Picovoli FO!

Pattern: Picovoli by Grumperina
Yarn: Knit Picks Shine Sport in Hydrangea
Needles: Size 3 Audi Turbo 36"

I love this top. I love how feminine the hourglass shaping is on the front, and how simple it is. I'm not sure if I love the yarn. Shine is very soft and just a little shiny, but it feels like a firm cord in your hands. It has absolutely no stretch and is thus very unforgiving on my hands. I could only knit for so long before my fingers got tired and I longed for the stretchyness of a good wool sock yarn...lol

I completed it using the picot edging because I knew I wouldn't be ironing it to prevent rolling, but the laziness that encouraged me to do this also encouraged me to figure out a way to knit down the edge instead of pulling out a needle. All in all, I don't know if it took me all that much less time to do it my way, though, because each bind off stitch involved a lot of parts.

1. Reach down with right needle tip 3 rows and pull up the pearl bump.
   
2. Place pearl bump on left needle
3. Knit stitch and pearl bump together
4. Repeat for next stitch
5. Slip first stitch over second to bind off

The k2tog wasn't that bad, it was the counting to make sure you were 3 rows down and catching that little bump. Sometimes it didn't want to cooperate. This whole bind off process created a pretty crochet chain type thing on the back side of the work, which also made it 3 yarn widths thick and made it want to curl up. A little trip to the ironing board fixed that.... I hope permanently. It's very important that you go down at least 3 rows, however, because if you go down less it doesn't pull the back of the picot down enough and it will curl outward forever more, no matter how much ironing you do. I made the mistake of not knitting enough rows after the "yo, k2tog" row on my neckline before I knit it together with my provisional cast on. It will forever stand up, but I'm ok with that. The rest of the sweater looks fantastic.

Adjustments:
Aside from how I knit down the edging, I did make a slight adjustment to the pattern. Because I'm LDS (or Mormon) I can't wear tank tops. I need little capped sleeves to cover my shoulders. This is just essentially a reglan sweater, so I thought sleeves would be an easy thing to add now that I'm comfortable adjusting patterns a bit. At first I just picked up all the underarm stitches and started knitting them all around together. This made the capped sleeve a little too wide. It would have probably been fine if I had been making a long sleeve, but these are tiny little sleeves and I wanted them a little more close fitting. At this point I actually read the musings on sleeves that Grumperina provided. I then tried her first suggestion. I knit back and forth on the existing sleeve stitches, picking up 1 stitch from the underarm each row. After what I thought was a good length, I picked up the rest of the underarm and knit a few rows, then did the picot edging. Again, this seemed a bit wide for me. "Hmm" I said "If it's too wide, then I should be decreasing stitches!" For the third and final attempt, I knit back and forth on the existing sleeve stitches like before, but this time I would pick up a stitch from the underarm at the end of each row. I'd then knit it together with the stitch next to it after I had turned to go back the other way. I did this for 14 rows (7 decreases on each side) then picked up the rest of the underarm stitches and knit them all around for a few rows. Completed my picot edging and knit it down as before. The little picots want to flare out a bit, but I suppose that's ok. All in all I LOVE this top!