Knit Light:

Yup, still a sweater knitter...

2011-12-11T17:09:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-13T16:34:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-06-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-06-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-03-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

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

2011-02-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

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?

Stash-based Activities

2010-12-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

I've done a little stash-busting and a little stash-making (more of the latter, I'm afraid) over the last couple of weeks.

First, the insta-sweater: my Sienna Cardigan (Rav link). (Here's the link to my project page.)

FO pic:

Pattern: Sienna, by Ann E. Smith, from Interweave Knits Fall 2006.
Yarn: Peace Fleece Worsted, Zarya Fog colorway frogged from my Patronus sweater.
Needles: US9 for the body and sleeves, US7 for the button bands and collar base, US8
for the rest of the collar and for the cuffs.
Mods: Lots. Knit seamlessly, changed the direction of a LOT of the decreases (so they'd mirror--the pattern had every single decrease as K2tog, which would have resulted in a lot of unpleasing asymmetry), changed cuff from rolled stockinette to 2x2 rib to match the sweater ribbing.

I haven't been able to get a modeled shot yet. I have found that those usually turn out best if someone else takes them, because when I take them myself I stabilize the camera by setting it on something, which almost always results in an unflattering (to me and to the sweater) camera angle. I need to get a little mini-tripod for this purpose--I'm leaning toward a Gorillapod (I think the pics on this website show its versatility, which is what I desire in a tripod at this juncture). They aren't expensive. I really can't explain why I haven't already bought one--they've been around, and I've known about them, for a long time. :::shrug:::

I'm particularly happy with how the seamless set-in sleeves turned out. I've put notes about how I did this on my Rav page. I mainly followed the same procedure Gudrun Johnston set out in her Kerrerra pattern: pick up 1 stitch for every 2 rows around the armholes (1/1 in the armpits); use shortrows to shape the caps but don't pick up the wraps; etc. I made one small modification, though: after picking up stitches I had 62, but I wanted more like 52 for the upper arm. When I got to the armhole shaping (the line of decreases above the armpit), I decreased one stitch at the end of each row, as follows: knit across to wrapped stitch, SSK, wrap and turn; purl across to wrapped stitch, P2tog, wrap and turn; etc. It worked great. No gappy holes, and by the time I was ready to start knitting the sleeves in the round, I was down to the desired number of stitches. This technique had the added benefit of nipping out any extra bulk that I might have ended up with around the armpits (I hate it when a sweater is excessively lumpy there--very unattractive). Anyway, here's a close-up:

I also really like the buttons, but I won't post a pic of that here; you can see them on my Rav page.

So stash-building...here are the yarns I have purchased over the last few days (in larger quantities than pictured here, except for the sock yarn). I'm on a warming trend, color-wise.

Yesterday, I bought these at the Fiber Gallery:

Cascade 220 in Nutmeg Heather--destined to become the Acer Cardigan by Amy Christoffers.

Blue Sky Alpaca Sport in Scarlet (it looks orange to me), which will become some sort of triangular shawl/wrap.

Black Trillium Pebble Sock in Eclipse. This will most likely become a pair of socks.

And this arrived in the mail today:

Quince & Co Tern in the Kelp colorway. My plan is to make Laura Chau's Castlegar cardigan with this. This is the first Quince & Co. yarn I've bought--I tend to be nervous about buying an unfamiliar yarn online. It's impossible to tell the texture from a photograph, and it's only slightly less impossible to discern color, given the variations in monitor settings, etc. For example, this picture makes the yarn look greenish, but in real life it's a nice, warm, dark gold. I knew this yarn would be nice because I've only read glowing reviews of all of their yarns (I've mooshed some Lark in person), but I was worried about the color because I have to be pretty careful with yellows. This one is good, though--I'll need to layer it over something dark, but it works OK with my skin tone. Phew!

And that's it for now. I have a bunch more stash, mainly single skeins of sock and lace yarn, that I've acquired over the last few months but haven't photographed or entered into my Ravelry database. I'll get to it eventually.

Kissing Frogs, Selfishly

2010-12-23T11:43:00.000-08:00

So I finished my grading on Monday (12/20), and was seized by a desire to throw over my year-end resolution and engage in some selfishly selfish knitting. Ever since frogging those two sweaters, the background noise in my brain has been all about what to re-knit that yarn into. I have pretty firmly decided to re-knit the Baikal/Superior Green into another Kerrera (only smaller this time--the sweater itself, alas, was my gauge swatch), but what to do with the Zarya Fog...? Well, after submitting my grades on Monday I started obsessively doing pattern searches on Ravelry, and I kept coming back to one that just so happened to be in my PDF library (on my computer...because it was part of a 5-pattern free giveaway from Knitting Daily awhile back): Sienna (Rav link)! This is a really simple cardigan with interesting details. I've always liked it, but wasn't sure what yarn to use for it. At first I thought the Peace Fleece would be too rustic for the pattern, but after knitting a little bit of the body, I thought it was actually a nice contrast. What do you think?

Here's a closeup the lace/cable bit:

And here's that pretty picot-esque collar, which I just finished knitting about 15 minutes ago:

So far so good. I have made a few mods to the pattern, which I'll post about when it's all done. The most notable mod so far, though, is that I knit the body in one piece and used a 3-needle bind-off to finish the shoulders. I cast on the total number of body stitches called for in the pattern, plus 2 stitches for faux-seams. I wanted about an extra inch of ease in the body, so this worked perfectly--my gauge is 4 st/in, and because I'm not seaming I won't be losing 4 selvedge stitches, whence my extra inch. Aside from that, I also made a mistake on the lace/cable chart (I realized 2 repeats in that I was crossing the cables every 14 rows instead of every 16. I just did an extra repeat, which gave me about an extra half-inch in length--just right!)

I've really been cruising along on this one, the result of taking a couple of days totally off from work-related nonsense. Lots of knitting time, plus Aran weight yarn knit on #9 needles, plus a fun pattern = insta-sweater! I expect to finish this over the weekend.

On Froggy Pond

2010-12-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Before:

After: FROGGED!

These were 2 sweaters that I never wore, both made of Peace Fleece. The gray (actually the colorway Zarya Fog) cabled one I didn't wear primarily because it was unflattering, but also because I was never happy with how the saddle shoulders came out. Not a good design for this yarn (it was my own design, so I don't feel bad saying that loud, clear, and in public). The buttons were looking to fall off, too, and I was loath to re-sew them because I just really wasn't all that into this sweater. So...to the frogpond it went. The dark (colorway Baikal/Superior Green) hooded sweater I actually loved, but it was too big. I plan to re-knit that design (Gudrun Johnston's Kerrera), though I haven't yet decided whether I want to use this yarn or a different one. In any case, I never even got around to sewing buttons on this sweater because it was just so frakking huge on me. On some level I knew that it was destined for the fr'pond, but I really did love the sweater. The yarn is gorgeous, especially out in the sun where the deep flecks of blue, black, and green played around among the shimmering strands of kid mohair. As a fabric, the drape and texture were also just to die for (surprisingly--this yarn feels very rustic in the skein, but it softens up and blooms very nicely with washing--I still wouldn't want it right against my skin, but it's good layered over other things). I couldn't part with it for awhile. I was sentimental, I admit. I was in denial. I even toyed with risky ways to re-size the sweater: a tumble in the dryer, for example, or cutting and seaming. But no. No!

So, to the frog pond we went, and only I came out unscathed, as you can see. Ruthless, I am! But I have no regrets. These yarns are too beautiful to be trapped in unworn sweaters.

End of Year Resolutions

2010-12-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

I have a few resolutions for the remainder of December.

First: I am not allowed to knit on any projects except for those WIP's that are destined (as FO's) to be gifted to other people. I have 3 such WIP's on the needles currently, and another one queued up after that. One of them is a scarf in Lanaloft Bulky, which is half done. Two of them are adult-sized sweaters, both started. I have a sleeve done on one (it'll be knit in pieces and seamed together); and I have almost finished re-knitting the waistband on the other (it'll be knit seamlessly, bottom-up). The one queued up after all of those projects is a baby sweater. My point is that I should have plenty to keep me busy until January. The only exception to this rule is for bus knitting--I am allowed to knit on the socks I started (for myself) over the weekend, but only while riding the bus.

Second: I am going to spend at least 2 hours per day, for the rest of the month, on my dissertation work.

Third: I am going to clean out, cull, and organize my closet, dresser, bookshelves, and yarn stash. My goal is to finish this by the end of December. Anything targeted for dismissal must be taken to an appropriate destination by the end of the month--except the yarn stash discard pile, which I will pack away in a separate container (with cedar blocks) to be swapped or sold.

And that's what I want to accomplish before the end of 2010. Going into 2011, and my 44th birthday, I want my life to be leaner, meaner, and more functional. I've got shit to do, dammit, and I'll never again have as much time left on this earth as I do right now.

Fooling

2010-11-21T23:38:00.000-08:00

Here's a pretty cabled sailor collar I'm playing with. The yarn is Beaverslide Dry Goods Worsted Weight in Mountain Midnight. I've had it stashed for a good year or so, and have been wanting to knit with it but wasn't sure what. I originally bought it to make the Tweedy Aran Cardigan (Rav link), but I decided that sweater wouldn't look so good on me almost as soon as the yarn arrived.

In any case, here's the collar-in-progress:

The yarn is OK to work with--it's pretty easy to miss a ply, and I've had a lot of knots in the skeins I've used so far, but it is so beautiful that I think it's worth the trouble. I love the color, and the fabric somehow feels both tough and soft.

Time Flies

2010-10-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Wow. I haven't been here in awhile--almost 2 months! I've been really lazy about photographing my FO's, so I haven't had anything to post.

I'm currently working on a few different things. I started Connie Chang Chincio's Metro cardigan with some Ultra Alpaca I had in my stash, and didn't really like how that was looking so I knit the yarn into a pullover that ended up being quite an adventure in knitting. I'll post details about that when I (finally) get a photo of it. But last weekend I went to the Fiber Gallery, in part to shop for yarn for a baby sweater but also to see if I could find something else to use for Metro. I had in mind some kind of smooth, drapey, possibly slightly halo-ey yarn. Then Erin suggested Blackstone Tweed, and...I wasn't immediately sold on the idea, but after much contemplation and staring at various other yarns, I kept going back to the Blackstone Tweed. My mind was finally made up when I looked at a display sweater they have in the shop that's knit in Blackstone Tweed: wow. Perfect. Drapey and soft. I wasn't expecting to choose a tweedy yarn for this project, but I think it will make for an interesting twist. Yesterday I knit up a large-ish swatch, which I washed and blocked. It's just lovely. I chose a teal/deep aqua color, and I think it's going to be a really nice--and slightly unexpected--pairing with this pattern.

Before I actually knit that sweater, though, I am making a hoodie for my niece: Bonne Marie Burns' Cassidy, which I'm knitting with Cascade 220 Superwash in a really nice medium purple heather (my niece's requested color). I'm almost done with the first sleeve. I took a brief hiatus from it to knit something else for a friend (that's a surprise, so I don't want to say anything further about it right now), which is almost done. I'll be getting back to Cassidy soon enough--it's a good project to be working on at the moment. Because it's knit in pieces, and it's a non-fiddly but interesting stitch pattern, it makes for good bus knitting.

And that's all for now. I hope to post again soon with some pictures...

What now?

2010-08-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm bored. I finished the L&O sweater, and now I don't know what to do with my needles. I have some little projects on the needles--too many, actually. 3 pairs of socks, a stole, and a scarf for my boyfriend. Last night at knitting I started a second attempt at Connie Chang Chinchio's Geodesic Cardigan (RAV link), using some Knitpicks Shadow laceweight yarn in the Midnight colorway (it's basically navy, with black and dark green heathering). It's going, but I'm sort of "meh" on it. I think I want to knit something with bigger and more colorful yarn, so it'll be visually exciting and quicker to finish.

I have a couple of projects lined up to knit for other people: a Rogue hoodie for my niece, and the vintage knock-off colorwork sweater (of dooom!--because it requires stranding 3 colors at a time) for my friend L. I am planning a trip to Michigan soon, when I want to measure my niece afresh (she is a pre-teen, so I'm worried that she's going to grow a lot all of the sudden), so that's why I haven't started the former. And I don't know why, but I'm just not ready to knit on the latter, I think because I knit a bunch on the body already that needs to be ripped out, and I'm dreading that. Also because it will end up being a very large pile of wool in my lap. Maybe I should start a sleeve, see how the 3-color stranding goes...

Other things that I have lined up: I have some nice purple Ultra Alpaca Light that I bought to make Connie Chang Chinchio's Sabbatical. That would be a nice transition piece for Fall. I have some dark blue Beaverslide Dry Goods worsted weight yarn that I have a couple of ideas for--it will become some kind of cardigan. I'm considering making an elongated, looser-fitting version of Bonne Marie Burns' Twist, with the cabled sailor collar rather than the hood. I have some mottled green (it's called Marsh Mix) Ultra Alpaca Worsted that could become a pullover, could become a cardigan--maybe Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark's Girl Friday?. I have some heathered blue Cascade 220 that I could use for that one, too... There's more, but I'll stop now. It's so overwhelming! I think I need to take tonight off, and do some stash diving tomorrow, see which yarn I can't keep my fingers away from.

Finished!

2010-08-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

I finished the Law & Order sweater! Finally. I say "finally" not because this project took me a long time--I worked on it for just over a month--but because I have knit and re-knit the yoke several times over the past week. It was a somewhat tricky thing to figure out because I wanted to raise up the back neck slightly with short rows, which are a challenge when knitting in the round. This was a particular challenge primarily because I wanted the faux shoulder shaping seams to stay even, and I put the beginning-of-round at the back left shoulder. That puts an extra row into the left shoulder seam stitches that never really gets resolved. I ended up doing the left shoulder shaping decreases on the wrong side for the left shoulder seams that fall between the short-row turns and the beginning-of-round marker.

Anyway, I'm mostly happy with the FO. It is wet blocking now, so we'll see how it looks when I try it on after it's dry. I ended up finishing the neck with a 2-stitch i-cord bind-off, which might be a bit too delicate compared to the 4x2 rib at the cuffs and hem. I'm not sure. Everyone tells me it looks good as-is, and I definitely don't want to put 4x2 rib at the neck opening--I want the center front cable to go right up to the edging. It just might have been better if I'd done something comparably delicate at the wrists and hem. I'm hoping it will be dry by tomorrow, so I can get feedback from the Purlygirls at knitting tomorrow evening.

My next step with this project is to write it up as a pattern and then to re-knit it by following my own directions. I'm thinking of doing that in a quite different yarn, perhaps Rowan's Felted Tweed. That way, when I finalize the pattern and put it out there, people can see how the different yarn properties affect the FO. Of course, then I'll have two copies of the same sweater, but that's not exactly a hardship. :-)

The biggest question that I have now is about scaling the pattern up and down for different sizes. I'm not sure how to do that. This is essentially an EPS sweater with a raglan-variation for the yoke treatment, so hopefully it'll be easy to sort out. The thing that'll be difficult is figuring out where to place the cables.

Once I'm done with the writing, re-knitting, and scaling up and down of the pattern, I'll start looking for test knitters!

Design-in-progress

2010-07-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of the first sleeve for the sweater I'm currently working on. I'm designing it as I go. It is based on a sweater I saw on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, but I'm departing from that with the sleeve cables. In the original sweater, the sleeves have two simple 2x2 cables right next to each other, separated by a 2-stitch wide purl column. Those cables start at about mid-forearm and continue to about where the sleeve and body join to form the yoke, with the purl column continuing up to the neckline. I wanted to do something different, and so far I'm very happy with what I came up with.

Here's the full sleeve-so-far:

And here's a more detailed view of the cable:

I'm toying with the idea of doing 4-5 of the wide, seed-stitch filled cables, and then just continuing the 2x2 cable up through the shoulder to the neckline. I don't have purl columns on the outside, so it would be a really subtle twist, almost more of a texture. (Sort of like the central cable of Cecily Glowik MacDonald's "Mystere", only much narrower.)

I am taking really careful notes of this sweater as I knit it. I am seriously considering writing it up and releasing it as a free pattern. If I do, I will probably knit another one in a different DK-weight yarn. I'm leaning toward Rowan Felted Tweed, in either a wheat-y or a mustard-y shade, or perhaps an orange-y one. Right now I am really excited to get to the yoke, so I can figure out how to do the construction--it is different from any other yoke I've knit.

In the mean time, I enjoy gazing at the seed stitch bits--they look so pretty in this yarn.

Finally Photographed FO's!

2010-07-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I have a slew of FO photos to post, thanks to my friend Cyan. I've had a bit of a backlog because I really hate how my FO photos turn out when I take them myself. Well, today Cyan--who is pretty handy with a camera--helped me out. Here are the results, in order of completion (I'll keep text to a minimum--and please ignore the weird faces I make because I'm uncomfortable being photographed!):

Pattern: Moch Cardi, by Gudrun Johnston (self-published)
Mods: I knit a full-length garter button band after finishing the body rather than the reverse stockinette, yoke-only button band called for in the pattern.
Yarn: Tupa by Mirasol, colorway 810 Dark Amber (it looks brown here, but it's actually a deep, rich burgundy)

Pattern: Tangled Yoke Cardigan, by Eunny Jang (published in Interweave Knits, but I bought it from Knitting Daily's pattern store)
Mods: none. I may reinforce the button bands at some point--the yarn is a little bit too lightweight to hold its shape under stress.
Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed, colorway 145 Treacle (this one is actually brown...)

Pattern: Que Sera, by Kristen Kapur (published in the Knitty, Spring/Summer 2010 issue)
Mods: none (I'm pretty sure...) This one is a little weird...it's the right size for me, but the button bands will not hold their shape properly.
Yarn: Spud & Chloe Sweater, colorway 7509 Firecracker

Pattern: Audrey in Unst, by Gudrun Johnston (published in the Twist Collective, Fall 2009 issue)
Mods: I added a titch of length to both the body and sleeves. I *loved* the sleeve cap construction--very cool to knit, and they look great.
Yarn: St. Denis Nordique, colorway 5809 Pewter

I wear all of these a lot, and love how they turned out (though I have to be in just the right mood to wear that orange...). I also loved working with all 4 of these yarns. So far they're all holding up really well in sweater form, too.

Cable Swatch

2010-07-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a swatch of the cable that will be on the sweater I'm making. I used a spare skein of Dale Heilo that I had in my stash, knit to the same stockinette gauge as the sweater yarn I'm using. It's still a little bit damp, but even without hard blocking the cable has opened up nicely. I thought charting it would be a real challenge and take a few tries, but I got it right on my first try--crazy, right? Lucky, more like. I did delete what I had originally drafted as the first row. I'm now plotting, in my head, the cable I will use on the sleeves--it will be quite different from the one on the sweater I'm knocking off. I'm envisioning a smaller version of this cable, without the center twist. That sweater has two of what I think are ~12" long 6-stitch and 6-row cables, placed side-by-side with maybe a 3-stitch purl column in between, on each sleeve about midway up (so they start about 5-6" above the wrist and end where the sleeves are joined to the body). Then the designer of that sweater continued the purl column all the way up to the neck opening, which doesn't please me aesthetically for some reason. I'm currently deciding whether to extend the cable I'm envisioning for the full length of the sleeves or not.

Anyway, here it is. Isn't it pretty? I'm especially pleased by the seed stitch bits.

