1945 Victory jumper - 7. the big reveal!

I'm trying to do the 'phone-pose' here with my grandma's old bakelite phone:
  

Fastest knit ever!!!
A quick recap of the past days:
31/1 Setting in the sleeves!
30/1 Finished the back of the bodice and the neck ribbing and sewed up the sleeves. Only need to set the sleeves in and weaving in the endless amount of yarn ends (did the white stripes with separate pieces of white to avoid a thick string of yarns along the edges)
29/1 Made a mistake while doing the armhole decrease, o had to rip out about 20 rows...
28/1 Finished the front armhole and neckline. Like the neckline shaping better than in my first version.
27/1 Finished the bodice up until the armholes!
25/1 Going from 90% to 30 again, with only one week left to compete the Knit to Vitctory challenge. Ripped out the patterned part of the bodice today and only left the ribbing intact. Re-started from the ribbing, planning to make the bodice wider, going towards 0 to max 1 inch of negative ease.
24/1 finished knitting the sleeves! In theory about 90% of the jumper is finished, but I'm afraid the bodice has to be re-knitted. Hours of work has to go, but now I want it to be perfect, with just a zero ease instead of a negative ease. It is hard to predict how lace patterns are going to look when finished... 20/1 sleeve I started is too wide, need to go... I'm going to restart the project tomorrow .

1945 Victory jumper - 6. close to the finishing line

Yes! Today is the day when I'm going to finish my Victory jumper, knitted in a whopping 10 days! To start, a picture from yesterday evening, when knitting the neckband:


To avoid stretching out I opened up the neckband and did a quick crochet buttonhole with a heart shaped button this time. I explained how to do this here.


picking up stitches - the easy way!
I used a 5:6 ratio for picking up the stitches for the neckband, same as on my Top Honors jumper. What I like about this technique is that you pick up every stitch in the first round, you don't need to count at all. By reducing the amount of stitches when starting to knit the ribbing you avoid holes between the stitches.

- pick up every stitch you come across evenly
- reduce the amount of stitches in the first row of ribbing by ribbing 4 stitches and then knit (or purl) the next two stitches together.
(you knit like this: K1, P1, K1, P1, K2TOG, P1, K1, P1, K1, P2TOG...)


Project of the day: setting in the sleeves and weaving in yarn-ends. (+ taking pics of the finished garment!)

1945 Victory jumper - 5. the victory is close

The victory is close!!! Yesterday was a rather unproductive day. In a hurry I made a huge mistake when decreasing the armholes. Knitted a huge piece with decreasing at both ends of the back while I should have decreased only at the beginning of every row. The evening was again about frogging and re-knitting...sigh...

my armhole shaping
(already used 3 times and works perfect for me)
- cast off 6 sts at the beginning of the next 2 rows
- decrease 1 st at the beginning of each of the following 10 rows

My planning was to finish the bodice yesterday and start knitting the neckband today. But again...I don't give up! Luckily have 2 days off from work, so I should have enough time to finish the back today, block the pieces and knit the neckband. The original pattern instructs to do this in two parts, one for the front and one for the back but I'm going to stitch up the shoulder seams and pick up the stitches all around like I did with my Top Honors jumper. The neckband is going to be a bit wider this time. I like the neckline of this second version of my Victory better, though I did a partly 'freehand' decrease to shape it. The jumper must be ready by friday midnight If everything goes well I only need to set in the sleeves tomorrow and make pics of my finished project.

1945 Victory jumper - 4. rewind and repeat!

Sometimes things are not working out the way you expect. The only thing you can do is raise the bar, start over again and perform even better...

A quick recap on this project. After a month of 'silence' I pulled out my knit-for-victory project and decided to complete it by the end of january. It seemed an easy task since the bodice was almost finished. After knitting the back part from the armholes up I started with a sleeve. This is how my almost finished jumper looked like last week:


This is how it looked like 2 days ago:

So what happened? On the 23th of january the bodice was finished and I was halfway of the first sleeve. Because the sleeve seemed to be too wide I decided to rip it out and re-start with less stitches, following the original stitch count of the Victory pattern. Re-started the sleeves on the 24th of january and finished them on the 25th. The modification in the sleeves is the different way of decreasing used for the sleeve cap. The original Victory pattern starts right away with decreasing without the horizontal part which is usually formed by casting off a few stitches first. I used the decrease of my 'blueprint' pattern,  without an enlarged or lengthened sleeve-cap:
- started at the beginning of the 4th red/white stripe block
- cast off 3 sts in the beginning of the next 2 rows
- decrease 1 stitch at the beginning and end of every alternate row until 28 sts left. Cast off.

sleeve version 1
you can count more pattern repeats in the width here

sleeve version 2
I was a bit tired so decided to start the sleeve-cap decrease the next day and started with the straight part of the second sleeve next to the first one. That's why there are two sleeves on the same circular knitting needle:

the finished sleeves (not blocked yet)


After finishing the two sleeves decided to take the right step and frog the bodice. It was just to small and I knew I wouldn't like it at all. So why knit something and then not to wear?


Frogged the bodice almost completely, with only the ribbing left re-started to knit on the 25th. Instead of 13 pattern repeats I did 16 pattern repeats in the width, which will give a better fit across the bust. Thanks to a quiet nightshift I managed to knit for a few hours during the night and then sacrificed a day on knitting while watching series 3 of Homeland. I must say, it was a great relax-day with just a little of shoulder-pain at the end. Here we are now, with just 5 days left of the Knit-for-Victory challenge, there is hope I manage to finish it on time:

1945 Victory jumper - 3. progress

After 2 days of 'speed-knitting' 2x half of the sleeves are ready. This time the sleeves are smaller, there is less pattern repeat in the width but a little more lengthwise to achieve the same look as in the picture above.

