Yup, still a sweater knitter...

Taking a little break from commenting on student drafts... My sweater obsession continues, but for some reason I've been having bad luck recently in the realm of actually knitting sweaters. I've completed a few...three...since summer that turned out wonderfully. I need to photograph them and put the project pages up on Ravelry. Actually, now that I think about it, one of them isn't quite finished yet. I still need to purchase and install a zipper. It will be my first time sewing in a zipper! I'm excited about it, but haven't done it yet because I have been so busy with work this quarter that I haven't had a chance to go out zipper shopping. But, I have also finished a cardigan (Amy Christoffers' "White Pine") and a pullover (Leila Raabe's "Peabody"), both of which are FAB. I think I love the White Pine cardigan just a little bit more because it's soft and cuddly (knit with Ultra Alpaca in the cream colorway--so gorgeous in those cables!) Peabody is knit with Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, which I actually like more than I expected, particularly after washing. This is the third sweater that I tried knitting with this yarn...and I'm happy that I finally found something workable and wearable to make with it. Still, it's not the best yarn for a sweater, IMO--it's not terribly resilient (unlike the Ultra Alpaca, which is almost ridiculously so), so the deep ribbing in the body of this sweater gets a little bit stretched out with wearing, and doesn't fit as nicely as it did when freshly washed/blocked. Not a huge deal.

Anyway (now we're getting to the bad luck part), since completing White Pine (and also Pignoli, also by Christoffers), I have worked on two different sweaters: I made a Girl Friday (Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark, published on knitty.com) in a dark green Ultra Alpaca, and...it turned out just a leeeeetle bit too tight. Which could have been OK, but it wasn't what I was going for with the sweater. I wanted it to be a little slouchy, like the model sweaters pictured on knitty.com. I want to make this sweater again, but I think I will use a different kind of yarn for it, or at least a lighter color so as to better show off the lace pattern. I'm actually thinking of using Ultra Alpaca again, only in one of the orange colorways (maybe Candied Yam Mix?). What could be nicer than a nice, slouchy, warm sweater in a sunny orange color? :-D

So, I'm going to frog the completed (but for buttons) Girl Friday, recondition the yarn (since I blocked the pieces before seaming it up), and make something else out of it. I have my eyes on a couple of pullovers that would be nice. So far the front runner is Jadis, a wonderfully simple design by Nathania Apple, published by the Twist Collective. I remember seeing this design when that issue of Twist was first published way back in Winter 2008, and didn't really think much of it. But today, I was scanning through all of the patterns on the Twist site, and it really jumped out at me. It just looks like a nice use for this dark green, peat-y yarn: simple and tailored so as to highlight the deep, complex heathering of the yarn. I'm definitely going to make the sweater longer. The design schematic calls for a 12" body from armpit-to-hem, which is not flattering on me. I prefer my sweaters more around 15".

Then, I knit the entire body, from hem to armpit, of a design called "Tinder" by Jared Flood (I modified it for knitting seamlessly, because I see no reason to knit this in pieces). I am using heather gray Cascade 220, which looks great in the textured stitch pattern...but I typically knit this yarn at 5 st/in rather than the 4.5 st/in called for in the pattern. I thought the stretchy fabric produced by this stitch pattern would make the fit OK...but I was wrong. I think it would have looked OK, but again--I am not going for a close fitting sweater, I want this to be a little slouchy. Serves me right for not swatching--for either of these sweaters! On the plus side, after knitting an 18" deep body piece, I had a nice big swatch for measuring...and sure enough, I'm getting 5 st/in. After crunching the numbers, I decided to follow the instructions for a size 2-up from the one I was originally aiming at. And then I RIPPED IT ALL OUT. Ouch! I have started re-knitting, though, and so far it's going well--I'm almost done with the bottom ribbing.

So today I spent a little break-time scanning through sweaters (as I mentioned above) on the Twist Collective site, and I purchased 5 different patterns. FIVE! The funny thing is that I never really considered knitting any of these when they first came out, but today they all just really jumped out at me as good matches with various yarns in my stash. Always a happy thing.... And that's it for me right now. Hopefully I'll have time over the holiday break to take pictures of my many as yet un-photographed FO's, and get my Ravelry project pages updated. What I'm really looking forward to, now that the current quarter is done: being able to attend Monday night Purlygirls meetings again!

Wow! To-do + Purging

I was just going through the pattern database on Ravelry and inadvertently clicked on my own projects tab. Not that there's anything wrong with looking at my own projects, I just wasn't intending to at that moment. It's somewhat fortuitous--albeit stressful--that I did, though, because I had NO IDEA how far behind I am in updating my projects!. I don't even know how many projects I have completed since I last updated on Ravelry. Many of the project pages I have updated are missing pictures.