Swatching Around

2010-07-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

I have a shocking number of FO's that I haven't posted yet. I finished my Tangled Yoke Cardigan, which was almost done when last I posted. Since then, I have also finished two more cardigans: Que Sera and Audrey in Unst (both of which still need buttons). I'm very happy with all of these, but I haven't had a chance to take pictures yet.

Today I started swatching around with a new (to me) yarn that I purchased at Knit Purl down in Portland: Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds DK Undyed. I bought the Ecru BFL variety. The ball band calls for knitting it up on US6's at a gauge of 22st and 30 rows per inch, which I got on the first try. This yarn is absolutely gorgeous. It is soft, lustrous, and gives amazing stitch definition (partly, I know, a function of the light natural color). I'm working on a design that I plan to knit up with it. I have 12 skeins, just shy of 1600 yards, so I should have plenty. The design I'm working on was inspired by a sweater that I saw on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, worn by the character Megan Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson). The original is a somewhat drapey, long-sleeved pullover with some light cabling on the sleeves, and a beautiful, complex cable on the front yoke. The most interesting thing about the sweater, though, is the yoke shaping. It is clearly a bottom-up, seamless yoke sweater, but instead of being either a round-yoke design or a raglan-yoke design, it has 8 lines of decreases, mirrored left and right, such that they all angle in toward the center neck. Since these decreases, while placed differently from traditional raglan decreases, happen at the same rate as raglan decreases (i.e. 8 per decrease round), it should be a pretty straightforward EPS design. I'll just need to decide exactly where to place the decreases, is all. I'm not going to be copying the CI sweater exactly. I plan to use a different hem and cuff treatment (the original has very wide ribbing there), and I'm going to do the sleeve cabling differently, though I'm leaning toward using the exact same cable up the front. I need to pore over my Barbara Walker stitch treasuries before I finalize the design. Anyway, here's a picture of my stockinette swatch (I photographed it upside down--oops). It doesn't do anything even close to justice to the yarn's gorgeousness, but it's a nice little teaser anyway. You can sorta see the deep lustre of the yarn. I'm actually thinking of writing this up as a pattern... We'll see how it goes.

A Knitter's Cable

2010-05-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'm halfway done with the cable on my Tangled Yoke cardigan. I love knitting each row of it and watching it emerge in all of its intricacy. I can't wait to wear this sweater, though I know the cable is the kind of thing that most people who see it will probably either think, "Huh. That's kinda pretty," or not notice at all. Except for another knitter, maybe. It is a knitter's cable: it looks simple and balanced, an effect that belies, except to another knowledgeable eye, both the careful design work that produced it and the satisfying knitting that is reproducing it. I love projects like this, that are mostly very simple but that have one or two really interesting details that only a handknitter can execute or appreciate. It promises to become a highly wearable wardrobe staple, but it will have that twist, that tangle, like a secret code sending out a message of kinship to other knitters.

LOL. Meh. It's just a cable. ;-)

Current WIP: Tangled Yoke

2010-05-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

I started this cardigan a few weeks ago, in mid-April. I've really been enjoying the knit--the yarn is tweedy but soft and lofty. I'm teaching two classes this quarter so I haven't had as much knitting time as I have in the past (some days I don't knit at all--the horror!). Anyway, I've mainly been working on this while riding the bus, or at other random moments throughout the day. This will be a go-to cardigan for me, I'm sure of it. It will so long as it fits, I mean. Because I've heard that this yarn (Rowan's Felted Tweed) grows with washing and blocking, I washed and blocked my swatch. Sure enough, it grew--not by a lot, but enough that I thought twice about knitting the size that I'd planned on knitting. I ended up going down a size. It looks good but if the fabric doesn't grow like the swatch did, I might be in trouble. Ah well, best to worry about that if it happens. No sense borrowing trouble from the future. Here's a WIP pic:

In other news, Chris and I adopted a 7-month old kitten on Saturday. Meet Artemis!

She is such a sweet little thing. She's still kittenish and very playful, but she's also just a total sweetheart. We're calling her Ari for short. Iphi was less than thrilled with this development. There was a lot of hissing and screaming for the first couple of days, but they have mostly settled down. Ari still hisses at Iphi and growls sometimes, but Iphi is unmoved. It's Iphi's house. Ari grudgingly respects the boundaries that Iphi sets. It's a workable system.

CT Update

2010-04-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

I posted this news to Facebook earlier, but I'll also post it here since I blogged about the CT scan yesterday.

The news today was good! I'm very relieved and happy. I didn't even realize how tense I was, until Dr. Mann uttered the words, "Your CT scan looks fine." This time I can wait 3 years until I go back for my next one. I guess I'll never fully stop being a zebra, but at least I can pretend I'm just a horse for more of the time. As I get used to this whole idea...and the routine check-ups...I find that I'm better able to appreciate some of the positives: I can honestly say, the vast majority of the people I encounter at UWMC are interesting, helpful, good, and otherwise worthwhile human beings, and I feel very lucky to make their acquaintance and to be under their care. It might sound funny to say so, but on the whole I have been extremely lucky all along. It's not lucky that my appendix decided to grow a tumor in the first place, of course--it would be a lie to say otherwise. I would rather that this had never happened, no question. Given that it did, though, I'm very lucky that a) I had the lowest-grade type of anomalous cells; b) the tumor had not spread beyond my appendix; and c) that I presented with appendicitis so that they were able to catch this early. (Most of the time an appendix tumor will cause no symptoms until it has spread far and wide throughout the abdominal cavity.) I'm lucky that I had my appendectomy at UWMC, where they had performed a trial of open appendectomy vs. closed (laparoscopic) appendectomy, and concluded that open appy's are the way to go (they do open appy's routinely now). Closed appendectomies carry a much higher risk of spreading these tumor cells around. I'm lucky that my surgeon, Dr. Horvath, recognized that something looked fishy with my appendix, and did a more radical removal than they usually do (she removed a corner of my large intestine along with the appendix). And now I'm lucky that UWMC has upgraded to the latest CT scan machines, which result in a radiation dose that is about 60% of what the older machines deliver (which is almost 60 times larger than a typical chest x-ray dose). It's still a big dose, but not as big--and that's good. Oh, they also stopped using the old chalky, sicky-sweet grape-flavored barium sulfate crap that they make you drink before an abdominal CT. At UWMC they're using some clear substance that's suspended in plain water--much more palatable, and without the unfortunate...uhhhhmmm...after effects.

I'm glad that I've come to the point where I can feel lucky within unluckiness. I'm also glad that I've come to the point where I'm starting to feel more comfortable talking about this with people. Much like the rest of my family, I tend to have "wild animal" instincts about illness or personal problems--that is, I tend to retreat, and to hold things inside, rather than talking about it or...I guess showing any weakness. It's no way to live. I think other people can tell that there's something off, and unconsciously keep their distance. Fortunately, I also tend to get over this tendency with time, to relax and open up more. At least I seem to be, now. It's good. I miss my old social life.

Anyway, that's about all I'll have to say on this subject for awhile. 3 years, unless I freak out after 2 years and decide to move up my next CT. Like I said yesterday, they have no data points, so there's no protocol. My doctor and I are making this plan up as we go. Once again, I feel fortunate in this--he takes my feelings into consideration at each step. Today he asked me, "What do you want to do? What would make you feel most comfortable?" Together we decided that I should have another CT in 3 years, which seems a good balance between a) not exposing me to more radiation than necessary; but b) keeping an eye on things and not getting complacent about my situation. I'm lucky...but that's no reason to be stupid.

So here's your reward for reading this far, Gentle Reader. A picture of the yarns I bought at the Fiber Gallery's anniversary sale last night (I'm only showing one skein of each):

I'm contributing to the overwhelming blue-black-gray cast of my yarn stash, but oh well. Those are the colors I usually want to wear.

Yarn Shopping

2010-04-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I went to the Fiber Gallery's super-secret sale preview for its "special" customers (i.e. the ones who buy a lot of yarn there). I bought some yarn. I can't take pics now because it's dark (and I don't like using flash), but here's what I bought:

Cascade Eco + in a funky limey teal, with which I plan to make a turtleneck of some sort, perhaps a variation on the Burnished Tunic from Knitscene a year or so ago. Several years ago I saw a turtleneck sweater in this color that I really wanted but didn't buy because it was too expensive and badly made (yeah, I'm a snobby knitter--LOL). Ever since then, I've had recurring daydreams about having a sweater like it, only well-made. So I'm pretty excited about this yarn, even though I'm not going to knit it for many moons.
Cascade 220 in black, with which I plan to make a cardigan of my own design.
St. Denis Nordique in a pewter-y gray, with which I plan to make Audrey in Unst.
Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in charcoal, for boring socks.
Louet Gems sock in navy, for more boring socks. (What can I say? I need boring socks!)

My color choices, except for the Eco+, are pretty boring, but I need some staple-y basics. I might go back and buy some laceweight for a Featherweight cardigan, too. I saw some that was really pretty, but I couldn't decide on a color.

Anyway, that's my yarn shopping adventure. Looking forward to this jaunt all week has kept me from being nervous about what's coming up tomorrow: I have my biennial CT scan scheduled for first thing in the morning, followed by an appointment with my surgical oncologist at UWMC. In 2006 I had my appendix removed, and it turned out that I had an extremely rare type of tumor called a mucinous cystadenoma--not technically cancerous, but still dangerous because it could spread throughout my abdomen and create a nasty condition called pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP). Another medical rarity: literally one in a million. Aren't I lucky? PMP is particularly dangerous because it doesn't produce any symptoms until it is quite advanced, at which point the entire abdominal cavity is involved. The surgery to treat this shit is awful, just...the most invasive procedure you can imagine. After my surgery and diagnosis I read everything I could find about it, and joined a support network...and then the whole thing freaked me out so much that I just withdrew, and couldn't even talk about it for a couple of years. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety; I'm still recovering from that, and I still find it very uncomfortable to talk about these conditions. Anyway, my tumor seemed to be confined to my appendix (which is why I didn't elect to have further surgery at the time), but I am still at an elevated risk for developing PMP somewhere down the line--and the kicker is that it could take decades to develop, or it could develop right now. Or it might never develop, which is obviously what I'm hoping for. The condition is so rare that they just don't have any data, and they can't make any predictions. So basically, I need to have regular CT scans for the rest of my life. I'll be glowing in the dark by the time I'm 60--LOL. Cross your fingers for me. I hope they don't find anything. That probably goes without saying.

Fun facts: Dan Quayle had the same kind of appendix tumor removed in the early 1990's. And Audrey Hepburn died of PMP, from a primary cancerous tumor of the appendix (the papers mistakenly reported it as colon cancer).

After my appendectomy, I joked for quite awhile that I was going to have the scar tattooed to look like there were bumblebees crawling out of it. (I have a completely irrational but mortal, instinctive terror of bees and their stinger-equipped ilk.) I haven't done that. Yet.

Inordinately Excited

2010-04-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

I am inordinately excited to be where I am in my current knitting project. I have knit quite a few bottom-up sweaters and it's always a little thrilling to get to the point where you join body and sleeves to begin knitting the yoke. I am extra excited this time. I'm not sure why, exactly. This yarn is fabulous to knit, it's true, and I'm looking forward to having it back on a needle with longer tips (I've been knitting the sleeves on 16" circs)...but that doesn't quite account for how excited I am. I guess it doesn't matter; what matters is just that I am excited. In any case, here's a pre-joining round picture:

Also, I have to rave about my latest knitting accoutrement acquisition: one of dancingsheep's new Large Project Bags. I've got a couple of her One-skein Project Bags and have really enjoyed them. This one, though, is almost tailor made for my primary knitting interest (coughsweaterknittingcough). I can fit a whole sweater project in this bag, and it's frakking adorable and beautifully constructed. It's fully lined and it has a series of useful pockets inside. Win!

Yarn-WIP'ed

2010-04-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

So I started knitting a rendition of Gudrun Johnston's Moch Cardi. I'm using some Mirasol Tupa that I bought at the Fiber Gallery a few weeks ago. I'm actually using the yarn to knit the very pattern for which I bought it! Miraculous. So often yarn will hang around for a little while, then my plans change and it becomes something else. (This happened with some Silky Wool I bought a year or so ago, but more on that in a moment.) So the Tupa? It's ridiculous! No yarn should be this beautiful and nice to knit. (Or maybe all yarns should be, I haven't decided.) I never want to put it down. I will never want to take this sweater off. WIP pics:

Body section progress shot.

Close-up of the hem lace detail.

I am planning to make one mod to this sweater: I'm going to pick up stitches for the button band instead of knitting it in, and I'm going to make full-length bands rather than only at the yoke (although I'm not going to put buttons along the entire length). I just don't think the wide open body will look that good on me--its openness is emphasized by the curling of the unstabilized stockinette edge, so hopefully putting some knitting along that edge will make it more flattering on me. We'll see.

Now about that Silky Wool. Last summer it became a February Lady Sweater. Last week it became yarn again. Yes, that's right...I frogged my FLS! Heresy and sin and perdition! I hadn't worn it in a really long time so I tried it on last week, and...I just didn't want it anymore. I want the yarn to become something else, so that's what it will do. Eventually.

Stash Flashing

2010-03-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Here it all is, in its immoderate glory. Actually this is only the woolly, non-mothproof portion. The rest (Lamb's Pride worsted and bulky, which come permanently mothproofed; along with a bunch of synthetic yarns that moths don't like to munch) is in slide-away containers under my bed. Oh, and there is a bag of yarn in my cedar chest that I plan imminently to knit into a sweater. But this is the bulk of it, anyway (I keep wanting to type "builk, perhaps because the size reminds me of a Buick? I jest, I know this isn't that huge of a stash):

I have earmarked some of this for de-stashing, but for the most part I love all of my yarn. I don't even want to get rid of the odds and ends. I feel like I'll think of something to do with it all (hopefully before I buy any more).

While I'm at it, I thought I would also post pics of my storage solution. All of this yarn fits into two of these:

These are the best non-cedar-chest storage containers I've found yet. They're not pretty, but they work. As you can see, the lids lock down. And here's the best part, which you can't see (except when I show it to you):

The lids have lips, with foam insulation to seal them right up, air tight. No moths or beetles are getting into these puppies.

Trying to Be Patient

2010-03-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to be patient. My Tempest cardigan is blocking. I soaked it and pinned out all of the pieces last night, but it's still stinky-wet. I really want to start seaming it. Maybe this afternoon... :-/

But look how much easier it is to block sweater pieces with blocking wires! This is the second time I've used these wires, and they are a HUGE improvement over the crazyhugegauge, unstraight fencing wire I was using before. Plus, I used my store credit (virtual punch card FTW) to buy these, so they're extra good. :-)

FO: Aestlight

2010-03-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

I finally took FO pics of my Aestlight shawl(ette). I knit the smallest size. I love this little thing! It feels so comfy against my neck, which is a combination of the goodness of DIC Smooshy and all that squishy garter stitch. I would actually like to knit this pattern again in the larger size. I had quite a bit of yarn left over after finishing this shawl but not quite enough to have knit the larger size, I think. What I might do is to purchase 2 skeins of Smooshy, knit the larger size, and then knit a pair of socks with the leftovers. (IMO 1 skein of Smooshy is more than enough for a pair of socks, so this should work out OK.) Anyway, here it is unfurled:

And closer up:

Pattern: Aestlight, but Gudrun Johnston, a.k.a. The Shetland Trader
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy (fingering/sock), colorway Cinnamon Girl
Needles: US6 Addi Turbo Lace (my absolute favorite needles ever)
Notes: Nothing really to note here. I didn't deviate from the pattern at all, except for along the first side of the edging, where I inadvertently skipped 2 rows of the pattern during one repeat. I did not rip back to fix it. Instead, I just fudged it with a later repeat (still before the point) to even things out again. I don't think it's noticeable at all. The color looks a lot more orange-y and washed out in these pictures because I took them outdoors in broad daylight (albeit in the shade). The actual color is better represented in the pics in this post. It's a deeper, richer color, almost mahogany. I love the subtle variegations!

I think my next shawl is going to be the Photosynthesis shawl, by Emily Wessel (Damp City Knits). Last weekend I went to a bridal shower in West Seattle. Afterward I stopped at Little Knits, where I'm pretty sure they sell almost every kind of yarn made by Fleece Artist. I picked up a skein of Suri Blue (50% blue faced leicester and 50% suri alpaca) in the Hemlock colorway, which I think will be perfect for this pattern. Looky!

I'm becoming less enamored of variegated yarns (except ones that are more tonally variegated, like Malabrigo or many of the Dream in Color yarns), but I was just really smitten with this mix of greens. I saw it within the first 5 minutes of entering the store, and I kept coming back to it while I was shopping. I finally just bought the damned thing--LOL. It was $20. Not too bad.

Spring Planning

2010-03-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm done computing and reporting final grades for my students, I'm ready to dive into my spring break projects. Not spring planting (though there may actually be a little of that). Spring planning!

I decided that the yarn/pattern pair I'd been working with the last time I posted (Frog Tree Alpaca Fingering + Geodesic Cardigan) weren't a good match. The tucks/pleats on the front of the sweater were a little too bulky--this is one area where changing from the lace-weight yarn specified in the pattern to a fingering-weight yarn, made a huge difference. So I have been slowly frogging that (see what I did there?) and re-knitting it straight into something else: the Tempest Cardigan by Weaverknits (Ann and Beth Weaver), from the Spring 2008 issue of Knitty. I'm making the sweater without stripes and with longer sleeves, but otherwise I'm following the pattern. I have the body sections all knit and one sleeve almost done. All I have left to do is to knit the second sleeve, block and seam everything, knit the button band/collar, and then choose and sew on buttons. I'm looking forward to finishing this--it has been a lovely, light project to work on, and I think I will enjoy wearing it. The yarn is so beautiful, and feels really nice on the needles. I haven't had a chance to photograph this WIP yet, because I've been pretty busy with end-of-quarter business.

My head has been turned by a dizzying number of different patterns, of late--both sweaters and shawls. I think I'm suffering from a little vertigo! I have a miles-long list of things that I want to knit immediately. Obviously I can't do that! I need to be more strategic, to plan things out a little bit more carefully so that I don't suffer an attack of the dreaded start-itis (a.k.a. "cast-on-itis"). I will probably finish Tempest over the next couple of days, and then I'll try to assess my WIP's, the patterns I'm lusting after, and the 2 projects that I have promised to other people (for which I have also already bought yarn).

Life is short...and my queue is long!

Stash Management

2010-03-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

So...I'm going to be teaching two classes next quarter, and I also just found out that I am getting a class over the summer, too. This means that I'll be a little more "flush" than I thought I would be, and can afford to indulge myself a little bit. Not a lot--I'm not going to be rolling in dough or anything, but I can relax the purse strings a little. So, of course, I have bought some yarn, and plan to buy a little bit more before I'm done.

So far I have ordered 3 sweaters' worth of yarn from WEBS--Ultra Alpaca, and Ultra Alpaca Light. I shopped around at the LYS's that carry this yarn, and they are all pretty low on stock right now. I saw a lot of onesie-twosie skeins, and only saw sweater's quantities of bleah colors that would look like ass on me. Between that and the volume discount that WEBS offers...well, I decided to just order it. I got 2 different colorways of Ultra Alpaca Light. I bought some of the Cordoba Grape colorway, which I am pretty sure I'm going to turn into Sabbatical, by Connie Chang Chinchio (I bought enough yardage for that pattern). I also bought that much yardage of the Salt & Pepper mix, which is basically a heathered gray. I'm kicking around some design ideas for that. And I got some Ultra Alpaca (worsted weight) in Marsh Mix, which I think is going to become Harvest (Ravelry link), by Cecily Glowik MacDonald. If you want to check out these colorways, here's the Ultra Alpaca colorcard and the Ultra Alpaca Light colorcard. They look basically the same, but...whatever, I'm including both just for grins.

