Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

I missed Lidia's Italy this week, as we were busy cooking. Hubby was making lemon and garlic-seasoned, breaded and baked flounder, to which I decided to make a sauce to go on top.

I began with 2.5 cups water and threw in a small bag of frozen shrimp shells. Boil, then simmer, covered. I do that with fish remains, instead of smelling up the garbage with them. Let simmer about 15 minutes.

As he was also making stuffed mushrooms, I absconded with 2 of them, chopped them very fine and sauteed them in some butter, adding some onion powder (had no shallots, but add that to the list of things I want to grow), then a good sploosh of Asti (had no white wine).

Then added all that to the pot of simmering broth and simmered the entire mixture another 10-15 minutes.

It wasn't alot of shrimp shells, so though the aroma said, Fish, the resultant sauce was delicate, not fishy.

I then made a roux with 2 TBL butter and 3 TBL flour, to which I added the strained liquid from the simmering pot, and whisked. Add salt and a bit of pepper to taste.

I'd love to try Julia's Beurre Blanc, but at 3 sticks of butter in the sauce, it would mostly go uneaten, or kill us if we did eat it all!

As I finished that errant Kimono Fana sleeve and am about to join all 3 pieces and shape the yoke area, I needed to do all the math first, for all 5 sizes, so that I know, at least on paper, that it can work. What happens once I knit it is something else and can muck up the entire thing.

Problem.
I'm not finding in any of EZ's books, and the Spun Outs and WG's which I have, though I haven't them all, nor in PGR's Knitting in The Old Way, ANY reference to shaping a square set-in sleeve in the round.

Oh sure, I could work the front and back to the shoulders, either separately or add 2 more steeks at the underarms, BO and seam them or bind them off together, then sew in the sleeves, or bind off the live sleeve sts into the armholes, or?

But no, I feel there's gotta be a way to do it in the round, no sewing, no more steeks, just the one at center front.

So, the one piece of knitting instruction I'm working from is EZ's Spun Out #21 (orig. WG #12, March 75), which details a set-in sleeve pullover, worked in the round.

So, the first thing to do, after trying to digest the instructions and figure out the *why* of each instruction, is to eliminate the shaping that occurs first, which is for the curved inset part of the sleeve.

I just want the straight up and down shaping part, so I'm gonna begin with the 2nd part of the instructions, which has you dec 1 st at each raglan point (not that this will be a raglan, but you know what I mean), on every 2nd rnd until half the sleeve sts are decreased out, then dec on every rnd til a few sts remain, then she has you do some back and forth work, which I haven't grasped yet.

Well, it all just makes the armhole depth too deep.

After running numbers, it looks like a 2/3 to 1/3 ratio works just about perfectly. Dec until 2/3 of the sleeve sts are gone on EOR, then dec the remaining 1/3 of the sleeve sts on ER.

Another issue is the % of underarm sts to be put on hold. Usually it's 8%. BUT EZ does the tops of her sleeves at only 33% of C = WAY too tight.

The sleeves for this design are at 41% of C, and as she suggests in the Spun Out, one then needs to put about 12% of C sts on holders. I find that 10.5% of C works, as I aim for about 2" worth for a size medium and that works out to be 10.5%.

Now, to get some uninterrupted hours to knit through this and see if it will work. But not til after another showing today, if she shows. She was supposed to show the house once before, but never showed up, and didn't call to cancel, so she's not on my good agent list, yet. Had 1 return visit on Saturday, and a showing and agent preview yesterday. It's all go here lately.

Now if this printer and computer would stop jerking me around - I'm trying to get a selection of designs and 1 each of all 7 of my books printed to send off to a new sales rep.

Coming up tomorrow - Barbara Bretton does it again!