I am going to have to go through and address these deficiencies! I feel like it's important to put up pictures of projects, especially when I'm knitting patterns by independent designers. Assuming my rendition of a pattern turns out well, it will hopefully help the designer to sell more patterns. I think it also helps other knitters to see how a pattern knits up, and how it looks on different body types. I certainly benefit from this info as posted by other knitters--so I really do need to do my part in return.

In other news, I just spent a couple of hours going through my collection of handknits. I have decided to cull a bunch of things that I don't wear, and don't really like on myself. I'm not sure what to do with these items--give them away to other knitters, donate them to charity, or what. I guess I'll have to think about it....

Time to Catch Up!

Was just adding a couple of projects to my Ravelry queue, and realized that I am further behind on photographing WIP's and FO's than I thought. Yikes! Fortunately I recently acquired one of those Gorilla Pod thingies. The job should be a bit easier than it was formerly, when I had to balance my camera on top of a chain link fence. Now I'll have more options for placing the camera--so hopefully I can find a more flattering angle, and get better results. That's my big project for the afternoon: a giant photo shoot, followed by uploading and tagging and all that. Maybe I'll get to start posting stuff, too.

Later the same day...

Wouldn't you know it, after committing myself to a month of WIP-wrangling, I am suddenly feeling inspired by 2 of the yarns in my stash (I also have a sweater's quantity of Quince & Co.'s Chickadee winging its way to me right now, and I know exactly what I'm going to make with it). I have some Silky Wool that I got during the Fiber Gallery's most recent sale--it's a murky greenish charcoal gray. When I bought it, I was imagining some kind of really simple pullover, maybe a V-neck. A little while ago, I thought "Cerisara!" I also have a sweater's quantity of BFL Sport from Lisa Souza, in a glorious colorway called "Tudor Blue," and it has been pressing on the back of my brain ever since I got it. I seem to be entering a gray/blue phase, probably because I'm just finishing up a gold sweater (Castlegar). I had no idea what I wanted to make with this yarn when I bought it, and haven't had any idea all along until tonight when I suddenly had the impulse to make a blouse-y tunic (fitting for a color called "Tudor blue") with a deep henley neckline and perhaps some side vents, and maybe some cable-y bits at the top and down the sleeves.

Well, I'm going to stick with the WIP-wrangling, painful as that will probably be, but it feels good to have inspiration wellin' up in me ol' noggin again. BUT: Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger! :-P''''

Stash Diving ---> WIP Wrangling

It's finals week, I'm up to my armpits in grading. During my downtime (you have to have some, right?), I've been working on Castlegar (in Quince & Co. Tern) and also finishing up Cassidy (in purple 220 Superwash) for my niece. Castlegar is almost done. Cassidy is all seamed up, waiting for a bath, end-weaving, and buttons.

Today I took a few minutes to go through my lightweight yarn stash (lace, fingering, and sport mostly, though I also have single skeins of DK, worsted, and chunky in these bins). There are several yarns that I feel drawn to knit, but I'm not sure what to do with them yet. I pulled several of them out, looked at them in different lights, dug my fingers into the skeins and played with strands, trying to get a feel for what they'd be like on the needles, and on my eyes, etc. Usually that brings inspiration, but not today. I'm probably just tired, mentally, from the end-of-quarter workload. I will admit, this quarter I am eagerly anticipating a summer off from teaching, and the chance to focus my life around my dissertation for a nice stretch of time. This makes it hard to think about anything else, and right now I have to think about student work, have to get through the next 5 days before I can really relax back into dissertation work. And knitting, apparently. You can't force creativity...so I put the yarn away.

In these same stash bins, I also have a few WIP's hanging about. I'd set them aside to play with the yarn, so they were the last things I looked at while packing everything back into the bins. Several of these really need to be finished, and they're further along than I'd remembered. I have 2 adult sweaters in the works (one for me, one for a friend), a baby sweater, a lace stole, 2 shawlettes (one started within the last week) and a pair of socks. Putting them back into the bins felt like putting millstones around my neck. Knitting should not feel so heavy on the spirit.

Therefore, I have decided that my next "project" will be plural: WIP wrangling. I will only work on unfinished projects either for the next month or until all of these are done, whichever comes first. After one month, I will revisit the issue and decide whether or not I've done sufficient WIP penance.

Embrace Aqua

I have never been secretive about my love of teal. Deep, blue with a greenish tinge, drown in it teal. With aqua, I have more trepidation. It's pretty, but unlike teal there are varieties of aqua that are just...bad. And yet I am always drawn to it for its teal-like qualities, and its flirtation with fashion don't-ness. So here I am, speaking my love for all the world to hear: getting ready to wear it on my sleeve...and on my feet:


Pattern: Cookie A's Summer Sox from Classic Elite Yarns Web-letter, June 2009
Yarn: Dream In Color Smooshy in Deep Seaflower (AQUA!)
Needle: US 1.5 (2.5mm) Addi Turbo Lace, magic looped.
Notes: Not much to add here. I didn't modify the pattern except to knit a slightly deeper heel flap than prescribed. I love the socks! Personlly, I consider this shade of aqua very much a fashion "do" because it's on the teal end of the aqua spectrum (as opposed to the seafoam end of the aqua spectrum).