Actually, after getting to the armhole part I just started knitting the another sleeve instead of starting with the decrease in the evening. (Knitting+watching tv works only if you are not involved in knitting increase/decrease or intricate patterns...) I'm trying to finish and set in the sleeves this weekend and hope to finally see the overall fit!

1945 Victory jumper - 2. on track again...or not?

Well, don't be fooled by this picture! This was the case in the morning. Now the jumper is sleeveless again... Victory became officially my jumper from hell!


The story (or should I say, saga?!) so far:
As far as construction goes instead of following the original pattern I followed my own 'blueprint' pattern, both for the stitch-count and for shaping the armholes. (Actually for the third time, as I didn't share my second jumper between the TH and Victory.) The neckline was a bit of freehand work this time, I wanted a wider ribbing than on my Top Honours jumper, but didn't want a too high neckline (like the original) so I lowered it a bit.
Somehow, I just don't know what happened, it turned out a size smaller in width than my TH jumper. Instead to grow, the lacy pattern somehow shrunk. Sounds weird, right? After blocking the results were reasonable, but I couldn't say I was in love...
Anyway, learned my lesson, but still started out the sleeve the wrong way.
Thought to be smart, I added a row of increase after the ribbing, like my blueprint pattern instructs. Instead of the expected results, the lace pattern seemed to grow this time, adding  too much ease with a blousy look, instead of the perfect fit.

Since I really want another perfect jumper decided to frog this sleeve (proudly produced past week - sigh..... and start all over again.
I must say, at this point I'm not completely sure that I'm going to leave the bodice as it is. I'd rather frog it and knit it up again than having something that's not perfect.

My plan for the next 1.5 week:
- start to re-knit the sleeves, this time using the stitch-count of the original pattern
- after finishing the sleeves sew it into the armholes, try the whole thing on and decide whether it looks good or not. (worst case scenario: frog and re-knit the bodice)
- try to finish the whole thing by the end of this month?!
- Yes, I am definitely knitting for victory!!!!

the pattern
Since I didn't share much information about the pattern yet, here is a little introduction:
'Victory' is a pattern from the collection of the English Victoria & Albert museum. Among other patterns from magazines and a couple of Bestway leaflets it is available as a free download. How about these other jumpers from the Woman's Weekly Magazine? I wish all editions of those would be available online!!! There is 'Neat and feminine' and the 'When you're off duty':


There is also 'A new design in cable stitch' or a 'Waistcoat for warmth':


My choice was the 'Victory' jumper, and as it is the 'Top Honours' it is from the war-winning year of 1945, featuring the English national colors of red, blue and white. I really like this bold, strong combination! (fun fact: these are the national colors of the Netherlands as well)


The yarn I use is again my fav.: drops baby merino in the shades 30 (dark)blue, 16 red and 02 natural:


pattern chart


The pattern envelope says it is 'such an easy pattern', because  only two rows complete the pretty scalloped stripe pattern. It is truly easy to memorize.
The stripes are formed by altering 6 rows in blue, 4 rows in red, 2 rows in white, 4 rows in red (my camera seems to fight with the bright red, but you get the idea...)

1945 Victory jumper - 1. an abandoned knitting project

You might have spotted By Gum, By Golly's 'Knit for Victory' banner in the side-bar. It seems like I've started this 40's challenge knitting project ages ago (somewhere in november 2013) but after a rather enthusiastic start I begun to doubt wether I liked the results...
It is another free jumper pattern from the internet, from the collection of the Victoria & Albert museum and there are quite a few gorgeous jumpers out there, made from this pattern. It looks so flattering on everybody, I just had to make one for myself!
   

I thought this 1945 jumper named 'Victory' would be perfect as my 'Knit for Victory' project! Back then (seemingly) I had plenty of time, so I thought I could easily finish it by the end of january. I choose to use the original 'national' colors: navy, red and white. I've ordered the wool (my fav: drops baby merino) a few months ago when it was on sale: 30 (navy)blue, 16 red, 02 natural


As usual, I started with my trusted 'blueprint'  pattern. Why would you change something that works? I thought that I would knit the lace pattern more loosely, normally I have that with repeated yarn-overs, so instead of a size 3.5 I started with a metric 3 needle. Of course, I didn't make a swatch and of course, the lacy pattern wanted desperately shrink in width, rather than stretching out...

By the time I started to realize I was going from zero ease to a negative ease I was too far progressed and almost finished the front and the back (knitted in round as always) And then...I just didn't know what to do and have put the jumper away. For quite a while...

And now, with only 2 weeks left I pulled it out to decide on it's faith. Frogging or finishing? When you observe the original picture you can clearly see that the lace pattern is supposed to be steamed open  (how could I missed that?!) so I decided to steam block the piece. Then I tried it on and it didn't look bad at all! Of course, it didn't look exactly the way like my Top Honours jumper looked like, it was just different. This might be the problem after all: the fit is just not the same.
Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but in my imagination it was supposed to look exactly the same, right? Have you ever had the same problem? The garment you were making appeared to be different from the garment you thought you were making?...
Let's hope I manage to finish my Victory jumper in the next 2 weeks!

Want to join this 1940's challenge?

Well, there is still enough time to join the 1940's 'Knitting for Victory' project, if you are planning to make something small! I'd recommend a few patterns from my blog, listed under 'free knitting patterns', going from easy to more difficult:

- 1940 pleated scarf

- 1943 servicewomen gloves

- 1942 lacy gloves