I can't seem to get off the sweater kick, despite completing the NaKniSweMoDo09 challenge last year. My sweater collection is starting to overflow my cedar chest, so I'm going to need to figure out new storage options sometime soon. I have a few things made with Lamb's Pride Worsted, which promises to be "permanently moth-proofed," so perhaps I can move those sweaters out of the chest. My stash is growing, too, and it's starting to make me feel a little panicky. Not because of its size, necessarily; more because it's all over the place and badly needs to be organized and properly stored. I'll be spending some quality time on stash management, and soon--before summer, when the threat of moths and beetles will increase.

Of course, the best way to manage one's stash is to actually knit with it. Here are the two WIP's I've been spending most of my knitting time on lately:

This is Gudrun Johnston's Aestlight pattern, which I'm making with a skein of Cinnamon Girl Smooshy. It was one of my Ravelympic projects--the one I didn't finish. :-( I'm getting there. The edging takes a long time.

And here's my newest project:

I know it doesn't look like much, but it's the first 9-10 inches of the body section of Connie Chang Chinchio's Geodesic pattern, from the new Knitscene. I'm knitting this with that Frog Tree Alpaca Fingering that I posted about last time. This yarn is so beautiful and soft. I love knitting with it. It's slightly heavier than the yarn called for in the pattern, so I went down a needle size to get gauge (I don't mind that this will make the fabric denser--it's alpaca, so I know it will drape nicely). I'm worried that it will be too big. It's hard to measure gauge because the fabric is so meshy, and I know that alpaca tends to grow with washing/blocking. Cross your fingers for me....

Ravelympics

2010-03-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

I can't go to Purlygirls tonight because I have to catch up on my grading, so I thought I'd do a quick post. I finished one of my Ravelympics projects on Friday--the sweater--but I didn't finish the shawl. I'm 4 repeats into the edging, which requires a lot of concentration. It's slow going, and I can only concentrate like that for a couple of repeats at a time. But anyway, here's the sweater:

Pattern: inspired by Francis Revisited (Ravelry pattern link) by Beth Silverstein (see below) and Sissiknits' mods (Ravelry project link)
Yarn: Plymouth Mushishi, colorway "Harvest"
Needles: US8 for the stockinette and US7's for the mistake ribbing.
Mods/Complete Re-jiggering: I didn't want the gauge to be as loose as the Francis pattern calls for, so I swatched and worked up all of the numbers myself, based on my measurements and ease preferences. My stitch counts were all different from the pattern. (I'm only crediting the pattern here because it was my inspiration.) I figured out the initial allotment of stitches for the front, back, and sleeves by working backward, from the target stitch count for the chest and upper arms, to the CO number that I wanted to use for the neck. Everything flowed from there. Doing the math to figure out where to put the raglan increases helped me to avoid the usual problem I have with top down sweaters: oversized sleeves. These sleeves are perfect. I did waist shaping, left the sleeves straight, and as I mentioned above I used mistake rib for the collar, cuffs, and hem. Oh, I also like to slow down the raglan increases to every 4 rounds (instead of every 2) as I approach the end of the yoke. I do this for the last 3-5 sets of increases, basically, depending on how I want the sweater to fit. This yields a more comfortable armscye (armpit tightness = bad!) depth while also keeping the sleeve size reasonable.
Other Notes: I'm very happy with this one, though it probably won't get much use until next winter. The yarn is nice and soft, and I love how it striped, particularly in the mistake rib sections. I also love how the sleeve striping almost matches, but not quite. I was hoping for more of a cowl neck, but I'm happy with how it turned out--it's more of a loose turtleneck.

I'm contemplating frogging a few of my existing sweaters, but I already have yarn for a few other things I want to make, so I probably won't get to the frog pond until next fall.

Looking Ahead

2010-02-20T14:31:00.000-08:00

I have added a bunch of lightweight yarns to my stash over the last couple of weeks, most of it while at the Madrona Fiber Arts festival (I didn't take any classes--too $pendy for me--but I enjoyed the marketplace a bit too much). I'm looking ahead to spring and summer knitting...planning projects that won't require me to hold a big wad of wool in my lap. Here are the newest pretty stash-things:

This is some cute sock yarn from the Lollipop Cabin booth--it's a 9-ply smooth merino superwash. I fell in love with the colorway. I don't know if this will become socks or a shawlette. There's enough yardage in this skein to do either one. I'm sure it will let me know. The yarn feels like it will be an absolute dream on the needles. I've seen a few sock projects knit with Lollipop Cabin's various yarns, and they are all beautifully variegated. Yesterday I saw a sock knit with this very yarn (a different colorway) and it was gorgeous--no pooling, splotching, or other weird color distribution anomalies. I wonder how the dyer manages it...

This is a Curious Creek 50% merino, 50% wild tussah silk laceweight yarn called Meru, in a "special edition" colorway. I think it looks like rose wine. I'm using another colorway of this yarn to make a Print 'o the Wave stole (Eunny Jang's design), and I just love it. I was excited to find more of it at Madrona, though I was a little disappointed that they didn't have last year's HUGE selection of different colors. Maybe they sold through their stock really quickly this year. I hope it doesn't mean that Curious Creek is scaling back production or otherwise becoming a casualty of the faltering economy, because the dye work on these yarns is beautiful--positively luminous (with help from the silk, of course). Once again, I'm not entirely sure what this yarn wants to be. Some kind of shawl or wrap, no doubt. Perhaps I'll take a stab at designing a big lace shawl--I have 2 skeins, just shy of 1000 yards, so it would easily knit up into a large triangular shawl.

I got 2 skeins each of these two colorways of Koigu KPM (Premium Merino), also at Madrona. I don't normally buy yarns at Madrona that I can get at an LYS--but I almost never see Koigu solids at any of the Seattle LYS's that I go to regularly. My thinking at the time was to make a pair of Endpaper Mitts (to make up for my earlier failed attempt at this pattern), and possibly a matching hat or cowl. I can't explain why I fell in love with these two colorways together, but I did. I think it's highly likely that I will actually follow my original plan for this yarn. It is somewhat dangerous that I have enough of each colorway for a pair of socks, though. Time will tell.

And finally, here's the yarn I bought yesterday:

So pretty! I walked up to the Fiber Gallery yesterday, just to poke and prod some yarn, half-assedly shopping for 4 different potential projects (Connie Chang Chinchio's Geodesic Cardigan from the new Knitscene; her Sabbatical cardigan from the new Twist Collective; Cecily Glowik MacDonald's Harvest pullover; and Gudrun Johnston's Moch Cardi). I got this yarn for the Geodesic Cardigan, and I'm about 80% sure that I will actually use it for that. I may end up doing something of my own devising instead--I'm intrigued by these loosely-knit lace- and fingering-weight sweaters that seem all the rage lately. Out of the bunch I've been most captivated by the Geodesic Cardigan. I also like Hannah Fetig's Whisper Cardigan, though I would want to tweak that design pretty substantially if I knit it for myself. I've also been toying with a couple of ideas of my own along these same lines (skinny yarn on US6 needles).

As for the other 3 designs: I think I have decided on yarn for Harvest and the Moch Cardi: Ultra Alpaca (worsted) and Mirasol Tupa, respectively. I have some reservations about the Moch Cardi design. It has a short button band, only at the yoke, which leaves the body section to curl under on itself. This results in some extreme tummy-baring action that isn't really the best look for me. Anyway, I don't need to buy all of that yarn right now--who knows when I will actually knit these sweaters?--so I'm going to wait and see if any new colorways come out that really grab me. The Fiber Gallery had a couple of colorways of the Tupa that I liked: a super deep burgundy (not unlike the Koigu, above) and a really clear, true blue. I'm leaning more toward the burgundy. Ultra Alpaca I usually end up buying online because a) the Fiber Gallery doesn't carry it; and b) the other two nearby LYS's that do carry it almost never have sweater quantities on hand in colorways that I like. The picture is even worse for Ultra Alpaca Light, which is one yarn that I'm considering for Sabbatical. I'm also considering Blue Sky's Alpaca Silk for that, which would be closer to the yarn called for in the pattern.

I clearly have a thing for aqua/teal and burgundy right now. Interesting....

Pullover it is

2010-02-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

I decided to make a pullover with the Plymouth Mushishi that I posted about last time. I love working with the yarn--it's fun watching the stripes come out, and the little bit of silk content gives the yarn a slight sheen as well as random, funky white bits of "popcorn." I'm aiming for a cowl neck sweater, though I may change my mind. My inspiration is Francis Revisited (Rav link), though I am not following the pattern. I like the shape and the casual elegance of that sweater, but I'm not knitting at quite as loose a gauge. The Mushishi ball band calls for knitting at 5 st/in on US7's; instead, I'm knitting at 4.5 st/in on US8's. Meanwhile, the pattern is at 3.5 st/in. As a result, I CO a different number of stitches, and I also distributed them differently among the front, back, and sleeves. Basically, I figured out the stitch count I wanted at the chest and upper arms, then figured out how many I wanted to cast on (aiming for a slightly narrower neck than Francis), and then calculated backward from the upper arms to decide how many I needed to start with on the sleeves. While knitting the yoke, I threw in a couple of sets of short rows to bump up the back of the neck a little bit. I am also planning to do a different trim (i.e. not seed stitch) at the collar, cuffs, and hem, and I may go ahead and let the purl side of the fabric face out on the collar because I like how it looks. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that this is one of my Ravelympics projects! Here is a progress pic--please note that I am still working on the first ball of yarn! These skeins are ginormous!

Just to make life interesting, I decided to do two Ravelympics projects. This next one is Gudrun Johnston's Aestlight Shawl (Rav link), which I'm knitting with a skein of Dream in Color Smooshy that I posted about awhile back. The colorway is called "Cinnamon Girl," and I think it's just perfect for this pattern, don't you?

In this picture, you can also see the bottom corner of the absolutely adorable one-skein project bag that I bought from Dancing Sheep's (a.k.a. Katie) Etsy store. Katie is a knitting friend, and I've been admiring her project bags for awhile. I bought two: one with puppy-printed fabric, and one with turtle-printed fabric. They are super cute. More importantly, they are very well made and perfect for transporting a 1-skein or sock project! Go check them out!

Moar FOzzz

2010-02-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

I finished the swatch cap I was making to practice 3-color stranded knitting--I posted about it last time, including progress pics It's all blocked now. Here's a pic:

Unfortunately, the colorwork band doesn't have enough stretch to fit an adult's head (or...at least not my head). The colorwork looks pretty good, though; much better than my first attempt. Here's a close-up:

Yarn: Dalegarn Heilo
Needles: Addi Turbo, US4
Pattern: my own
My chart error is glaringly obvious to me--can you spot it? I think I'm ready to work on the sweater, though I might want to do another small stranded project first, just to practice knitting l-o-o-s-e-l-y. I'm also a little worried about the ribbing, because it doesn't seem to me that blocking took care of the torque--it took out some of it, but not all. It still looks torque-y to me. I might try putting in fake seams, ala Elizabeth Zimmerman, to help straighten things out. The stockinette doesn't seem to torque, just the ribbing.

I also finished the shawl I was making:

Yarn: Frog Tree Alpaca Sport in a really nice springy clovery green
Needles: Addi Turbo Lace, US6
Pattern: Medallion Lace Shawl, from Evelyn Clark's book, Knitting Lace Triangles
I am in love with this shawl. It has beautiful drape, and I love the added "heft" of the sportweight yarn. The depth of color, the slight sheen, and the halo of the yarn are amazing, and very nice in this pattern.

I'm now contemplating doing a Ravelympics project...using this Plymouth Mushishi I picked up a couple of weeks ago. I wound up one of the skeins this morning and have been swatching. I can't cast on for the project until the Opening Ceremonies of the actual Olympic Games this evening...but what should I make? Cardigan? Pullover? I would love suggestions, if there's anybody out there!

FO: Tall Flower Cardi

2010-01-23T16:23:00.000-08:00

I finished this sweater last weekend, and sewed on buttons over the ensuing several days. I only had a few minutes here and there to do it, so I got the first 4 on Tuesday--enough to wear the sweater. The buttonholes disappear into the garter stitch bands, so it didn't look weird with no buttons on the lower part of the sweater. I got the final 4 buttons sewed on today. I'm very happy with this sweater. It was a little challenging, because the yarn I used is slightly lighter than the yarn called for in the pattern (a worsted yarn held double). Another challenge was weaving in ends. Since I used a superwash merino yarn I couldn't spit splice, so I had a bunch of ends at the selvedges, plus the ones from knitting and seaming the sleeves, picking up and binding off the button bands and collar, etc. I'm saying there were a lot of ends--not the most enjoyable aspect of knitting, but worth doing right. I love this design because it's cute without being cutesy, if you know what I mean. I feel like it has both whimsy and dignity, so it's fun to wear but I don't feel like I'm dressing like a 19 year old. Now that I'm in my 40's I worry about these things. It's a long story involving a cousin of my mom's who dressed in more revealing and otherwise "younger" clothing as she got older, rather than less revealing clothing as most women seem to prefer. I still want to wear somewhat funky clothes--I'm definitely not interested in dressing like an old lady--but I also don't want to be that woman, you know? It's hard to explain. The upshot is that it's sometimes challenging to dress myself as I get older, and in ways that I didn't expect when I was younger. Plus my body is changing, so there's that. I don't have a very good sense of what's flattering and what's embarrassing.

Anyway, here's the cardi:

Pattern: Tall Flower Cardi, by Cecily Glowik MacDonald (Ravelry Link)
Yarn: Cascade 128 Superwash, colorway 815 Black
Needles: Addi Turbos, US10.5
Notes: Nothing really to add about this one. I knew I wanted to knit it as soon as I saw it on Ravelry. Other than adjusting for my gauge, which was slightly tighter than the pattern gauge, I followed the pattern instructions to the letter. I love the lace panels, and that they take on an overall shape rather than simply a repeating pattern shape...if that makes sense. I also love the little button tab on the collar--it's one of my favorite details about this sweater.

A cool side note: I PM'ed Cecily on Ravelry to let her know about 2 small typos I found in the pattern, and she sent me a free pattern for her Harvest pullover (Rav link) as a thank you. I was surprised and thrilled by this--I didn't expect anything in return, but I have been admiring Harvest for awhile and now I'm excited to knit it. I'm in search of the perfect yarn for it. The pattern calls for Classic Elite Kumara, which I understand is quite delicious. I need to find a LYS that carries it so I can squish it a bit before I decide.

In other news, I got over my frustration with the swatch cap I've been making. I pulled out the disastrous first attempt at 3-color stranding, and re-knit it using an easier technique. Basically, I make 2 passes for each round. On the first pass, I knit only 2 of the colors, and slip any stitches that will be in the 3rd color; then on the second pass I slip the stitches I knit and knit the stitches I slipped on the first pass. It looks so much better. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to finish the cap, block, and move on to the actual sweater. The imperfections are as follows: 1. My tension is still too tight in places, so that the colorwork puckers more than I think blocking will correct; I will need to really focus on being loose-loose-loose! 2. On at least one row I didn't get all the stitches I was supposed to. I also found an error in the chart, which I'll need to correct--and this, of course, is exactly what a swatch cap is for! Here it is:

And a closer view:

On this view, you can see that the bottom band of red needs to continue for one more row; if you look closely, too, you can see where I think I missed stitches on the second pass (though they might just be stretched out of shape from being slipped and otherwise manhandled). Here's the sleeve detail from the original sweater--which is the chart I was following for this cap; you can see that the yellow (which translates into red in the new color scheme) encompasses one row further up into the big medallion thingy:

Aaaaaand I also have some new yarns to show off. I got a sweater's quantity of this Cascade 220 Superwash from the Fiber Gallery. It's going to become a hoodie of some kind for my niece (either Cassidy, the ubiquitous Central Park Hoodie, or perhaps I'll design something new). It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's a really pretty medium purple heather. The color reminds me of grape SweetTarts.

The other day I was walking home from the U-District after teaching, and decided to stop by Bad Woman Yarn. I was mainly hoping they would carry the CEY Kumara, so I could cop a feel, but alas they did not. I did, however, find some Plymouth Mushishi in a colorway that I like. I first became fascinated by this yarn when I saw Aimeeisknitting making a cardigan with it at Purlygirls, several months ago now. A couple of weeks ago, erinb was working with it, and that reminded me of it. I've seen it around in various LYS's, but always either in colorways I don't like, or only a single skein of colorways I do like. Well, Bad Woman had a bunch of it in a colorway I love (I think it might be the same colorway Aimee was using), so I got 2 skeins--hopefully enough to make some kind of cardigan for myself.

That's it for today--what are you working on?

NaKniSweMoDo09 Wrapup

2010-01-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

I guess I earned my patch. I thought it would be fun to make a mosaic of all of my NaKniSweMoDo projects:

Here's a quick rundown on the projects--sort of a "where they are now" review:
1. Arwen-esque: (based on Kate Gilbert's design, but heavily modified) I wear this one a lot. I'm very happy with how it turned out. I typically wear it pinned closed, as pictured. At some point, I may add buttons and loop closures, but I'm not sure yet.
2. EZ Fairisle Yoke sweater: (Elizabeth Zimmerman's design) I adore this one. I'm particularly proud of how my color choices played out in the yoke. I also like the garter rib that I used for the cuffs and hem, and the overall fit. The buttons are a little meh, and I may switch those out if I find some I like better.
3. die Federspitze (a.k.a. Liesl): (Ysolda Teague's design) I wore this one a lot last summer and into the fall, but for some reason haven't been wearing it much lately. Perhaps it's time to bust it out again. I really like it. I'm glad I knit this in gray--though I recently saw a really nice version of this on Ravelry that was knit with Noro Kureyon, and I love how the Noro striping looks in the Old Shale lace pattern. I might knit another one at some point.
4. Ariann: (Bonne Marie Burns' design) Sigh. I love this design, but it looked terrible on me so I frogged it and re-knit the yarn into a Bernhardt. See below.
5. Viridis: (my own design) I made this one for my boyfriend, Chris, and he loves it. It looks terrific on him, and it makes me really happy to see it on him.
6. Mossidy/Cassidy: (Bonne Marie Burns' design) I am quite happy with this one, though the hood is a little heavy and tends to pull the sweater down in back and, thus, up in front, which can be a somewhat unattractive look. I still wear it a fair amount, though.
7. Patronus: (my own design) This one is OK. I like it...it fits well...but for some reason I don't wear it very much. I may end up frogging it and making something else with the yarn, which I love.
8. Metro: (my own design--based on EPS) I love this sweater, even though it's a little weird looking. I probably should have alternated skeins, but I didn't feel like it. It fits great.
9. Vaila: (Gudrun Johnston's design) OMG LOVE! I wear this one all the frakking time. It is the perfect turtleneck, and I love everything about it. Except...how much Malabrigo pills. Right now this is out of rotation because it needs a thorough de-fuzzing.
10. Granny's a Wino (a.k.a. Granny Smith Cardigan): (Melissa Wehrle's design) I adore this sweater, and wear it a lot. I like wearing it to teach. I was afraid that the loosely-plied alpaca yarn would pill up or pull out of shape, but it still looks like new.
11. Bernhardt: (Allison Green Will's design) This one is another favorite--I'm very glad that I frogged Ariann and used the yarn for this instead. I wear it a lot, and I typically wear it as pictured--closed with a kilt pin. I like that it is a relatively simple sweater, with clean lines, but the lacy rib gives it just enough visual interest. It looks a little weird around the shoulders if I wear it open, but I don't usually like wearing sweaters that way anyway.
12. Starsky: (Jordana Paige's design) I was surprised by how much I love this sweater. I knit it kind of for fun, and thought it would just be a sitting-around-the-house sweater, but it is almost too good for that. It fits beautifully, and I love the open line of the lapels--it's good for showing off a cool top while still keeping warm. The yarn (Cascade Ecological Wool) is to die for.
13. Margot: (Linden Heflin's design) Again, a big thumb's up for this one. This was my first time knitting with Berroco's Ultra Alpaca Light (a DK/sport yarn), which is now a favorite. This sweater is wonderful--simple, classic, and black. It makes me very happy.
14. Gitchigumi (a.k.a. Kerrera): (Gudrun Johnston's design) Sigh. This one makes me a little sad. I love the design. I love the yarn. But...the FO is just too big for me. I was aiming for a 38" and ended up with a 40". I'm not sure why--I did the math, and it seemed on track to fit before I picked up for the front band. My gauge didn't grow in the wash, even though the yarn bloomed. I'm afraid I'm going to have to frog and re-knit, which I'm not looking forward to because of all that double garter stitch. I'm so disheartened by the prospect that I don't even want to take an FO picture. I really do want the sweater, though, and I want it in this yarn. I'm not willing to risk trying to give it a strategic shrinking in the dryer. I don't want to ruin the yarn. Sigh, again. I know what I have to do, I just don't wanna.