And here's a swatch, which has led to a WIP:

Pattern: Cirilia Rose's Vashon, from Berroco #302 for Vintage & Vintage Chunky
Yarn: Cascade Eco-plus in Lake Chelan Heather (aqua made from mixing lime, yellow, and bright blue to judge from the odd fleck of fluff)
Notes: I have barely started this. I swatched to see if I liked the cable in this yarn. After knitting the first couple of rows I thought "no," because it seemed like the cable was getting lost in all that aqua heathery goodness, but halfway up the chart my answer changed to "YES!" I think this design was made for a color like this (I also love the color in which the sample is knit, FWIW). I'm making slight mods to the pattern, and hopefully it won't lose its vintage-y feel. My main mod is to add length to the body. I like the cropped look of the design (it comes in at 9" from hem to armpit) but I don't look good in cropped sweaters, so I'm adding 3-4" to the body. To deal with the extra length, which will hit me at the hip rather than at the waist, I also cast on for the larger size at the waist band, and I'll decrease to the waist before increasing back up to the bust. I'm also adding stitches to the body section to give me slightly more ease in the bust (I didn't want to go up a whole size because that adds 4" to the bust and I don't want the sweater quite that loose). I'm planning to stick with the 3/4 sleeves, but I will make them slightly longer than in the model. I'd like them to come down onto my forearms.

That's it for now--just taking a quick break from working. Tonight, Chris and I are flying to San Francisco for 6 days!! I have to do final grading for my classes while we're down there, but I should still have time to enjoy the city a bit.

Knitting for Others.

I have sad news that I haven't mentioned here yet. My mother passed away somewhat unexpectedly on January 19th, one week to the day after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I don't want to write out the whole story right now, and I'm not sure whether/when I will want to, but it is obviously something that has been occupying my thoughts a lot over the last couple of months. While going through this, I have found comfort in knitting for other people.

First, once I got to Michigan on the 14th, my instincts told me to start knitting a "comfort shawl." I thought of it as sort of like a prayer shawl, except...I'm an atheist and don't pray, so..."comfort" it is. Anyway, I thought of it as something I could knit while sitting with my mom and while thinking about her--so that the shawl would sort of symbolize what ended up being my last few days with my mom (though I didn't realize that when I started it). I purchased some Berroco Vintage yarn at Threadbender Yarns in Wyoming, MI, and started working on a simple stockinette shawl that I planned to edge with feather-and-fan lace. My mom died before I got very far into the shawl, but I continued working on it at home until I had to admit to myself that the color scheme just wasn't working. I went out and bought more Vintage in the heather gray colorway, and started over again, this time knitting the Shaelyn Shawl by Leila Raabe. The pattern is written for a sport-weight yarn in a single color, but I am using worsted weight yarn and striping gray with two shades of teal/aqua. I'm doing the stockinette portions in gray, and alternating light and dark teal for the lace sections. I really like how it's turning out this time. (I was originally knitting the yarn in these 2 teal colors, plus a lime heather green--I liked the 3 colors together, but striping them was a bit too garish for what I had in mind. The gray quiets things down nicely.) Anyway, I will be giving this shawl to a friend of a friend, who is dealing with a serious illness right now. I'm not done with this shawl yet, but I have been working on it here and there, and still trying to use that knitting time to think about my mom.

The second thing that has comforted me through the loss of my mother is the sweater that I knit for her a couple of years ago. Mom loved that sweater, and she wore it a lot. I have some pictures of her wearing it that I will post as soon as I can figure out how to get them from my phone to a blog post. Anyway, as we were discussing Mom's funeral arrangements I requested that we bury her in the sweater. My sisters and brother immediately agreed, and that's what we did (my sister Jan and I also bought her a skirt that she would have loved, plus a cashmere turtleneck to go with the sweater--the whole outfit was very "Mom"). I'm not sure why--as I mentioned above, I am an atheist, and even my mom's death hasn't swayed me from that beyond the normal amounts of "magical thinking" that the death of a loved one tends to cause--but it makes me feel like I'm taking care of her, somehow, to know that she'll be wrapped up in my knitting for all eternity.

