![\"3-30-16a](\"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/3-30-16a-001.jpg\")
<\/a>Bob has been onboard a couple of times, and both of us were invited for lunch yesterday. What a galley. That big cast iron stove takes over an hour to preheat. That would be lovely on a chilly morning in Maine, but baking is no fun in the current Cuban heat wave.<\/p>\nThe communal dining table where we ate lunch. \u00a0That’s a big chest freezer at the bottom of the photo. \u00a0We contributed a bottle of coke, a bag of ice and a package of chocolate chip cookies to the lunch. \u00a0Not very exciting, but the crew have been missing ice (couldn’t they make a ton of it in that huge freezer?) and American Coke and Keebler cookies.<\/p>\n During our last sail from one of the cays to Cienfuegos I dug out some yarn I\u2019d brought to make a sweater. Before I left home I bought some yarn from the Canadian mail order company Elann.com. They were having an Amazon special on full bags of an Australian merino DK weight yarn that they call Embrace DK. It is processed (superwashed) and spun in China, and it will be a while before I know what I think of that!<\/p>\n Last year I knitted the sweater called “Baby\u00a0Cables and Big Ones Too,” by a Finnish designer Suvi Simola.<\/p>\n I wanted to wear the sweater against my skin so I last year I bought some Cascade pima cotton yarn that gave the right gauge for this sweater. The sweater is knit from the top down, which means you can try it on as you knit. I did try it on along the way, and I was happy with what I was getting, until I got almost all the way down to the hem. By that point the cotton yarn could not support the weight of itself, and the thing hung on me like a rag. The neck, which is a very pretty raglan rectangle, was distorted by the weight of all that cotton. It was NOT pretty.<\/p>\n So, last fall as I packed up things to put onboard, I ripped the needles out of that sweater and grabbed the bag of Elann Embrace DK. They got stuffed in the back of one of the cabinets on Pandora, and I promptly forgot all about it\u2026until last week.<\/p>\n As we sailed to Cienfuegos I began the sweater. The yarn is soft and the label says it will not pill. The color I chose is Wedgewood blue.\u00a0\u00a0 I have now finished the body and have tried it on a couple of times in order to redesign the hem. I like it! I have opted not to make the shaped waistline, but began some increases at the side \u2018seams\u2019 (there are no seams since this is knit in the round) to make my version into an A-line shape with little tab openings in garter stitch before doing the garter stitch \u2018hem\u2019 at the bottom. I am happy with this look.<\/p>\n Now I am also redesigning the sleeves. The sleeves on the original look long on some of the models, and too-long sleeves are one of my biggest pet peeves. You can\u2019t do anything in a garment with sleeves that are too long. They just get in the way all day long, and get downright disgusting if you try to eat anything\u2026and cooking is impossible. Yes, they always look so feminine on the models wearing these garments, but no one can actually live in clothing with sleeves that droop down your hands.<\/p>\n So I\u2019ll just have to see how the sleeves work out. I\u2019m not planning to do the big long cable on one sleeve. I think I will do a one of the delicate little cables (Cable B, in fact) on both sleeves that should not go much beyond the garter cuff. Since the sleeve is knit in the round from the shoulder down I won\u2019t be dealing with placing the cables until I near the end. The cables on the body are asymmetrical, so I\u2019ve decided to make the sleeves match each other.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n