So...that was my big 2009 knitting accomplishment. I knit other things, but last year was mainly about the sweaters. So far this year has been, too--I've already completed 2 sweaters this year (one hasn't been blogged yet), and I'm hard at work on the 3rd. I'll be slowing down, though. I want to do knit more things from my own designs, which takes time. I also really need to spend more time on my dissertation this year....

Knitting in the meantime...

2010-01-11T14:18:00.000-08:00

While sorting out how to do the 3-color stranding on the big sweater project I posted about last time, I needed some other projects to keep me busy, and to take with me on the bus or in the car. One of them was this, which I completed yesterday:

Pattern: Layered Skater's Top (Undertop) from Veronik Avery's Knitting Classic Style.
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light, colorway 4213 Blue Glasynys (:::LOVE:::)
Needles: US4's (for hem facings) and US5's
Mods/notes: I love Veronik's sense of style, and really want to knit several different patterns from this book (so far I've knit one other). I basically followed the pattern instructions for this sweater, but had to modify slightly for gauge (my gauge was 5.5 st/in, whereas the pattern calls for 5.75 st/in). I also knit it as a standalone sweater rather than a layering piece, and as such I wanted it to have a bit more length in both the body and sleeves. I made full-length sleeves, and lengthened the body by about 3"--I have a long torso and long arms for my size anyway, but I wanted this sweater to hit at the hip. I made a deeper interface for the body hem, working 11 rows instead of the 7 called for in the pattern to prevent curling. I also made it slightly bigger around at the hips than at the bust, so it wouldn't hug me too tightly at the midsection. The pattern might have an error in it, or perhaps I read it wrong--it instructs you to do the short row shaping for the neck/saddles 1 stitch sooner than the decreases for the saddle shaping--it's hard to explain, but following the instructions results in a glaringly obvious decrease stitch in the saddle edge about halfway between the shoulder point and the neck opening. In other words, instead of the saddle edge stitches following a single, clean line from the shoulder to the neck edge, it gives you a little bump or jog where the short row shaping starts. I didn't like the effect so I just moved the turning point out by 1 stitch, basically widening short row shaping band by 1 stitch on either side. I am very happy with how it turned out. I'm also delighted to have another sweater knit with this yarn (i.e. in addition to Margot, pictured here--scroll down).

I love the cable up the sleeves:

And the way the sleeve cap decreases look "feathery" and then flow into the shoulder saddles:

It's still damp, so I haven't taken a modeled shot yet, but the fit reminds me of a classic Milano ski sweater--close and sporty, yet elegant. I'm very happy with it.

I started this shawl the other day, as well. I'm knitting the Medallion Shawl from Evelyn Clark's book, Knitting Lace Triangles. It will be my bus knitting project. I have about 100 yards more yarn than the pattern calls for, so I may end up with a fairly large shawl. OTOH, I'm also a fairly tight knitter, so it may not be that large after all. We'll see....

I'm using Frog Tree Alpaca Sportweight. It's a 2-ply yarn with a beautiful luster and nice, rich color, and I'm delighted with how it's working up. I've had this yarn in my stash for a few months--I bought it on sale at the Whippletree Yarn Store in Hudsonville, MI. They had it on sale for 20% off that day, so I bought all 4 balls that they had in this colorway. I woke up from a power nap last Thursday and just had to knit with this yarn, so I dug it out of my stash and cast on immediately. It's a little odd, because I've been planning to knit this shawl for awhile, and I had pretty much decided to use some Dream in Color Smooshy that I have in my stash (colorway: Cinnamon Girl), but...when something feels so right, you just have to go with it.

3-Color Stranding

2009-12-24T10:26:00.000-08:00

I am currently working on a knock-off (using completely different colors) of this sweater for a friend of mine:

It's hard to tell at this distance, but the colorwork on the yoke and sleeves contains 3 colors per row for about half of the chart. Here's a close-up:

So here you can see that there are two shades of cream/tan--a darker and a lighter. My friend selected the colors pictured here:

The body of the sweater will be charcoal; where the original sweater is yellow, the knock-off will be red; tan will become gull gray; and cream will still be cream.

I charted this all out, and bought a little plastic device called a "Norwegian knitting thimble" or "strickfingerhut." The one I bought is pictured and discussed in this blog post. Another version is pictured (and sold) here. Expecting a somewhat steep learning curve, I decided to knit what Elizabeth Zimmerman calls a "swatch cap," i.e. a hat that is made primarily to test for gauge--and also to see how a colorwork chart works up in real life. Her philosophy is that it's better to use more yarn and end up with a useful item, rather than to save yarn but produce just another square to toss on a useless pile of gauge swatches. Also, if you're planning to knit your project in the round, you'll get a better sense of gauge if you also knit your swatch in the round.

But Elizabeth Zimmerman also says you should never knit a stranded colorwork project that requires more than 2 colors per row. I am here to tell you: she is right. I expect that really experienced knitters can make it work--and to be fair, the cap that I'm knitting doesn't look terrible, per se--but I am having a bitch of a time. I have figured out a procedure that works for me, for carrying all 3 colors at once. By "works for me," I mean that I am able to get through a round of knitting without having my hands cramp up or throwing the project across the room in frustration. What I don't mean is that the result is pretty. It's not. I can't for the life of me keep the tension even. Some stitches are all blurped out, saggy and lazy; while others are pinched tighter than Felix Unger's you know what. Here is a picture:

I love how it's turning out, in terms of the color, but the stitches are just all over the place. (Keep in mind, I photographed the prettiest section, and my hand is inside of the hat stretching the stitches out.)

Anyway, the TECHknitting blog has an exhaustive and helpful tutorial on knitting with 2 colors held in the same hand, and also 3-color knitting, here. As usual, she has pinpointed the problem: tension! The wonky tension that I'm getting is the result of trying to hold 2 colors in the same hand, when they are getting eaten up by the pattern at different rates. What happens is that the "floating" color gets extremely slack (hence the bloated stitches), while the other color gets tighter (hence the anal-retentive stitches). This is complicated by the fact that the design I'm trying to knit doesn't have a clear main color that predominates, with 2 contrasting colors that occur in similar proportions throughout the row: every color has long-ish floats on almost every row.

The upshot: I think I'm going to have to abandon the attempt at carrying 3 colors per row. The other options are either to knit with 2 colors and then add the 3rd color afterward by duplicate stitching; or to knit with 2 colors while slipping all stitches that are meant to be in the 3rd color, and then to go back over the row knitting only with the 3rd color and slipping all of the stitches in colors 1 and 2. Because the 3 colors occur in roughly equal proportions in all rows, thus rendering duplicate stitch a major impracticality, I'm going to try the latter method. I think it will turn out a lot more evenly, and will be a lot less frustrating for me even though it means that each 3-color round will require two full passes to complete. With tons of practice, I could probably get some semblance of "the hang" of the 3-color stranding technique, but it's too frustrating. I knit for pleasure. I love doing colorwork, and I love knitting with Heilo, but I'm really not enjoying this. I will enjoy it a lot more if I change how I'm doing it.

New Stash

2009-12-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

I finished my Kerrera Hoodie. The knitting is all done, and it has been washed and wet blocked, but it still needs buttons and button loops. It turned out a little on the large size for me, which is fine. I think it's more of an outerwear piece anyway, so I'll just layer it over other stuff. I love the yarn, and I think this was the exact right project for it. I'll take pics as soon as I get the buttons and sew them on, etc. Here's a pic from when it was still a WIP--a close-up of one of the sleeve cuffs that shows off the color of the yarn very nicely. What it doesn't show is how wonderfully Peace Fleece blooms when it's washed. The sweater has a lovely fullness, sheen, and halo now, and it's really snuggly. (Yes, I'm wearing it right now!)

And here are some pretty new stash sock yarns that I have acquired over the last couple of weeks--all purchased at The Fiber Gallery.

This one is Madelinetosh Tosh Sock, in the Cedar colorway. I think it's going to end up as a shawlette, but I haven't picked a pattern yet. It needs to be something relatively simple, since the yarn has so much going on.

This one is Dream in Color Smooshy in Cinnamon Girl. I think this one is going to be a shawlette as well. I'm thinking of Damson, but I'm not sure. It might be a little frilly for me. All I know is that this yarn sings to my weird fondness for certain shades of orange, and as such it begs to be made into an item that will enjoy high visibility.

And finally, another skein of Smooshy, this time in Cocoa Kiss. This yarn is definitely going to end up as a pair of socks. Not sure which pattern. I have several in my Ravelry queue that would look nice.

Start-itis

2009-11-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

I have a bunch of things going, including 2 sweaters, 2 socks, and a stole. Crazy! Here are photos and some details:

This is the Print o' the Wave stole, by Eunny Jang, in Curious Creek Meru, colorway Dorothy. I bought this yarn at Madrona last year. She seemed to have a Wizard of Oz theme going on in her booth. Hopefully I'll get to go this year--definitely can't afford to take any classes, alas--and hopefully, if I go, I'll get more pretty yarn.

This sock, along with its mate, will eventually be a pair of Bayerische Socks, also by Eunny Jang. I'm using Louet Gems in Fern Green. So pretty! Very nice stitch definition. I love the twisted stitches in this pattern. It's super fiddly to get the leg charts started after knitting the cuffs, but I love the result so far.

This is a pair of Boot Sox I'm making for my boyfriend, without a pattern--I'm making it up as I go along. Your basic 2x2 rib, flap heel with slipped stitches for thickness, on size 3 needles, socks. I'm using Cascade 220 Superwash in a lovely olive/bottle green color that doesn't photograph well. It is the same colorway that I used (except in regular Cascade 220) for my Cassidy hoodie awhile back. Hopefully Chris will like them.

This is the hem of a sweater I'm making for my friend Le'a--I'm knocking off a vintage sweater that she got in a thrift store, I believe it was in the 1980's. The tag says it was handknit in Norway--it has a colorwork yoke with raglan sleeves, and more colorwork right above the sleeve cuffs. The original was, oddly, knit flat in pieces and seamed together (ugh--stranded colorwork flat!). Because the seams are coming apart at the armpits, I can also see that the raglan decreases were done right at the edges rather than a stitch or two in. I'm doing the whole thing seamless, bottom-up. I have the colorwork all charted out. Right now I'm only worried about 2 things: 1. The waist ribbing seems to pull in more than I wanted it to; and 2. The ribbing has a very strong bias to it. I hope that blocking will solve both of these problems. I am going to put the project on hold briefly while I knit a quick gauge cap to test this principle.

As if that weren't enough, I got bit by a new pattern bug the other day:

This is Kerrara, by Gudrun Johnston. I saw the pattern and immediately imagined it knit up in this Peace Fleece that has been in my stash for awhile, in the Superior/Baikal Green colorway. I can't photograph this yarn properly. It is a deep, steel, greenish blue. I have been on a rather small boat out in the middle of Lake Superior, so I can attest that they got this color right, at least concerning Lake Superior. I can't speak for Lake Baikal. It is an oddly welcoming and intimidating, formidable color. It beckons while it warns. It makes me think of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It makes me think of home.

Consolidated FO's

2009-11-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

I took a bunch of FO pictures yesterday, so I'm just going to post them all at once, in the order of their completion.

First:

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in "Aguas"
Needle: Addi Turbo Lace, US6
Mods: I knit the small stockinette and the large lace instructions, and I had just a small amount of yarn left over.

Second:

Pattern: Starsky by Jordana Paige
Yarn: Cascade Ecological Wool, colorway 8016 (I call it "Oatmeal"), approximately 2.5 skeins
Needles: Addi Turbos, US10 + Knit Picks DPN's (the nickel-plated ones), US9
Mods: I added waist shaping. I changed one little thing in the chart that seemed wrong: stitches 7 and 8 in row 1--counting from right to left; I changed it to the 1/1 RPC on RS (see chart key) to match all of the other leaf-top stitches. Finally, I altered the ribbing so that it would flow into the banana leaf pattern more smoothly.

And third:

The pictures of this turned out rather blurry, but this one shows the fit OK.
Pattern: Margot by Linden Heflin
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light, colorway 4245 "Pitch Black"
Needles: Addi Turbos, US6
Mods: I started out following instructions for the size 36, but my gauge in this yarn was a full stitch/inch smaller than called for in the pattern, so I did more raglan increases to get to the correct chest size. I also changed the frequency of the increases as I got closer to the armpit, doing them every 4 rows rather than every 2--I like the look of this shaping better than a perfectly straight angled raglan seam. I cast on 14 stitches at the underarms rather than simply joining the raglan seams together--again, I just prefer this kind of shaping. Finally, I added length to both the body and sleeves, prior to the split garter stitch trim. I am seriously considering adding even more length to the sleeves, but I like the length of the body as-is.

I really enjoyed all of these projects. Good patterns all around, and fun to knit. I ended up knitting Margot in 5 days, which I think is my personal record for completing a whole sweater. I think I probably knit the Liesl sweater faster, if you only count the stitches that actually ended up in the FO. But I had to rip that one out twice and re-knit because of gauge issues, and both times it was after I had completed the yoke.

Needle Weirdness

2009-11-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

So...I was working on the sleeves of my current project (Margot from knitty.com), using my Addi Turbos, size US5, 16" circular needle. The sleeves fit onto the needle just fine, and I'm zipping along when I become aware of a "dragging" sensation at the needle tips. I thought maybe there was a rough spot or something, but I couldn't find it with my fingertip so I kept going. The dragging sensation continued. Basically, it felt like too much work to insert the right needle tip into the loop to be knitted on the left needle. I couldn't figure it out. I knew it wasn't the yarn because I had knit the entire yoke and body of the sweater on a 24" Addi Turbo US5 circular needle, and had been thrilled with the feel of knitting the yarn--Ultra Alpaca is really nice on the needles. But the sleeve...not quite so thrilling, in fact it was downright unpleasant.

I'm not sure what sent me over the investigative edge, but I finally whipped on my glasses and took a good, hard look at those needle tips under a bright light. Here's what I saw:

Can you see how flat they look, almost like they've been pounded with a hammer? By way of comparison:

This one is a little blurry, but I think it shows enough detail. Those are the 16" tips to the left, and the 24" tips to the right--both Addi Turbos. See how the 24" tips have a little point to them, right on the end? See how the 16" tips don't have that little point? I'm amazed at what a huge difference this makes in terms of the feel and the ease of knitting with this needle. I'm surprised I didn't notice this before--though I don't think I've used this particular needle all that often. I think I'll be replacing it--knitting with it was that unpleasant. (Unfortunately, I no longer have the original packaging, so I don't think Addi will exhange it for me.)

Look What I Got!

2009-11-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to the Fiber Gallery and bought a bunch of Dalegarn Heilo to make a sweater for a friend. Look, look: yarnz!

This is ultimately going to become a charcoal gray (MC) sweater with a geometric colorwork pattern in the yoke. I'm knocking off a vintage Norwegian sweater that my friend has had for a long, long time, only this one will be in completely different colors. I'll post more about it soon--I expect to start this in the next day or two. (I'm just waiting for her to verify the chest measurement, since I came up with two different measurements, myself--on two different occasions, but still, there's a 2" difference between them!) I'm very much looking forward to knitting this project. It has already been fun charting out the colorwork, and writing out the instructions for myself. But this yarn...it's really a knitter's dream yarn. I love love love working with it, though I don't yet own an FO out of it (I have a WIP that will require frogging and re-working, thus is currently hibernating).

And when I got home this evening, a package from WEBS was waiting on the porch for me. Inside, I found this:

Ultra Alpaca Light, in black, which is destined to become Margot. This one will be for myself--I've been wanting a really simple, not too heavy, black pullover for forever, and as soon as I saw this one (it's in the Fall 09 Knitty, in case you don't want to follow the link) I knew it was just the thing. Simple with nice details. I'm actually going to cast on for this tonight. Not that I don't have enough other stuff going, but I really want this sweater! LOL. It will be my bus knitting project. It should be nicely portable even when it's almost done, because of the sport/DK weight yarn.

I tried to buy the Ultra Alpaca Light from an LYS, but I went to 3 different stores that carry the brand and none of them had enough for me in black. They each had sweater quantities of 1 or 2 other colors, but only a couple of skeins in black (and no backstock--I asked). And I really wanted to use this yarn...I think this kind of project is perfect for this family of yarns. I have 2 sweaters out of the worsted weight version, and the things I love most about them are their softness and drape. Some of the knitters' comments about this yarn on Ravelry say that they found this lighter weight yarn scratchier or less soft than the worsted weight version, but this batch feels silky and sproingy to my hand--just like I've come to expect from the worsted weight--so hopefully Berroco has solved whatever problem was causing that difference. Anyway, since WEBS has an automatic volume discount, this yarn worked out to be super cheap, so of course I bought more. There was a SNAFU with that shipment (they sent the two colors in separate packages, for some reason), so I had to send it back and am still waiting for the re-shipment to arrive. Basically, they sent me 1 skein in the wrong colorway, and 8 skeins in the right colorway. It was a totally understandable error, because the colorways are similar and they oddly have the same dyelot number...but still, I couldn't knit with it like that. If you want to see the colors, click this link and scroll down to look at the colors 4285 Oceanic Mix and 4213 Blue Glasynys. I ordered 4213; they mistakenly sent 1 skein of 4285. Still, it's a customer service WIN because they have completely rectified the error with no fuss, no muss, and they said they would automatically refund the return shipping cost to me when it arrives. Oh, and they have already sent the replacement--they didn't make me wait til the return got to them.

OK, I'm gonna go wind some of this up now. Happy knitting!

