetic solid color left over from a long-ago sweater project. I did think about using black, especially since the plan is to finish the sweater with a contrast edge in black or charcoal. But where's the fun in that?

Still, I hope the jacket won't gape open too much at the front, because a glimpse of that wild pocket inside could be eye-popping. :) Back to work now.