Revisiting the Toaster Sweater

I did not make pants yesterday, but I might today. We’ll see. Yesterday, I made a Toaster Sweater from that lavender stretch fleece I got at Joanns.

Pros: The top is luxe and warm and very comfortable.

Cons: Stretch fleece is a pain to work with. I didn’t quite get some of the settings correct on the serger. Also, I haven’t made this pattern for over a year and forgot that I intended to lengthen it a couple of inches. This top is fine and will go into the rotation, but I immediately retraced and lengthened the sweater for the next iteration.

You will notice that the cuffs look darker. I was very careful, throughout the process, to make sure the nap was running in the same direction on all the pieces. I thought I double-checked the cuffs before I attached them but apparently not. I will not take them off and reattach them because this fleece disintegrates if you try to remove a seam. I did it wrong on both cuffs so we will just refer to that mistake as a design element.

I have some hot pink stretch fleece (Hobby Lobby) but after working with the purple fabric, I am not in a hurry to cut into the hot pink. I’d also like to frankenpattern the Toaster Sweater with the Nancy Raglan. I like the turtleneck style of the Toaster but would like a tunic style top like the Nancy, which has a cowl neck.

While I was working on the Toaster Sweater, I listened to the replay of the livestream that accompanied the release of Johanna Lundstrom and Malena Hjerpe’s new book Fit For Knits. I am even more excited to get my copy. I am familiar with Johanna’s work but she published her previous books solo. She collaborated on this book with Malena Hjerpe, who is a patternmaker and has worked for companies like H&M. Malena had some excellent tips for working with knits—all included in the book—and I expect to learn a lot. She talked a bit about cutting knit patterns and noted that often, knit fabrics will look like they are off grain. The practice of measuring from the selvage to determine if a woven fabric is on the straight grain doesn’t necessarily work for knits. Hmmmm.

I’m also trying to wrap my head around the top-down, center-out pants fitting method. I have the kit from J Stern Designs and have watched her videos and a few others, but I haven’t yet come across that one piece of information that will enable me to synthesize it all in my head. Jumping in and actually doing it may be the only way that will happen.

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Not much is happening in the neighborhood right now. Our neighbor, Ali, has a friend named Sarah who buzzes in and out of here periodically. Sarah is now our friend. The husband helped her replace the pump in the gas tank on her vehicle, and in return, she offered to stain the greenhouse for us. She’s been working on that for the past couple of days. That was a job that needed to get done and it was lovely of her to offer.

We lost a couple of trees in the pig pasture, which was weird because we haven’t really had any big windstorms. The husband cut those up and fixed the fence, because, of course, the tree couldn’t fall in the middle of the pasture where it wouldn’t damage anything.

And I am packing up and getting ready to head out of here. When people find out that I usually leave the husband alone over Thanksgiving, they react with horror and dismay. Trust me, he doesn’t want to go anywhere. He once had a stretch of 10 years where he never left the state of Montana. His idea of the perfect vacation is being alone in his shop. (He will miss having his morning cup of coffee delivered to him in bed—and before people get their knickers twisted about domestic servitude, I will note that he gets the coffeemaker ready before he comes to bed and sets the timer so that I have hot coffee waiting for me when I come downstairs in the morning.) Why would I want to make him miserable by demanding that he go somewhere with me? After 36 years together, each of us knows what makes the other one tick. We laugh about the fact that he bought me a vacuum cleaner for my birthday one year—because I asked for one. I have no use for jewelry.

So I will be a migratory bird for a few days and he will spend time being productive here. It’s a win-win all around.