Out With a Whisper

2009-11-06T00:46:00.000-08:00

Oddly, I am on the verge of completing the NaKniSweMoDo 2009 challenge, and I haven't even taken a single picture of the 12th sweater WIP. I'm not sure why. It has been a very pleasing project, since I'm using one of my favorite yarns (Cascade Ecological Wool--very sheepy, soft, and sproingy, this time in a color that looks so much like oatmeal that I can almost smell the brown sugar). The pattern is interesting to knit and easy to follow, plus it's knit at a bulky gauge on US10 needles, so it's relatively quick. It's knit in pieces, which isn't really my favorite way to knit but is growing on me. I love the magic of setting in a sleeve cap, and how a set-in sleeve fits around the shoulder.

Anyway, the pattern I'm using is Starsky, by Jordana Paige, in the Winter 2005 issue of Knitty. I'm almost done. The whole thing is seamed up and I'm about 2 inches away from completing the front bands/shawl collar. I'm quite pleased with it so far, though the sleeves are on the long side and the sweater is turning out to have less ease than I expected. I thought my rendition of Bernhardt was a "big hug" of a sweater--and it is--but this one...seriously. Big. Freaking. Woolly. HUG.

Anyway, I should finish the front bands/collar in short order tomorrow, so I'll snap a picture and post it prior to blocking and belting this sucker.

Double Trouble

2009-10-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

I have two FO's to show off. Here's the first, which is NaKniSweMoDo09 sweater #10 for me:

This pic shows off the fit best, but it's a crappy picture (just generally and also of me--I am terrible at taking self-portraits!).

This one shows off the front of the sweater, and the detail, better. I may end up switching out the buttons--they are like little pewter coins, very thin, and they don't stay buttoned quite as well as I'd like.

Pattern: Grannie Smith Cardigan by Melissa Wehrle (aka Neoknits).
Yarn: Classic Elite Alpaca Sox, colorway 1827 (I call it "wine"). I won the first skein from the Doubleknit Podcast "Alpaca May-pril" drawing, and supplemented that with two more. I have a little under a full skein left (albeit in 3 separate balls).
Needles: US3 and US4 Addi Turbo Lace and Inox Express (see previous post "Inox FAIL!").
Modifications: I knit more length in the body and sleeves, changed the shape of the body from V-shaped to hourglass shaped, and also futzed with the stitch counts to ensure that I would have selvedge stitches and full horizontal lace repeats. I love the fit. The only place there is a slight problem is right above the last waist shaping increase, under the arms at boob level--the fabric tends to bag out a little bit right there. It's not very noticeable unless I hold my arms away from my sides unnaturally, and it doesn't do it all the time, only if the sweater rides up on my hips. Finally, I also used Lucy Neatby's "Magic Buttonhole" technique to finish the buttonhole band. Worked like a charm!

And here's the second, NaKniSweMoDo09 sweater #11:

Pattern: Bernhardt by Alison Green Will, published by the Twist Collective, Summer 2009 issue.
Yarn: Berrocco Ultra Alpaca (worsted weight) in the Tanzanite Mix colorway (#6295) I originally used this yarn for my rendition of Arianne (see previous post...somewhere), because I didn't like that sweater on me or in this yarn. I think this sweater is a much better fit for the yarn.
Needles: US7 Addi Turbo Lace + US7 Addi Turbo (16" for the sleeves)
Modifications: I really only made 2 changes. First, I knit the sleeves in the round rather than flat. Second, I joined the sleeves and body at the underarm and used Elizabeth Zimmerman's instructions to knit a seamless set-in sleeve yoke. After completing the yoke, I tried on the sweater and discovered that the sleeves were far too long. Don't ask me why, but I decided not to rip back and re-knit the yoke after shortening the sleeves. I pressed on, thinking the collar/front band would maybe pull the sleeves up...somehow? I was clearly deluded. After finishing, washing, and blocking, the sleeves came down past my fingertips! So last night and this morning I performed surgery on the sleeves. I slipped 16" circular needles into the first row of knit stitches above the cuffs, then counted up about 28 rows on each sleeve, and slipped in a second 16" circular needle into those rows of stitches. Then, I snipped a stitch, pulled back to each circ, and proceeded to Kitchener graft the cuffs back onto the shortened sleeves. (I tried the sweater on first to make sure I hadn't taken out too much yarn!) I thought that grafting--particularly the process of evening out the tension in the grafted row--would be a much bigger pain than it was. The result is awesome, in my opinion. :-) I will wear this sweater a lot.

I completely forgot to take before photos of the sleeves. Trust me: with my arms down, the sleeves completely covered my hands and fingers. Here's a pic of all the yarn I frogged out:

Now I'm working on my 12th NaKniSweMoDo09 sweater: a rendition of Starsky by Jordana Paige, from the Winter 2005 issue of Knitty. I'm using Cascade Ecological Wool in one of the natural/undyed colorways I think of as "Oatmeal." As of right now I'm about a third of the way done with the back.

Now What?

2009-10-16T21:38:00.000-07:00

I finished both of my sweater WIPs. Last night I started seaming my Grannie Smith cardigan (Granny's a Wino). I thought I might get both sleeves set in and maybe one of the side body seams done, but I ended up seaming the whole thing. Then it was early enough that I decided to just sew on the buttons, too. And voila, the cardigan, she was done. So today I picked up my Bernhardt cardigan again. I started the front/collar band on Thursday, and I thought I might get to about the halfway point today, but no...I finished it. The sleeves are too long, which is annoying and disheartening because I specifically tried to avoid that and it happened anyway. But I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm going to do about it. I tried it on with the sleeve cuffs rolled up and it looked pretty good like that, so I might just leave them. We'll see.

But now what do I do? I expected these two projects to carry me through the weekend and they didn't even carry me into the weekend, dammit. I need a new sweater project, double quick, but I'm not sure what I want to knit next. Hmmm. Time to do some plotting, I guess.

A Tale of Two WIPs

2009-10-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

I've got two sweater WIPs going right now. I've been working pretty steadily on my version of the Grannie Smith cardigan by Melissa Wehrle, aka Neoknits. I love the design, though I made a few changes to it to suit my body, and I can't wait to wear it. It's on a brief hiatus because I'm going to learn a new technique for doing buttonholes in a hemmed buttonhole band. The technique is Lucy Neatby's "Magic Buttonhole" trick. I borrowed one of Neatby's DVD's from Jessica--Finesse Your Knitting 2. The DVD is awesome, and I'm enjoying it. Alas, the Magic Buttonhole technique is on Finesse your Knitting 1. I may buy both DVDs at some point, but I found a flyer for sale online that features just that technique, so I bought one and am now ~~anxiously~~ patiently waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Here's a pic of the WIP as it looks today (a little schlumpy from being rolled up in a project bag). All the pieces are done, washed, and blocked, the shoulder seams are done, and the button band is all knit and just needs to be stitched down.

I needed a new project to work on, so I finally got around to frogging my Ariann (which I didn't really like on me, at least as I knit it and in this yarn), and started knitting the yarn up into Berhnardt, by Alison Green Will, from the Summer 2009 Twist Collective issue. This project is knitting up really quickly--seriously, it's flying off the needles. All that stockinette, I guess. Plus, the yarn is a pleasure to knit. It's Berrocco Ultra Alpaca; I'm impressed with how well it held up to being frogged from a completed sweater that I actually wore a few times. I just started it on Monday (yes, 5 days ago), and here's what I have done already:

I think I'm going to like this sweater a lot. It's kind of a "blankie" or a "big hug" of a sweater, something easy and drapey...at least I hope so. I have to admit, I'm not crazy about the way the sweater looks on the model. It's too big for her. The cuffs hang down over her fingers, and the shoulders look too wide on her. I probably wouldn't have chosen to knit it, but I saw a few renditions of it on Ravelry that look really cute, so I decided to give it a go. I'm knitting it with less ease, to hopefully neaten up the look a little bit. I'm also not going to make the sleeves quite so long, and I plan to do EZ's seamless set-in sleeve treatment for the yoke rather than following the pattern's sleeve and shoulder shaping instructions. (The pattern has you finish the sleeve caps and the chest/shoulders separately, seam the shoulders, and then sew in the sleeves.) I've been wanting to try this technique for awhile, and it seemed like a natural thing to use for this sweater, since the body is knit in one piece and the sleeves are knit in the round.

So that's my knitting life right now. How about yours?

Inox FAIL!

2009-09-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

I'm making progress on my Granny Smith cardigan. No new pics, but I started the back at Purlygirls Monday night and I'm already almost done with it. Specifically, I am done with the armpit shaping and am approximately 3 pattern repeats from doing the shoulder shaping. (The lace pattern is 12 rows long.) I guess I've had a lot of knitting time this week! Actually, this sweater is just knitting up really quickly--surprisingly quickly, since it's made with sock yarn on US4 needles.

Anyway, last night one of the tips of my Inox Express circular needle started flaking off. Jessica told me that this had happened to her, but this is the first time it's happened to me, so I was quite dismayed. I've got a bunch of these needles, most of them purchased at the now-defunct Mary Booth Yarn Shop in Essex Junction, VT forever ago. It's sad to lose one. Here's a pic:

Please forgive the flash saturation. I can never seem to get it quite right with my little Powershot. Anyway, this flakage looks harmless enough, but it snags the yarn while I knit. (I'm sure it's exacerbated by the fact that I'm using a fuzzy Alpaca blend right now, but that can't be helped.) Not acceptable!

So today I motored up to the Fiber Gallery to buy a replacement needle. Somehow I have no redundancy in my US4 needle holdings. I hemmed and hawed briefly over whether to buy the Addi Turbo or the Addi Turbo Lace, and decided on the Lace. They're pointier. I wish I could have an Addi Lace needle with the nickel plated finish, but I can't. Of course Knitpicks needles are the pointiest of all, and nickel-plated to boot, but they lack a certain get them right now! quality. Instant gratification is important. LOL. But seriously, when I'm in the middle of a project I don't want to have to put it on hold while I wait for a new needle to come in the mail. Too. Slow.

Of course I couldn't leave the store without buying yarn--despite the fact that my stash levels are becoming pathological. But this yarn is so pretty...it was saying to me, "Turn me into an Ishbel!" So I guess I'm jumping onto that bandwagon now. Ah well, like I always say to people about the Beatles, or Nirvana, or Radiohead: some things deserve a huge following. I guess I would include both the yarn and the shawl pattern in that category. Anyway, enough blathering! Here's the yarn:

This picture doesn't do the color justice. It's so pretty. For some reason the blue-teal-green portion of the spectrum has really been calling to me lately. You have to see this one in the sunlight, I think, to really get a sense of the depth of color but all I have at the moment (it being post-sunset) is this crappy flash.

Vaila Redux

2009-09-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here's the obligatory modeled shot, post washing/blocking (not really--I'm too lazy to block a sweater for realz, I just lay them out flat and try to smooth things out, etc.). I'm really happy with how the ribbing relaxed. The sleeves are just a titch too long. Maybe. They're supposed to be long, and I like the look. I'm just worried that they might drive me insane. Oh, and this completely blows my mind, but the yarn feels even softer after washing. Amazing.

(Details in previous post.)

Unveiling Vaila

2009-09-10T15:56:00.001-07:00

Well, Vaila is done! I'm in love with the sweater--it's soft and squishy, the color is gorgeous, and the fit is exactly what I wanted. Here she is, pre-blocking (I'll post a modeled shot once that's done):

Pattern: Vaila, by Gudrun Johnston via the Twist Collective.
Yarn: Malabrigo Merino Worsted, ~5.5 skeins (I bought 8, so I have a ton left over) FYI, I knit the 36" size (for zero ease), which called for 7 skeins of yarn, so...I came in quite far under that, despite lengthening the sweater by about an inch.
Colorway: Azul Profundo
Needles: Mostly US8 Addi Turbos and Inox Express, but I used a US9 for the outside collar.
Notes: This is a great pattern--clear, concise, and well-organized. I basically followed it to the letter, with a couple of very minor exceptions:

I knit the cuffs and hem on US8's instead of US9's, because I didn't want them to be too voluminous (particularly the cuffs).
I lengthened the body slightly (about an inch).
I made the collar shorter by about 8 rows.

I only have 2 lingering concerns, now that it's done: 1. The bound off edge of the collar feels a bit too unyielding to me. I may tink it back open and re-do the bind off using EZ's sewn method. 2. I alternated skeins every 2 rows, and I think one of the skeins I used in the sleeves was spun slightly heftier than the other. As a result, the sleeves have a slight "Michelin Man" ridge-y thing going on. I hope that chills out with washing and blocking. I expect that all of the ribbing will r-e-l-a-x with a good soaking. I hope so, because right now the collar fits more like a regular--but extremely high--turtleneck, and I really do want it to flop open into a cowl neck. I will report back....

So that's NaKniSweMoDo #9. I'm back on schedule to finish all 12 sweaters this year. to that end, here's the first sleeve of #10:

My plan is to keep working on this in the background, as my bus knitting project (since it's knit in pieces, it's lace, and I'm making it with sock yarn, it's very light and portable), and to cast on for my next sweater--a cardigan for my boyfriend's 40th birthday present--sometime in the next week.

Sad

2009-09-09T12:40:00.001-07:00

It has been a sad week around here. We had to say good-bye to Abi, my boyfriend's cat. She'd been sick for awhile, and finally on Monday she let us know that it was time.

Here she is, perched on my napping ass, from about a year and a half ago:

RIP, little Abi. We miss you. 4/8/92 - 9/7/09

Drown in Color

2009-09-04T11:29:00.001-07:00

I'm well into the body section now. I just have to decide how long I want to make the sweater. I still have one more set of decreases, plus another ~14 rows after that (if I follow the pattern to the letter) before I join the sleeves. That'll only take me through the next lace repeat, and I don't think that will be long enough. It's about 13 inches long now. The pattern schematic wants it to be 15-1/2", and I think I might want it more like 16". (Why, oh why don't we switch to the metric system in the U.S.?) We'll see.

Meanwhile, mmmmmMalabrigo eye candy:

I'm absolutely in love with this yarn. It is SO soft, lustrous, and beautifully dyed. I could drown in this color. Don't get me wrong, I still love the springier, woolier, and even the scratchier yarns out there (like Cascade 220, Ecological Wool, Peace Fleece, etc.). I often like to know I'm knitting with--and wearing--wool. But WOW. This yarn is like knitting with silky air. Such a treat for my fingertips, and I can't wait for a cold, icky winter day so I can snuggle up into this gorgeous sweater. Yay!

Make 2

2009-09-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

Make 2, she instructed, and so I did:

Now I get to start the fun part: the body, with those lovely lace panels. From now on I am always going to make sweaters in this order, i.e. sleeves first. Save the fun part for last. :-)

I am really excited about this sweater. Wearing it will be such a pleasure. The sleeves feel cushy-gushy, soft and warm, and the color is amazing. Also I like how they fit. I'm glad that I did the cuffs on US8's instead of US9's--they should open up a little bit with washing/blocking, and I really don't want them to be too floppy. Hope I got it right.

Inspired, or Short Attention Span?

2009-08-29T15:43:00.001-07:00

You decide.

I have one sleeve done on my Vaila, and suddenly yesterday I felt inspired to investigate sweaters knit with sock yarn. You see, I won this pretty little skein of Alpaca Sox in the Doubleknit Podcast Alpaca May-pril drawing...

Plus I have these two skeins of Alpaca Sox in a bluish-gray colorway...

I found both of these while digging in my stash bin for something else, and was all, "Ooooh, pretty." And immediately wanted to do something with it. I mean with all of it.

At first I thought of making Tempest, by Ann Weaver (from the Spring 2008 Knitty), and doing a bluish-gray with wine stripes thing. But I didn't really want to knit stripes, mainly because I don't think I would wear a sweater striped in these two colors. Also, I think I'd want to knit that sweater using overlapping lightly variegated colorways as the designer intended. One of the things I really like about the design is how the stripes sort of whisper against each other. These two Alpaca Sox colorways would clang against each other. Not what I'd want.

Next I found myself drawn to Hannah Fettig's Featherweight Cardigan, which I think would be perfect in the gray-blue colorway. The only question is whether or not I have enough of this yarn to make it... I might be able to find another skein of this dye lot, but it's doubtful. I bought it at Weaving Works over a year ago. Since it's a top-down design, I think I'll just knit the body and then make the sleeves as long as my supply of yarn will allow. Bingo! Plan established. I probably won't get to this project until late Winter or early Spring, but I'm pretty set on it.

Now what to do with one skein of burgundy yarn? I thought about making a shawl, maybe Ishbel or Damson from Ysolda Teague, or maybe Aestlight from Gudrun Johnston. The problem is...the image of these yarns as sweaters has taken hold in my brain.

Then I remembered this sweater: the Grannie Smith Cardigan from Melissa Wehrle. I popped open my laptop and brought it up on Ravelry, looked at a bunch of different examples of it in different yarns, and BAM! That's what I want to make with this! Of course I'll need more yarn...but how much more? Yardage-wise, I think I could squeak by with only 1 more skein (2 total) if I knit the sweater as written. I want to lengthen both the body and the sleeves, though, and I also want to change the body shaping (the pattern is written with an inverted-V shaped torso, which I don't think would look good on my body type). Thus, I should probably get 2 more skeins. I called the Fiber Gallery this morning and they had the yarn, so I'll go pick that up tomorrow or Monday. W00t! And of course, I promptly swatched for the project, with the same yarn in a different colorway leftover from one of my Lace Ribbon scarves:

After blocking, my gauge is spot on, and I love the fabric. It falls somewhere between the Kidsilk Haze called for in the pattern and the smooth sock yarns that some people have used instead--I should end up with a soft, cushy, drapy, and subtly haloed sweater, which I think will be amazingly gorgeous in this colorway. It's meant to be! I'm probably going to cast on for this today or tomorrow, so that I'll have a portable sweater project going. (Vaila is not portable, because I am alternating skeins to avoid pooling and abrupt shade changes.)

And that's my knitting life right now. So much for my very recently expressed desire to take a more (ahem) "Buddhist" approach to my knitting projects. I vacillate between feeling inspired by the pretty yarn and the beautiful designs...and feeling like I have a major case of ADD. But at least I'm not feeling burned out on sweater knitting anymore. That's a good thing.

P.S. I just looked again at the Ravelry page for the Featherweight Cardigan, and saw that the designer is going to raise the price on September 15th. Bought it!