And my last knitting-for-others project: I'm almost done with the Cassidy (by Bonne Marie Burns, aka Chicknits) that I'm making for my niece. I've been working on this for awhile, depending on how you define "working." I bought the yarn about 2 years ago but kept delaying the actual commencement of knitting because my niece, who is now 13, kept growing. As 11-13 year olds will and must do. She has gained a lot of height, especially--she now has almost (?) 3 inches on me in height.

Anyway, I'm almost done with the sweater. The body pieces are all done, the shoulders are seamed, and the hood is knitted. I also have both sleeves done, but I need to rip them back to re-knit the sleeve caps because I made them too long. (They are just over 20" to the armpits). I would just leave them and let my niece roll up the cuffs, but the ribbing on this design looks pretty different on the wrong side than it does on the right side. It would just bug me. Anyway, in addition to re-knitting the sleeve caps, I also need to knit the button bands. I'm cutting it perilously close on yardage! I should have gotten an additional skein, because I added a few inches to the length of the body. I think I'll have just enough to do the button bands and seaming, with a very small amount left over--which actually makes me quite happy. No huge additions to stash!

So now I need to figure out what to knit next.... In addition to the designs and yarns I posted about last time, a couple of other things have crossed my radar recently. I've been feeling very drawn to medium, heathery shades of denimy and greenish blue, and big, squishy cables....

Inspiration

I'm feeling so inspired by some of new sweater designs that have come out recently! I'm such an obsessed sweater knitter...

Here's one that I'm definitely going to knit: Irish Coffee, by Babycocktails. I'm completely in love with this design--so much so that I ordered the prescribed yarn for it today: Brooklyn Tweed's gorgeous Shelter, in the Button Jar colorway. I tried to link directly to the color, but in case that didn't work, it's the greeny-blue one in the second row, third from left. Click on it, then hover the mouse over the photo to see a close-up. It will be clear to you why I picked it. I'm a sucker for this color, particularly when it's spun up into a heathery-tweedy yarn like Shelter, in which the component colors show up as flecks of contrast against the main color. Gorgeous! I have some Cascade Eco-Plus in almost the exact same color, actually (they call it Lake Chelan Heather), that I'm also planning to knit into a sweater. If that had been the right weight for this design, I'd have used it. Looking at the Shelter yarn, I tried to make myself pick a different color, but I kept coming back to the Button Jar. So I guess eventually I'll have two sweaters this color (or maybe I'll use the Eco-Plus for a blanket instead--I do have 3 skeins of it, 1438 yards--plenty for a blanket in bulky yarn). Anyway, I'm normally nervous about buying yarns online, but one of my fellow Purlygirls brought a skein of Shelter to knitting a couple of weeks ago. I got to smoosh it and pet it, so I know I'll like it. Given that the yarn was made by Jared Flood--a man of impeccable knitterly taste, IMO--I pretty much knew I'd like it anyway, but I feel extra safe since I was able to touch it in person first. (It's somewhat expensive yarn, so that's important.)

A couple of other designs that are really inspiring me right now:

Atelier by Heidi Kirrmaier (Ravelry Link), which I'm thinking of knitting in one of two yarns that I have stashed: 1. Ultra Alpaca Light, in the Cordoba Grape colorway (#4212). I initially bought this to make Connie Chang Chinchio's Sabbatical, but I ran out of steam on that design before finishing the first sleeve--the lace is really complicated. 2. This amazing Beaverslide Sport/Sock yarn in the Swift Fox colorway, which I also already have in my stash. I bought a sweater's quantity a couple of months ago after playing with a small sample that Lauren, the proprietress of Beaverslide, sent to me. Both of these yarns are slightly lighter than the yarn prescribed in the pattern (sport vs. DK), but I could either knit it at pattern gauge and end up with a more drapey fabric, or do some math to figure out stitch counts for a smaller gauge.

Then there's Larch, by Amy Christoffers (Ravelry Link). When I bought the Cordoba Grape Ultra Alpaca Light mentioned above, I also bought a sweater's quantity of the same yarn in the Salt and Pepper colorway. I had no plans for it beyond wanting to make a gray cardigan. I think I have j-u-s-t enough to make this sweater in my size, and I think the design would look lovely in gray. It would be a really nice, versatile wardrobe basic.

I also already have yarn to make Acer (Ravelry Link), another of Amy Christoffers' designs. I bought some Cascade 220 in Nutmeg Heather for this one, and I think I'm going to start that next, actually. I'm pretty sure that I already have some pretty buttons for it in my button tin, which is an extra double-good bonus.

Finally, Cecily Glowik MacDonald published a beautiful new cowl-necked pullover design the other day: Hollyhock. A long, long time ago, I purchased some medium denim-y blue Cascade 220 that was on clearance at the Fiber Gallery. I bought 8 skeins of it, which is more than enough to make a long-sleeved version of this sweater.

So that's what has been inspiring me lately. How about you, dear Reader?