:::Love:::

2009-08-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the first cuff of Vaila, which I started at Purlygirls last night:

I'm totally in love. Already. Which is good, because I've been running out of sweater-knitting steam a little bit, and I'm only 2/3 of the way to my NaKniSweMoDo09 goal. It's a funny thing. I am mainly a sweater knitter, but I've actually been looking for reasons to knit non-sweater-y things lately. I don't think it's the exclusive focus on sweater knitting per se that's producing this fatigue, but rather the fact that I have to keep cranking them out. Or at least I feel that I have to, because I have this goal of knitting 12 sweaters this year. It's a cool concept, and I'm glad that I'm doing it, but I think it has at least the potential to lead one to rush from one project to the next. That kind of vague pressure tends to make me balk whenever I encounter it--not just in connection with a hobby, but also at school or on the job. I like to pause after completing something, to take it in and reflect on it a little bit before I move onto the next thing. Well...thinking about this in connection with NaKniSweMoDo, I've realized that there's no reason why I can't build some contemplation time into my knitting process. So I've decided that, for the rest of the year, I'm going to only knit things that I am super excited about, and if I get to a place where I'm not super excited about any potential sweater projects, I'll knit on something else for awhile, until I feel inspired again. I don't know why I wasn't approaching the challenge in this way before. And it's not like I have knit any sweaters this year that I wasn't interested in or excited about on some level. I think I was just...instead of appreciating a project at all of its stages and staying focused on it as I was completing it, I was starting to look ahead to the next project while still knitting the current one. Then, I would feel as though I didn't have the time to wait for a new project to inspire me; and if I didn't feel immediately inspired, I would simply pick something and start it up, sometimes without thinking it through or planning it out carefully enough. It's like this: if you can imagine being on vacation in France, and you're standing in the Louvre, and instead of enjoying the amazing works of art that surround you, you're thinking about how great it's going to be when you get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Also, not taking the time to sit in a cafe after leaving the Louvre, to come back down to earth after being surrounded by so many iconic pieces of art all at once; and then forcing yourself to trudge onward and upward into the Eiffel Tower whether that's what you really want to do next or not. You know? So to translate the metaphor, what I've been doing is knitting a sweater while thinking of the next sweater, so that when I finish a sweater I immediately cast on for the next one, without taking the time to appreciate the newly finished one, or even to put away my tools. So one annoying symptom of this has been the proliferation of circular needle tangles gathering like cobwebs or dust bunnies on the various horizontal surfaces in my house. This needs to stop! I guess the thing I'm getting at is a mutant version of the Buddhist principle of being where you are and doing what you're doing. I think we in the West suffer from a chronic deficiency of this. And frankly, one of the reasons I knit to begin with is because it helps me to enjoy and appreciate where I am. It calms the anxiety engines in my forehead and heart, with its combination of tactile stimulation and rhythm.

Anyway, Vaila seems to be giving that back to me. I am so in love with the yarn, and so excited about the design, that I can't help but enjoy and appreciate the series of steps that will eventually add up to an FO that I will love wearing.

Starting, Finishing, and Stashing

2009-08-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I get to knit with this yarn....

It's so beautiful and soft and luscious! I just finished winding it into cakes, and I'll be casting on directly. For what, you ask? (I am really good at imagining what actual readers want to know...) I wish I could link you directly to the pattern, but the Twist Collective site is down for maintainence right now. Fortunately, I bought the pattern last week, right after I bought the yarn. The Twist site has been down for a little while, which is unfortunate because I was really getting into my daily "drool over the Fall 2009 Twist patterns" routine. The sweater I'm going to make with this fantastic yarn, however, is not from the newest issue, it's from Winter 2008. It's called Vaila (Ravelry link), and it was designed by Gudrun Johnston (scroll down and you'll see a non-Ravelry picture of the Vaila sweater in the right column). Now, looking at Ms. Johnston's blog, I am suddenly realizing that I love a lot of her work. I didn't even realize that she designed all of those beautiful patterns, many of which I have been admiring individually while my brain failed to aggregate them under her name. Perhaps she will have to go on my list of favorite designers, along with Veronik Avery and...I have other favorites but I can't think of them right now. Anyway, for the first time ever I am knitting a sweater from a pattern using not only the yarn called for in the pattern, but the very same colorway. This colorway is that beautiful. Deep, rich, sink your whole body into it teal. I have actually been daydreaming about making and having a turtleneck sweater in some shade of teal for a really long time. I tried one on in a little boutique which, sadly, no longer exists, in about 2002 or 2003, and came this close to buying it, but there was something weird about the fit. Aha, but this time I can make it fit however I want. Mwahahahahahaaaaa! My evil plot is afoot, to tell the cookie cutter clothing industry to suck my fat one!

In other news, I finished my Monkey socks. Yay! I love them. The colorway is kinda crazy, but I really like how it striped out. I find it interesting that it pooled at the instep pretty much the same way on both socks, except one pooled orange and the other pooled navy blue. Oh, I also find it interesting that, when this yarn was still skeined, and even when I first wound it into cakes, my eyes saw it as predominantly black with orange and raspberry bits. Now that it's knit up, I can barely see any black in there at all. It's navy, dark green, and brown/tan. Still with orange and raspberry bits. Anyway, here's a pic. In it you can also see my swanky new sock blockers, which I got at the Fiber Gallery last week.

Last week I also knit this crazy little garden snail--my first ever knitted toy! It turned out pretty cute, if I may say so. It was a gift for my friend Sharleen. I'm happy to say that she loved it, and *I* loved that it made her smile. She has a beautiful smile that lights up a whole room. :-)

And in Stash news, I have acquired the following two yarns recently:

...4 skeins (520 yards total) of Frog Tree Alpaca Sport in a lovely grassy green, which I think will ultimately turn into a wrap of some kind. I got this at the Whippletree Yarn shop in Hudsonville, MI, when I was there in late July/early August. They had it for 30% off, so I bought everything they had in this colorway.

...and 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Sheridan colorway. I bought this to make the Bayerische socks by Eunny Jang. However: a couple of days ago I agreed to test knit a new pattern by one of my Ravelry friends, and I think this yarn would work really nicely in the pattern. I think I'm going to give it a shot. Oh, and a super cool thing about this pattern: I suggested the name for them, and the designer decided to use my suggestion! :-)

Finally, I have sadly decided to shelf the King Charlie tee I covered in my last post. I ran out of mojo on it because I discovered, after splitting off the sleeves, that I had miscalculated the stitch count for the sleeves by failing to account for the additional cast-on stitches at the armpit. :::shakes fists at the heavens::: Curses! Foiled again! I think I'm going to have to rip back and change the rate of increasing, or something, and I don't have the stomach for it right now. I think it will have to hibernate until after the 1st of the year (i.e. after NaKniSweMoDo is done). I have other projects I'd rather knit first.

On the Needles

2009-08-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have two projects on the needles now. First, my current sweater project, which I started awhile ago--I took some time off from it to knit a couple of baby things.

I'm calling this one "King Charlie Tee" because the stitch pattern (from Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns, V. 1) is called "King Charles Brocade." Here's what Walker says of the stitch pattern: "It is one of the patterns in a vest worn by King Charles I of England on the day of his execution in 1649." So...a little bit of a gruesome note for a sweater that's turning out to be quite cheerful looking. I'm hoping that the collar will lie flatter, and be more of a boat-neck, once the sleeves are completed and it's blocked. That's usually what happens, so I'm optimistic.

I'm also working on my first soaker (diaper cover for cloth diapering), which I'm making for a friend's baby.

I'm not sure about the sizing. The pattern is Vanilla (Ravelry link), by Kelly Brooker. It has instructions for 3 weights of yarns: DK, worsted, and bulky. I'm using a worsted weight yarn (Cascade 220 leftover from my Arwen-esque cardigan) but following the DK instructions so that the fabric will have a firmer hand. Anyway, I'm following the directions for size medium, but it's measuring more like a size small. It's not a big deal. I'm going to knit more of these--this one is kind of a test, to see how it fits the baby in question (BIQ). I love the construction of this design--it starts with a provisional cast-on, then you knit the crotch and do the leg hole shaping, and then pick up the provisional stitches and join for working in the round...up to the waistband...then pick up stitches for the leg cuffs. It's a simple, efficient design that knits up very nicely. I think the ribbed crotch is a particularly clever design element--and it's one of the reasons I chose this pattern to begin with. A bonus I didn't know about until I got to that section of the pattern: a nifty new short-row technique! Way better than wrapping and turning. (Having sung its praises, I also want to say that I wish Brooker had provided a more streamlined/simplified version of the pattern--as written it's really wordy and ends up seeming more complex to knit than it is.)

Finally, here is perhaps the cutest F'ing thing I have ever knit in my life. It's all done, except I have to find (and attach) the perfect buttons for it:

Pattern: Baby Sweater on Two Needles (February), from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac
Yarn: Berocco Comfort DK in Teaberry
Needles: US6 Addi Turbo and Inox Express

I loved knitting this. The yarn was nice to work with, and the pattern is fun and fast. I have more yarn, and plan to knit a hat and booties to go with this.

Two FO's

2009-08-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

I haven't been here for awhile, so I have a bit of a backlog of pics to post. I really wish I could figure out how to photograph myself better. I'm not referring to the blurriness of these shots--that's due to a lens that needs cleaning--but rather to the boringness of the pictures. But whatever. In this post, I'm just going to include the two adult-sized sweaters I've completed since my last post:

Pattern: "Patronus," a cardigan I designed based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's "seamless saddle shoulder" schematic from Knitting Workshop.
Yarn: Peace Fleece Worsted in the Zarya Fog colorway.
Needles: US8 Addi Turbos and Inox Express. I think I used a US7 for the ribbing, but it might have been a US6.

I really love how this sweater turned out, and I think I'll wear it a lot. It's casual, sort of a camp sweater, but the waist shaping keeps it from looking schlumpy, IMO. I'm particularly proud of the shawl collar, which I knit using short rows of the YO variety. (I have since learned a new short row technique that I like better than any other I've tried--it's from a soaker pattern that I'm knitting for a friend, and it involves slipping the first stitch after the turn, and then knitting the stitch below the slipped stitch together with the pre-turn stitch to close the gap. I want to try the Japanese short row technique before I decide on a favorite.)

Additional views...

Back, showing a little bit of the wonkiness in the saddles--the lines sort of bulge out right above the sleeves. It's weird. I'm investigating ways of fixing this.

Left sleeve and shoulder, showing how I halved the staghorn cable for each sleeve (the right sleeve's cable is a mirror image of this one).

And here comes #2...

Pattern: "Metro," a straight up EPS sweater with a raglan yoke, garter-trimmed high-ish v-neck, and hems.
Yarn: This yarn was hand-dyed (colorway "Artichoke") by Yarn Hollow, for City Knitting in Grand Rapids, MI (which is where I bought it). The label says "Texas," and indicates that it's a DK-weight yarn. However, on Ravelry it is now listed as "Jumeaux," a worsted-weight yarn. I knitted it as DK....
Needles: US6 Addi Turbos and Inox Express; I used US5's for the hem facings.

I'm very happy with how this sweater turned out, also, and I have gotten to wear it several times already. It fits exactly how I wanted it to, and I particularly like the contrast between the colorful yarn and the streamlined construction of the sweater. It might look a little better if I had alternated skeins, particularly while knitting the body, but it seemed more trouble than it was worth--and I am happy with that decision. There is a little flashing/spiraling, particularly at the bust, but I don't think it looks bad.

Stick a fork in it

2009-06-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

It's done!

Back view:

Front view:

Pattern: Cassidy, by Bonne Marie Burns (ChicKnits).
Yarn: Cascade 220, colorway 9448. I call it "moss."
Needles: Addi Turbos, US6 and US7. I knit the whole thing with two 24" needles (1 each size).
Mods: Not really any. I used a different cast on method (the cable cast on, as instructed by Jacqueline Fee in The Sweater Workshop), so I think I ended up with one extra row in the cuff/hem ribbing. Oh, and I picked up more stitches for the button bands than the pattern calls for, and I knit the band(s) all at once, in one piece, rather than doing them half at a time and whip stitching them together at the center of the hood.

Final note: Man, I have gotten much bustier over the last year or two! Or at least it looks that way, in pictures. How is it possible that my bras still fit?

Mossidy/Cassidy

2009-06-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

I'm ready to sew up the body + sleeve pieces! Alas, they are not quite ready to be sewn yet. I washed and pinned it all out last night, and just a little bit ago I pulled out all the pins only to discover: The pieces! They are not yet dry! Oh NOZ! So I patted them all out and left them to finish drying. I did not put the pins back in. The pieces seemed to be behaving themselves, and they are only a little bit damp, so I'm just not worried about it.

In the process of pinning this mutha out, I discovered that I really, really really need to buy 2-3 more boxes of T-pins. This one box I have isn't nearly enough. So that's one lesson I've learned from this project so far.

Here's another (lesson): Blocking the pieces of a to-be-seamed sweater is definitely the way to go. I can already tell that seaming is going to be way easier than other pieced sweaters I've sewn up, sans blocking, in the past. I have made a total of...6 seamed sweaters in my knitting career, and I haven't blocked to pieces of a single one of them. Until now. I decided to block this one for two reasons: A) The cable and rib stitch pattern was really pulling the pieces out of shape, and the vertical edges were curling very badly; and B) Because the pattern told me to. LOL.

More about that B reason: Initially, when I knit the back panel, I tried doing the short-row shaping thing at the shoulders. The pattern said to do the stair-step bind-off sort of shaping, but I was determined to try it with short rows instead. Mistake! The way the shoulder proportions worked out, it was impossible to keep cabling right up to the shoulder seams, so the cables just kind of...stopped, turning into weird ribbing instead...for a good inch before the top of the shoulder. It looked like ass, IMO. So I set that panel aside, and tried the stair-step bind-off on the first front section: much prettier! After finishing that first front panel, I went back and re-did the back panel to match. I'm very glad I did. So...after that little detour into modifying this pattern, I decided that maybe Bonne Marie Burns knows best after all, and followed her instructions to the letter from there on out.

I'm still worried about the sleeves, though. They look huge to me. You'll see, in the pictures below...they look almost as wide as the back. I guess if I think about the EPS (Elizabeth's Percentage System), though...they should be almost as wide as the back, since the sleeves each get 33% of the number of stitches as the entire body. The back panel is only half of the body...so I'm comparing 33% to 50% of the body stitch number (called "K" or "Key" in the EPS), which...yeah, I think they look about right then. Sort of. Mostly. We'll see...

OK, here are some blocking pics. First, the whole thing laid out:

And here's the back panel, to show off the pretty cables (such as I can, given the limitations I'm working with--see below):

Apologies for the bad photos. It's blocking in my basement, in a somewhat restricted space, so I can't get good sunlight onto it and had to rely on my camera's very inadequate flash. (I hate built-in flash. I so desperately want to buy a digital SLR so I can use a real flash, and set the aperture and shutter speed myself, according to the result that I want. I should never have bought a point-and-shoot digital camera... I know myself. Gadgets that think they know what I want better than I do really piss me off.)

Viridis (FO) + New Project

2009-06-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my boyfriend's sweater, Viridis! Here it is:

Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmerman's Seamless Saddle-shoulder sweater, from The Knitting Workshop. My own elements: box stitch texture + shawl collar using short rows and a steek (EEK!)
Yarn: Cascade 220 in a deep forest heather
Needles: US6 and US7, Inox Express and Addi Turbo

I love the way the saddle shoulder detailing worked out. I'm very happy with how the steek went, too. When I was ready to start the neck opening, I bound off 16 stitches in the center of the sweater's front, then cast on for a 7-stitch steek on the next row. I'm sure I could have gotten away with a 5-stitch steek, but I wanted an extra couple of stitches just for grins. I shaped the neck opening as a V-neck, decreasing along the neck edge every 4 rows until it looked about right (in the future I'll probably do the math, but it worked out OK). When I picked up stitches for the collar, it left a nice border of knit stitches that mirrors the knit stitches along the sleeve/shoulder shaping. It just worked out that way, and I'm very happy about it. Oh, and I used 2x2 ribbing at the cuffs, but not at the hem--it's just box stitch all the way down. Here's a close-up of the back shoulder, showing off the shaping:

I also started a new project: Bonne Marie Burns' (Chic Knits) Cassidy. I'm calling it "Mossidy" after the color of the yarn. I actually cast on for sleeve #1 last week, the evening before I flew to Philadelphia for a wedding. I finished the first sleeve and most of the second before returning home. Now both sleeves are done:

That's what's going on with me. How about you, phantom Reader?

Options...

2009-05-20T12:37:00.001-07:00

I'm almost done with the second sleeve of Viridis. I'll probably finish that this evening. There is still a fair amount to do on this sweater: the entire yoke, which entails learning a new construction method (seamless hybrid or seamless saddle shoulder), and also figuring out how to do the neck shaping that will serve as a foundation for the shawl collar. I think I get how to do it, but it would help if I could find even one adult-sized pattern out there with a similar neckline. The only one I have found is a toddler-sized sweater in Ann Budd's book of many sweater patterns (I'm blanking on the title right now and I am too lazy to look it up). Still, I expect to finish this sweater over the Memorial Day weekend.

So, as I said in my previous post, I'm figuring out what to do next. There are so many options! I am leaning toward re-starting Patronus. It's very un-summery, which is slightly problematic, but I really love the yarn and I'm excited about tinkering with the design. It's the one that's closest to "ready to go" right now, so it's a logical choice.

I thought of another yarn option, though. This "souvenir" yarn from my stash:

It's a DK weight yarn, 70% wool + 30% mohair with a nice, smoothly spun texture. I love the colors in it, for the most part--the gold/orange makes me slightly uncomfortable (it's not the kind of orange I usually go for, a little too yellow, and I almost never go for yellow because it makes me look like a sickly alien life form--LOL), but it seems pretty well balanced by the nice sagey greens. So the question would be...what to do with it? I need to swatch a little bit, see how the dye job knits up, how it drapes at different gauges. I envision, anyway, doing some kind of relaxed tunic, or perhaps a wrap sweater (since it's a thinner yarn, it seems like it would work pretty well in a wrap design), maybe with some lacy bits if the variegated colors won't totally obscure that. Hmm...my evil knitting plot thickens...

Plotting...

2009-05-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm on track to finish my boyfriend's sweater, Viridis (a.k.a. "Big Green Box-stitch"), next week sometime. I'll be starting the second sleeve this weekend, will hopefully get into the yoke during knit night Monday night. So of course I've been assessing my stash and trying to decide what to knit next. Here are my options, as I see them:

Do a new colorwork sweater, using this pretty blue heather as the base yarn, and the red and yellow leftovers from my Fair Isle Yoke Sweater, along with other Cascade 220 colors from my stash, for the yoke:

Knit something in this lovely dark olive heather:

Re-start Patronus (my own design!).
Knit the Tweedy Aran Cardigan (Ravelry link) in this Beaverslide Dry Goods yarn:

So many options. All of them for cold weather.

OR, I guess I could try knitting a tank or whatever I can manage, out of this old, old, old cotton yarn that I bought ages ago in Vermont. I have 5 skeins, roughly 575 yards, of this...which really doesn't seem like enough to make *anything* (though I also have some plain black cotton yarn in my stash that I could use for trim or stripes...):

I don't know what I want to do. I have a good week to decide, I guess. I'll figure something out.

Finish-itis

2009-05-14T16:49:00.001-07:00

I have THREE finished objects to show off! I had a bit of finish-itis this week. I finished my Fountain Pen Shawl a couple of weeks ago; then I finished my Kiri shawl; and then I finished my Bonny Blue Ariann. The Fountain Pen Shawl counts as part of my finish-itis because I finally got my little butt out to Home Despot and bought some steel wire, and then to Target where I bought some interlocking foam tiles. Voila! Instant blocking set! (Not so instant...I had to run around more than I would have liked, but it ended well). Can I just say, I was absolutely astonished at the magic that ensues, when one blocks knitted lace. I had no idea. Or rather, I an academic understanding of the theory of blocking, but the actual experience...wow. So cool! Pics and project details will follow.

But first, one for the complaints department. I have been having a most annoying set of interactions with the subscription department at Interweave Knits. I called them on March 26th to renew my subscription. I gave the nice woman my credit card info, and she told me I was all set. 3 minutes, start to finish! Sounds great, right? Too good to be true. I kept getting these "You just received your last issue of Interweave Knits! Contact us now to renew so you don't miss any issues!" emails on my gmail account. So I finally replied to one, and said, "Hey, I renewed my subscription like a month ago. What's the deal?" 3 email exchanges later, I am informed that they have no record of my renewal, and was I charged for it? I backtracked through both my debit and credit card activity records (because I couldn't remember which one I had used), and found no record of the charge. I thought, "Am I nuts? Did I only daydream about calling?" So I checked my cell phone activity record, and there was the call: 3/26/09, to the Interweave subscription renewal 800-number, for 3 minutes. And you know...I'm tempted to tell them to forget the whole thing, and just buy the damned magazine (when I like it) from my favorite LYS. Because you know what? They f*cked up my subscription the first time, too. That time, I sent the little mail-in thingy with a check (which they promptly cashed), and they sent me the first issue, no problem. It came time for my second issue, and it didn't come. I waited, patiently, thinking it had gotten hung up somewhere. Finally I emailed them, and not only had they never sent it to me, it was SOLD OUT! Nothing they could do. They cheerfully extended my subscription by one issue to make up for the missed one, so that's why I have remained a loyal customer. But now I'm not so sure. :::Sigh:::

Anyway, here are pics and deets:

Pattern: Ariann, by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn: Berrocco Ultra Alpaca, worsted, in 6295 Tanzanite Mix (this pic makes it look slightly bluer than it does in person)
Needles: Addi Turbo and Inox Express, US6 & US7
Comments: Not completely happy with how this turned out. I loved both the pattern and the yarn, and I think they're well suited to each other. I just...went down a size, when I should have gone up; and I made the sleeves about an inch too long, so I have to fold them up.

Pattern: Fountain Pen Shawl, by Susan Lawrence. Interweave Knits, Spring 2009
Yarn: Handmaiden Fine Yarns, Sea Silk, in Nova Scotia
Needle: Addi Lace, US6
Comments: :::Love!::: I made this to wear to a wedding later this month. Now I have to find something to wear with it--LOL. The pattern and charts are excellent, and the yarn was absolutely delicious to knit.

Pattern: Kiri, by Polly Outhwaite, a.k.a. All Tangled Up
Yarn: Frog Tree Alpaca Wool Fingering (100% alpaca), in black
Needle: Addi Lace, US6
Comments: :::Love!::: again. I think I will wear this a lot--it's lower-key, more casual, than the other one. I loved knitting this, as well. The charts are awesome, the pattern is easy to memorize, and the yarn was lovely on my fingers, though it was not spun very consistently. Lots of thick and thin areas.

Oh, and I finally blocked my second Lace Ribbon Scarf (by Veronik Avery, from www.knitty.com last...summer I believe), because I am now obsessed with blocking knitted lace. It made a HUGE difference! I actually completed this scarf last November. When I washed it the first time, I just laid it out flat to dry; it looked OK for awhile, but lately it has been looking very rumpled. Blocking wires to the rescue! Much better now. :-)

Mistakes

2009-05-01T10:56:00.001-07:00

So...I finished the first sleeve for my Ariann yesterday. I'm about to start the second. I was comparing the sleeve to the body, just to make sure that my gauge wasn't all wonky on the sleeve. It felt like I was knitting tighter--which I think I was, a little, but it's not as noticeable as I'd feared. Anyway, I was idly looking back at the pattern, and then looking at the body section, and back and forth, etc. (you get the idea, right dear Reader?). And of course, I screwed up the waist increases. The pattern says to do the waist decreases (from hip to waist--this is a bottom-up seamless garment) every 4 rows. Apparently I just assumed that the increases would also be done every 4 rows. Nope. It's every 8. So I did them twice as fast as I should have. So now what? Should I go back and fix it? Or leave it?

Usually I don't worry too much about errors unless they will be really obvious in the finished item. On my Fountain Pen Shawl (which I finished Monday night, BTW--I need to buy blocking supplies ASAP!), I made several errors, primarily by putting in YO's where they didn't belong. That seems to be the main sort of mistake I make in lace; something about the rhythm of lace knitting makes me prone to that for some reason. I think my hands enjoy doing the little "flip" of the yarn that makes a YO. Usually I can just drop the stitch and work the extra tension back into the fabric, though in this shawl I opted to do some K3tog's to get rid of the extra stitch instead. It's not noticeable unless you lay the shawl out and examine it carefully. I don't think anyone's going to be doing that (except maybe me when I block it, just because I'll want to know where the mistakes are), so why worry about it?

With the cardigan, though, I'm not sure how to decide whether or not to fix it. I'm inclined to just leave it. It's hard to tell, from just holding the body section around my torso, whether or not it will look weird in the FO.

In other news, my Kiri shawl is going really well. I have made it my bus knitting project, since it's light and very portable, and the lace pattern is really easy to memorize. (It repeats every 6 pattern/right-side rows.) It's also really easy to tell which row I'm on by "reading" the knitting, even though I'm using black fuzzy yarn. It's funny, when I first started this shawl, I found the lace pattern really fiddly; but then I put it into hibernation while I made the Fountain Pen Shawl. Since the latter has a much more intricate lace pattern, the Kiri lace seems a lot easier now that I'm returning to it. I'm almost done with the first skein of yarn--I'm using Frog Tree Alpaca Wool Fingering, which comes in a 215 yard put-up. I have 4 skeins of it, but by my estimate I won't need the 4th skein. I probably won't use all of the 3rd skein either. I don't want this shawl to be too large. I really like it so far--it's very yummy in the alpaca, and I can tell it will have beautiful drape after blocking.

OK...time to wind some more Ultra Alpaca and start that second sleeve... If I have a reader or two out there, please weigh in on the waist shaping issue. Should I rip it back and re-knit?

Fountain Pen Shawl

2009-04-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

This shawl is becoming a beast! I made it through 9 repeats of the main lace pattern, and decided to stop there. (The pattern says to do 10 repeats.) I'm working on the edging now. I think it's going to block out to a pretty good sized shawl. Unfortunately there is a somewhat distinct line where I switched to the second skein, which is slightly brighter, particularly the blues and the lime green--the deeper teal green is indistinguishable from that of the first skein. I think the line will be more noticeable to me than to anyone else, though (except maybe other knitters who are familiar with the phenomenon). I don't mind it anyway, because a) it's part of the charm and the quirkiness, one might say the charming quirkiness, of using hand-painted yarns; and b) it wouldn't have been worth the trouble and the tangles of trying to alternate skeins every couple of rows.

I'll probably finish this tonight or tomorrow, as I'm about to start row 7 (of 24) of the edging. Hmm...this yarn better get me to the end, cuz I really don't want to try ripping back to the end of the 8th main lace repeat... We'll see, I guess. I'll post pics as soon as it's washed and blocked. Can't wait to try draping it around my shoulders!

Blues and Greens

2009-04-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I seem to have the blue-green section of the spectrum covered. Here's what I'm working on, and where I am with each project as of today.

First up, my favorite thing to knit right now: Ariann in Ultra Alpaca. I can't sing the praises of this yarn enough. It is so lovely to work with. I love how it feels on my hands--silky and springy and gentle, like butter--and I also love how it slips effortlessly across a nice nickel-plated turbo needle. Divine!

You can see that I'm almost done with the body--only an inch or two to go until I'm ready to knit the sleeves and then join them up to knit the yoke.

I have finally figured out a pleasing cuff to use for Viridis, which I'm making for my boyfriend. The body of the sweater is all done, and I'm only this far into the sleeve:

This picture also shows the color of the yarn a lot better. The previous picture that I posted of the body section makes it look like it has a lot of khaki in the mix or something, but it doesn't--it's a deep forest green. Very pretty. Every time I show C a piece of it, he tells me how much he loves the color. Yay! I want to finish Ariann in April, for the Doubleknit Podcast KAL, but I am still devoting time to this, and with any luck will also finish it before the end of the month. That would take care of #4 and #5 for NaKniSweMoDo.

I'm also working on two shawls--sort of. I'm actively working on one, and the other is now in hibernation because I'm using the needle for the active one. I want to knit a shawl that I can wear to a wedding I'm going to in May, and...you'll see that the hibernating one is black. Not so good for a wedding. Here they are:

First, the Fountain Pen Shawl, from the latest issue of Interweave Knits, which I'm making in Handmaiden Sea Silk fingering weight. I have 2 skeins of this (400m each), a total of 800m (837 yards). The pattern calls for a yarn that comes in 1250 yard skeins, and I think the sample was made with about 1000 yards, give or take. So I'll probably have to make mine a little bit smaller, but that's OK--the one in the magazine is huge, and I don't need mine to be that big.

This yarn is a dream to knit with, which surprised me. I expected it to be hard on my hands like cotton is--since it's also a 100% plant fiber yarn, but it's not like cotton at all. It's smooth and wonderful. The colorway is called "Nova Scotia." The picture does not do justice to the yarn's gorgeousness--it has a lovely sheen and such nice depth of color. I'm a little bit worried, because the second skein has a lot more blue in it, and the green doesn't seem as dark, but I'm hoping it will come out all right. I may decide to try alternating skeins every other row or so, for a few repeats, when it's time to transition to the new skein. That might help to smooth things out a little bit. Oh, and NUPPS! This pattern has nupps. I have now knit...a total of 6 nupps, and my assessment is...they are very pretty little things, and well worth their mild pain-in-the-ass-ness. I was warned beforehand, by Jessica and Amelia, to knit them l-o-o-s-l-e-y, so that's what I'm trying to do. It's a little difficult to keep such a slippery yarn slack on the needle, though.

Then there's Kiri, a pattern that was recommended to me by Abby, a friend from Purlygirls. I really love both the pattern and the yarn, and I'm looking forward to wearing this tossed around my shoulders for "dramatic flair" in the classroom or at a conference, probably over a black turtleneck worn with a black skirt and tall black leather boots, with my hair pulled back severely and my glasses on the end of my nose--LOL. Oh, and I'll be wearing a hand made shawl pin and a large ring as my only other accessories. Behold!

April = Alpaca

2009-04-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

I have decided to set Patronus aside for now, until I finish my BF's sweater (Viridis, which is progressing slowly but surely) and this new one that I cast on today. In honor of the Doubleknit Podcast discussion about doing a KAL for April focusing on Alpaca yarns...I have decided to knit up this pretty blue Ultra Alpaca that has been burning a hole in my stash for several months. (A funny thing, since I never intended to buy it to begin with, but that's a story I've already told.) I'm dying to wear it because I love the color so much. I tried using it for my rendition of Arwen (see previous posts), but when I swatched the cable it became very clear that this yarn + that pattern = meh. Well...late last night, at like 2am, I cast on for Ariann, by Bonnie Marie Burns of Chic Knits. I have admired this pattern for quite awhile, and have also been thinking it would work well with this yarn. I think I'm right. Here's a photo:

It's hard to tell from this shot, because I'm only just barely past the bottom ribbing of the body section, but I think the lace pattern is working up nicely. The chevron effect is going to be subtle, because this yarn is heathered and fuzzy and blue (blue wavelengths are somewhat hard for our eyes to deal with), but it's visible and pretty. So far the only mod I have made is to add 2 stitches to each button band, in an effort to give the sweater just a leeeeetle bit more room. I'm making this fitted, with a little bit of negative ease across the boobs. I'm expecting the alpaca to grow when washed and blocked, since it is notorious for doing that, and the fact that it's lace will also make it more forgiving. I have seen examples on Ravelry that are too loose for the person modeling, and that's just not the look I'm after. BUT, I was worried because the size I'm making is about 1/2" smaller than I usually shoot for.

I have to say, I love love LOVE working with this yarn. Last year I knit a Wicked with some deep eggplant Ultra Alpaca, so I knew I would like it. It hits the trifecta of nice knitting yarn, for me--the 3 S's of soft, silky, and sproingy. You also get really good yardage for the price--it's only slightly more spendy than Cascade 220. It's easy on the fingers in a way that is helping me to loosen up my knitting a little bit. And have I mentioned how much I love the color? The picture doesn't quite capture it--makes it look brighter and flatter than it is in real life (blues are as tough for cameras to deal with as they are for human retinas to deal with). Mmmmmm. I can't wait to finish this and wear it! I think it'll get some summer use, despite being alpaca (one of the warmest fibers out there, from what I understand), since it's a cardigan and also has a little bit of open stitchwork in it.

Now I'm going to set it aside for a little bit, so I can take a run, finish some housework, do some grading, and hopefully knit a little bit more onto Viridis before the day is over.

Patronus

2009-04-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

I gave this cardigan a cheesy name, but it seems fitting. I named it after the "Patronus Charm" from Harry Potter. The combination of the yarn color name (Zarya Fog--"zarya" is Russian for "dawn") and the staghorn cables I'm using just suddenly reminded me of when Harry Potter conjures his Patronus to defeat the Dementors. He doesn't quite realize what he's doing when he casts the charm, but his patronus appears: a misty stag. So: QED.

Here's what I have done on the body so far:

And here's a close-up of the cable:

The yarn I'm using is Peace Fleece, in the colorway "Zarya Fog," as I said earlier. I'm knitting it on an Inox Turbo US 8 (I don't know if Inox still makes these needles, but I love them; they have sharper points than Addis, and they feel smoother to knit with, though the cords are a little bit too stiff). Anyway...I love this yarn. It's a little bit stiff to work with, but my swatch softened up considerably and developed a nice halo that somehow highlights, rather than obscuring, the stitch definition. I absolutely love the colorway, though--the base color is gray, and it has little flecks of color throughout that give it a nice warmth.

Later the same day...
I knit another cable repeat, and couldn't shake this weird feeling that I was doing something wrong. Sure enough, I tried to stretch this body-in-progress around my own body-that-is, and it's way too tight. So I pinned it out and measured, and even accounting for the 2" button bands I'm planning, I have somehow made this thing way too small. So I frogged and re-swatched. This time, I made my swatch 30 stitches wide, and I did about 5" of stockinette (bounded by garter stitch on all 4 sides) followed by 5 repeats of the cable. I pinned that out and measured it 9 ways from Sunday. Now I'm washing the swatch. I will rinse it and let it dry and then I will measure it 9 ways from Sunday again. After measuring the swatch, though, I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened: IT'S THE CABLES, STUPID! I have 4 cable panels @ 20 stitches each. My gauge is right around 4.25st/in. in stockinette, but those cable panels are each only about 3.5" wide, instead of the ~4.7" they would be if they were in stockinette. That means I'm losing almost 5 whole inches in circumference.

Yeah. As I discovered while knitting (and ripping and re-knitting) Liesl, no amount of blocking is going to make that much negative ease look nice. In other words:

FAIL!

Noodles of Amazing Deliciousness

2009-04-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

I don't just knit and procrastinate writing on my dissertation. I also cook sometimes. And sometimes what I cook turns out delicious! Here is an example:

Noodles of Amazing Deliciousness
(Super easy!)
Ingredients:
***1 brick tempeh, chopped into bite-sized pieces
***2-3 packages fresh Yakisoba noodles (the kind I buy comes packaged with soup packets, which I toss)--soak in boiling water to separate them.
***1 shallot--I slice it finely and then cut the slices in 1/2-1/4's. Or just chop it up however you want.
***greens of your choice, chopped to your liking (I like spinach, broccoli, kale, etc. The pictured batch was made with collard greens--which snap when you cook them!)
***mushrooms
***Tamari soy sauce (use a decent soy sauce for this--the cheap ones are too salty)
***oil for cooking (I use olive oil)
***sesame oil

In a skillet or wok, brown the tempeh and cook the mushrooms to desired level of doneness. Add the shallot and stir fry until it softens. You can brown it if you want to--it tastes nice that way. Add the noodles and the greens and stir fry for a little bit. Add soy sauce--I don't really measure it, I add enough to coat everything. You can dilute it a little bit if you don't want the noodles to be that salty. Continue stir frying until the greens are tender. Remove from heat. Drizzle on some sesame oil (I use about a tablespoon per package of noodles--YMMV). Serve and NOM.

I keep meaning to try adding some garlic to this--it would taste delicious, I have no doubt, I just keep forgetting to get it ready before I start cooking.

This one's done

2009-04-05T15:28:00.001-07:00

Finished my Liesl (aka "die Federspitze," which is what I named it on Ravelry). Here's a pic:

Pattern: Liesl, by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lanaloft in dark ash--used just a smidge over 4 skeins.
Needles: US10.5 Addi Turbos

Yay! I decided to use hooks instead of buttons to close the front. I'm very happy with it. It's pretty similar in style to my February Lady Sweater, but it's thicker--I expect that I'll wear both of these sweaters a lot this summer.

New Contender

2009-03-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

Well. Last week I got kind of tired of doing box stitch, so I felt the need to put Viridis on the back burner for a few days. I think more than being tired of box stitch, I was hungry for an FO. As luck would have it, I've had my eye on Ysolda Teague's Liesl, a really cute pattern that also happens to be a quick knit and requires not too much yarn. So I went to The Fiber Gallery and shopped around. I went in thinking I'd buy some charcoal gray Cascade 220, but as I was standing there the charcoal gray Brown Sheep Lanaloft caught my eye. Hmmmm. It's a nicely heathered gray, 100% wool, single ply yarn. Very pretty. Not too expensive. Perfect!

And it has been. I started this sweater last Thursday, on US 10.5 needles. I decided to do the high neck version, size 38...so I knit the yoke, separated off the sleeves, and then knit a few repeats in the body section. Then decided to try it on. Ooooof! The neck opening was WAY too tight. So I ripped it all out and re-knit to about the same point, then tried it on again. Bleah....WAY too tight in the boobs! The kind of tight that no blocking in the world could possibly fix, and the kind of tight that is simply NOT attractive. This time, before ripping it out, I checked my gauge. A pattern repeat is supposed to be 4" wide; mine were only 3" wide, slightly stretched. I know, I should have checked that before frogging my first attempt--better yet, I should have swatched before casting on, but noooooo. I was too eager for a new FO. Live and learn. I ripped it all out again and cast on again. I liked the fabric I was getting, so I opted to follow the directions for a larger size rather than going up to a US 11 needle (which I don't have in any case). I did some percentage math--my gauge is 75% as wide as it should be, so I did the algebra: 38" = 75%x. When I solved for x I got 50". Done. I can vouch for this: Liesl is a really quick knit. I'm already done with the yoke and both sleeves, I've tried it on and it fits very nicely. The best part is how well the yarn has behaved, despite all this knitting and ripping I've put it through. It looks lovely. Behold!

And these are the buttons I think I'm going to use. I wasn't sure I wanted to put buttons on it, but then I remembered these cute ones in my stash and pulled them out to see how they'd look--perfect again! Score! My plan, since I didn't make any buttonholes, is to make crochet loops instead. I think it'll look cute, and it will also help me to avoid the overly stretched buttonhole issue that is pretty apparent in the model picture on the pattern page. Anyway, here are the buttons (sorry for the small size--I snapped this pic with no flash, and it came out kinda blurry, so I sized it down a bit):

Progress

2009-03-12T13:30:00.001-07:00

I'm making progress on Viridis. I'm almost done with the body. Last night I whipped out a spare needle and put half of the stitches onto that so I could try the thing on my boyfriend. It looks pretty good so far. Yesterday I was working on it on the bus and got almost to the end of that ball of yarn...and...I happened to have my cake of Zarya Fog Peace Fleece along...and I have already calculated out the numbers for the cardigan I want to make out of that, so....

Yeah, you know the rest. The bottom ribbing for said cardigan is almost 2" deep now. I need to think of a name for this one. I also need to decide on a cable pattern for it. I'm envisioning a shawl-collared cardigan similar to Starsky from Knitty, except without the belt and the wrap front--I have decided that a double-thickness of knitted fabric at my waistline isn't the most flattering thing in the world. So I want this cardigan to button, and I want it to have some kind of cable running up each front, up the center of each sleeve, and up either the center of the back or up both sides (to mirror the front cables). I think a bold cable will look best in this yarn--it's very heathered, and makes a nice mohair halo when washed (ask my swatch). I want the cable to be more interesting than a simple twist...maybe a braid, or an open twist that travels over some purl stitches between its widest point and where it crosses.

So that's what I'm working on.

Doodling

2009-02-28T09:53:00.001-08:00

It's been awhile! Here's what I've been working on:

First, the sweater I'm making for my boyfriend: I'm calling it "Viridis." It's sort of inspired by Veronik Avery's "Notre Dame de Grace" sweater, from Interweave Knits (Summer 2007). I'm really only using the box stitch pattern from that design, though, and constructing the sweater according to Elizabeth Zimmerman's Seamless Saddle Shoulder instructions from The Knitting Workshop. Anyway, this is somewhat slow going--my boyfriend is man-sized and I'm knitting this in Cascade 220 on US7's; plus the stitch pattern is pretty monotonous. I also haven't had a ton of knitting time over the last couple of weeks, so despite the fact that I started this on Valentine's Day (exactly 2 weeks ago), I'm only about 8" into the body section. It's OK. The sleeves will go quickly, and from there it'll get more interesting, what with learning a new kind of yoke construction/shaping and all. Anyway, here's what it looks like so far. The picture doesn't do the color justice--it is a deep, rich forest green. I'm not sure why those tan elements are standing out so much in the photograph. IRL they don't show up at all.

Prior to starting Viridis I did a bunch of swatching for a different sweater. Awhile back my boyfriend requested a knockoff of the Dude's sweater from The Big Lebowski. The actual sweater is a vintage Pendleton sweater, several colorways of which are available on eBay. I've been trying to figure out how it was made--specifically how the colorwork was done. Thanks to help from Jessica Rose and Nancy Marchant (the "Brioche Queen"), I am positive that the stitch used in the body of the sweater is a brioche stitch of some kind. This picture (lifted from an eBay offering) shows the brioche-ness pretty well:

Two things to notice about this picture: first, that the background color is slightly--but only slightly--visible behind the contrast color in the 2-color parts of the sweater, but it doesn't look like it's a full stitch, i.e. there isn't a "purl" column between the knit columns; and second, that the colorwork forms straight horizontal lines--you'll see why this is important in a minute.

But first, take a look at this picture of the sweater's innards (same eBay sweater) and you'll see the difficulty (I'm posting it in a larger size so you can see more detail):

The reverse face of the fabric shows stockinette V's, just like the public face of the fabric. the contrast color is carried across the whole width of the fabric, and it is knitted in, not stranded. You can see that the main color and contrast color alternate, row by row...but what I don't get is how the pattern shows up so cleanly on the public side of the fabric. It's perplexing.

Here are some swatches I did, right side and wrong side, to show the difficulties. Here's the initial swatch that I made, using the basic stranded colorwork technique, before I was firmly convinced that the Pendleton sweater uses a brioche stitch. (An aside: knitting this swatch convinced me that stranded colorwork in the flat is WAY more trouble than it's worth--I will always always always use steeks instead!)

So...on to the brioche variations. At first I thought the sweater used just the basic brioche stitch (which yields the same result as the stitch called "fisherman's rib," even though it's done differently), but when I looked at Nancy Marchant's brioche-in-color swatches on her website, I thought that the right side of the Pendleton sweater looked more like what she calls "half brioche," so that's what I swatched:
Here's one side:

And the other side:

I inadvertently flipped the public and private sides of this swatch when I switched from single-color brioche (the dark brown) to 2-color brioche (tan and dark brown), but you can see the problem, I'm sure: in the 2-color portion, the public side (top of first pic) shows the dark brown quite a lot--if you could hold the swatch in your hands you'd see that there is a "purl" column between the stripes of tan. But on the private side I'm not getting the striping that you see in the Pendleton sweater, above. Also, the public and private sides of the fabric aren't even close to the same texture--the V's are all funky on the back. (Blocking might explain that...) Finally, while I was knitting this, I couldn't figure out how to alternate colors within a row to get the horizontal part of the colorwork pattern.

So...I tried Brioche Stockinette. Here's that swatch:

Public side: you can see that the stripe where I change colors is jagged, not straight across.

And it looks totally wrong on the private side.

Just for kicks, I tried doubleknitting, thinking maybe I was wrong about it being brioche...

Front.

Back.

Nope. It's brioche. But how...?

The Pendleton sweater is almost certainly machine knit, so all I can think at this point is that the machine was able to do some funky brioche-y looking stitch that will be difficult or even impossible to replicate in hand knitting. I'll keep trying. But since I'm on the NaKniSweMoDo clock, and needed to get going on my Sweater #3 for that, I decided to back burner this for now. I started "Viridis" instead. I'm determined to figure this out sometime, even if "figuring this out" means figuring out that it can't be replicated in hand knitting. But I think my next step has to be finding one of these sweaters in the real world so I can get all up in its business.

All done!

2009-02-10T13:46:00.001-08:00

My EZ Fair Isle cardigan is all finished--I did the last bit of work on Sunday 2/8, and wore it yesterday for my birthday. :-)

First, pics of the steeks after reinforcing and during cutting...

The whole front:

Close-up:

And during cutting:

And here are the finished pics:

Close up of the buttons:

Pattern: Fair Isle Sweater, by Elizabeth Zimmerman, from The Opinionated Knitter, using a 7-stitch steek up the front, and 2x2 knit/garter stitch ribbing at cuffs and hem.
Yarn: Cascade 220, various colors
Needles: Addi and Inox turbos, US7, US6 (for ribbing), US5 (for neck & button bands)
Other Notes: I followed EZ's directions for garter stitch button bands and the 1-row buttonhole from The Knitting Workshop (p. 72-3), including the mitered corner to transition from the button band to the neck band. I did a final decrease round on the collar after the 4th garter ridge, decreasing by 20% (K3, K2tog around). Also, instead of binding off the bands in purl (that many stitches?! was she smoking crack?!), I ended them a row early and bound off in knit on the wrong side.

I'm very happy with this sweater. I think it's my favorite one yet. I love the way it fits. I followed the proportions for older fashioned fitting and tapered sleeves, with a little bit of waist shaping. I'm also very happy that I made my goal and finished it in time for my birthday--it is my gift to myself.

Bonus photos of the sweater's innards:

The stranding:

Steek reinforcement on the left (as I'm wearing it--i.e. on the button side)

Steek reinforcement on the right (buttonhole side), showing the bit of blanket stitching I ran up the edge of the yoke facing, where the crochet seemed a bit looser than I was comfortable with. It's not beautiful, but I think it'll serve:

Fair Isle Love!

2009-02-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

I finished the yoke of my EZ Fair Isle sweater on Wednesday. Wow! I could not put it down. I was completely fascinated to watch the pattern emerge with each row--and now I'm completely addicted to colorwork, and can't wait to do some more. I have several colorwork projects in my Ravelry queue, including a knockoff of The Dude's sweater that I've been planning to make for my boyfriend for quite awhile. I also just queued a design from Lopi book #17, which I've had in my library for ages. Of course I want to tinker with the design...

Today I finished a big pile of grading, and I'm off to the Fiber Gallery to get steeking supplies now, along with a few more skeins of Lamb's Pride Bulky for the Lopi sweater (I have a motley bunch of skeins in my stash that I bought for other things, and I think if I get a few more skeins of gray for the main color I'll be set. I know, I know--gray again?!--but it's a lighter shade). I'm going to try crocheted reinforcements for these steeks...hopefully that will work OK. I made the steek 7 stitches wide, though, so I'd have room to run a line of machine stitching if I run into problems. Hopefully I won't. Sewing machines and I don't get along very well. Here's a couple of pictures before I hit the shower and head out:

A full body shot:

And a close-up of the yoke:

I'm so excited to finish this and wear it! :::Love!:::

EZ Fair Isle Progress + Kiri Shawl

2009-02-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

I'm starting the stranded colorwork portion of my EZ Fair Isle sweater today! I finished the second sleeve on Monday and did the joining round last night. After joining, I did 3 sets of short rows, and then was kinda stuck, for 2 reasons: 1. I wasn't sure if I should do the ~8 rounds of knitting as EZ instructs (in The Opinionated Knitter) after the short rows, or if the short rows would count for 6 of those 8 rows (I opted for the latter--hopefully I won't regret that choice, but I looked at a bunch of different project pictures on Ravelry and it looks like the ones with short rows were worked this way); and 2. I didn't have any bus knitting for this morning because I hadn't wound the yoke yarns yet, and also...who wants to wrangle 6 different colors of yarn (even if only 2 at a time) on the bus?

So...this morning, I just grabbed the stuff to start working on my first shawl project, Kiri (Ravelry link), which I'm knitting with some black Frog Tree Alpaca Wool fingering weight yarn. I did some swatching on the bus to campus, cast on for the actual shawl during my office hours this afternoon, and made it almost through the whole first chart on the bus home. I think I did the little garter stitch tab sort of weirdly, but it looks OK so I'm sticking with it. Also, the Addi lace needles I bought for the project, in US7, yielded a fabric that seemed a lot looser than what I want, so I switched to a regular Addi in size US6. I like the resulting fabric a lot better. I miss the sharp points, though--maybe I'll go buy a US6 lace needle.

So that's my knitting day today. I'm back up to 2 WIP's, but I still expect to finish this sweater in time to wear it on Monday. (We'll see--finishing involves cutting steeks, which I've never done before, so that could present a bigger hurdle than I'm expecting.)

Intriguing Trend

2009-02-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

So...I like to troll the various tabs on Ravelry just to get ideas for stuff I might like to knit--my friends activity page, the new pattern listings, the people page, etc. Anyway, maybe 2-3 weeks ago, I came across a sweater called Owls, by Kate Davies. It's a free pattern, available from the blog I linked to in the previous sentence. I was intrigued by the design. It's a pretty cool use of cables, and on a round-yoked sweater it just looks...I don't know, interesting. Cute. And clever. I had never seen this motif before, an owl made of cables. Suddenly I'm seeing it everywhere. I did a search for "owl" in the pattern browser, and found patterns for adult, baby, and child sweaters and vests; fingerless mitts; hats; socks; a dishcloth; and even a re-write of the Calorimetry pattern called "Owl-orimetry," all using this motif that, until a couple of weeks ago, I had never even seen before.

It must be something that's been around for awhile, but for some reason this is the first time it has crossed my radar. And it appears to be making a bit of a splash, if the frequency with which it's showing up in my friends activity and on the people page are any indication. I find its seeming popularity intriguing.

Knitting Stuff & Stuff

2009-01-31T16:41:00.000-08:00

I have finished pics and progress pics, both of which are somewhat overdue. First, an FO:

Pattern: A Cardigan for Arwen, by Kate Gilbert (Interweave Knits, Winter 2006)--sorta
Yarn: Cascade 220, color 2429 "Ireland"
Needles: Addi Turbos + Inox Turbos, US 8 and US7 circs.
Gauge: 5 st/in.
Mods: I used the cable and the hem design from the pattern and that's about it. I used the EPS to figure out how many stitches I'd need for each piece (should have calculated for a bit more ease, IMO--this is a little tighter than I wanted it, though I love it as-is). I knit the body in 1 piece to the armpits. I knit the cuffs, did a 3-needle bind-off to join the ends, then picked up stitches and knit the sleeves upward to the armpits. Then joined the 3 pieces and did a raglan yoke. I did the raglan decreases right next to each other (no "seam" stitches in between), SSK + K2tog, so they'd have that feathery look. In retrospect, I wish I had done the first 3-4 sets of decreases 4 rows apart instead of 2 because there's a bit of puckering at the armpit edges. Finally, I omitted the hood and did a wide collar with box stitch (K2P2 for 2 rows, then P2K2 for 2 rows, etc.) between the cables instead. I love how this turned out. I want to wear it every day. This is my first sweater made with Cascade 220, and I'm very, very happy with it. It's soft and snuggly.

Here's a closeup of the collar. I love the way the reversible cable lays out along my shoulders.

And here's what I'm working on now:

Pattern: Fair Isle Yoke Sweater by Elizabeth Zimmerman (from The Opinionated Knitter).
Yarn: Cascade 220, base yarn is charcoal heather; yoke yarns...see for yourself (below).
Needles: US6 for the ribbing, US7 for the stockinette (I wanted a slightly firmer fabric than for the Arwen).
Gauge: 5.25 st/in.
I'm knitting a steek up the front--so it will be a cardigan. I decided on a 7-stitch steek, just to be safe. Oh, and I'm using 2x2 garter rib for the hem and cuffs. My plan is to do a garter stitch border for the neck and button bands. I may do those on a US5.

Close-up of the yoke yarns:

Progress in Portland

2009-01-19T17:13:00.000-08:00

Chris and I spent most of the weekend in Portland--left Saturday (hitched a ride with a friend who lives there) and just got back about half an hour ago. I'm heading out to the Seattle Purlygirls knit night momentarily, but wanted to post pics of my Arwen-esque cardigan before I left. It doesn't feel right if I don't post in-progress pics. When last you saw her, gentle reader, my cardigan was still in pieces, and indeed had only a body and cuffs. On Friday I finished the first sleeve and started the second. On Saturday I finished the second sleeve and, while riding in my friend's pickup truck, commenced joining the pieces. I worked quite a bit of the yoke on Saturday and Sunday, and finished it on the train ride back to Seattle today. I also grafted the underarm stitches while riding the train, so it truly is all done except for the collar--and of course weaving in the ends, of which there are only a few. My plan is to knit a flat collar with the reversible cable continuing up each edge and box stitch in between (except for the 2 seed stitches right next to the cables), though I still have to figure out the logistics. I think the fit might be a little tighter than I was planning on--I could use another inch or two of ease--but I still like it. It will probably relax a little bit with washing and blocking. Here comes a modeled pic. Please excuse that the top of my head is cut off, and of course my satanically red eyes--I took this myself with a timer. And I have yet to meet the camera whose red-eye reduction was anywhere near powerful enough to deal with my retinas.

Arwen: Finally, Cuffs!

2009-01-15T14:55:00.000-08:00

Seriously, I knit the first cuff 6 times before finally figuring out how I wanted to do it. I ended up just using a provisional cast on (I did that invisible cast-on thing where the bottom live loops are on waste yarn or a spare circ needle), then knitting 7 repeats of the cable pattern to make the cuff, ending with row 6 (a right side row). Finally, I did a 3-needle bind off to close the cuff. I tried everything else, including kitchener grafting--bah, not worth it!--from a crocheted provisional cast on, from the above described provisional cast on, and from a cable cast-on (not provisional); and seaming from a cable cast on and a regular bind off. I guess I'm glad I tried all that stuff, but it unfortunately stalled me out at this stage of the sweater for an inordinately long time. If I had just done the cuffs this way to begin with, I probably would have finished this sweater a week ago. As it is, because of the holiday I will probably finish it this weekend. That'll make just under a month's worth of knitting on it, so I guess that's not too bad. It's the pace I need to keep in order to make the NaKniSweMoDo goal. Plus, I can now knit this cable pattern with my eyes closed. In addition to knitting a bazillion of these cuffs (two failed attempts of which survive because the yarn is just too trashed to frog and reuse again--I'll make cup cozies out of them or something), I have also finished the two scarves I'd been working as bus knitting projects. Next up: I'll pick up stitches along the top edge (notice that it has a selvedge stitch) and knit the sleeves up from there, then join to the body (already done to the armpits) and do a raglan yoke. I'm not doing the hood. Instead, I'll be knitting a wide collar with the cables continuing along the edge, and with box stitch everywhere else. Anyway, here are the goods...

First, the pesky cuffs:

Notice that the cable pattern is mirrored. I'm very proud of that. I decided to do the right cable chart for the right cuff and the left cable chart for the left cuff--yes, the pattern has you do that too, but the pattern also has you knit the sleeves sideways. I was initially going to just use the same chart for both--because I'm lazy!--but I changed my mind when I cast on for the second (left) cuff. I think they turned out neato keen, man.

Here's my Branching Out scarf:

Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool in a dark charcoal color, just shy of 2 skeins
Needles: Addi Turbo's US6 (2 sizes smaller than the pattern recommends)
Pattern: Branching Out, from Knitty
This still needs blocking. I ended up using almost 2 skeins of yarn, and the scarf ended up being a little longer than I am tall. I expect it to grow a LOT with blocking, as lace always does. Hopefully it won't be too long.

And here's my Noro striped scarf:

One side,

The other side,

And on.

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, 4 skeins--2 each of colorways 84 and 252
Needles: Addi Turbo US6
Pattern: Noro Scarf by Brooklyn Tweed (Jared Flood)

I love how this one turned out. The yarn really softened up with washing. I wear this almost every day--it is comfy, warm, and oh so pretty. I've gotten actual compliments!

NaKniSweMoDo

2009-01-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

I mentioned this before: I'm doing NaKniSweMoDo! Now I have a cool little image--look to the left--to advertise that fact right here on my blog. To that end, I've been working my Cardigan for Arwen (heavily modified). The body is done up to the armpits, complete with a little bit of waist shaping. I have also completed one of the cuffs--knit it at knit night last night. It consists of the reversible cable, its 2 seed stitch edging, and an extra selvedge stitch on one side. My plan is to knit the cuffs, graft them into little tubes, and then pick up stitches for the sleeves (hence the selvedge stitch). Ultimately I'll join the sleeves to the body, do a raglan yoke, and then knit a wide collar instead of a hood. I plan to continue the cables through the collar, and in between the cables I think I'm going to use box stitch. I have it in my head that plain 2x2 ribbing won't look good. Too boring--I want some texture. Seed stitch would probably make more sense, because it would be consistent with the 2-stitch edging around each cable, but I really don't wanna do all that seed stitch. So...I'm going to try box stitch. Anyway, here's a pic of the body. It might look familiar, since I put a cropped version of it as my new blog header banner. I can't get it to fit right--I'd really like it to fill the whole header box and I don't know how to make it do that--but I guess it looks OK.

Faithfully Yours

2008-12-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

I learned something about myself this week. I had a bunch of WIPs and decided to frog several of them, thereby paring the number of WIPs in my knitting bag to 3: my mom's cardigan, my Noro striped scarf, and my branching out. I did this frogging on the same day that I catalogued most of my stash (see a couple of entries ago), even though I decided to frog the stuff awhile ago. As soon as I was done, I could suddenly breathe easier.

So what I've learned about myself: I prefer to only have 2-3 projects on my needles. When I have more than that going, I tend to not finish anything, and consequently to feel anxious and knitting avoidant. Fewer projects feels more manageable, do-able. When there's more, I feel buried in unfinished work, like I'll never be able to finish.

Good to know.

Sheep Season

2008-12-15T00:46:00.001-08:00

I just finished marking my final grade sheets, and I'll submit them tomorrow morning (they're due at 10am). It feels really good to have finished them a little bit early, rather than at the last minute. It's like...I'm on top of my work for once. I was able to meet a deadline without breaking my brain or staying up until 4am. So now I'll have more time to knit for a few weeks--classes don't start until January 5th.

I still can't find my camera's battery charger. Where the hell did I put that? I need to finish photographing my stash!

Also, it snowed in Seattle today. Here's what my front yard looked like this morning:

Yep. It's sheep season.

Stash Hijinks + 2009 Resolution #1

2008-12-11T17:37:00.001-08:00

Today was stash maintenance & assessment day. Wow! I have a fuck ton of yarn, the vast majority of it acquired over the last year. I'm surprised by how much sock yarn I have. It's not that much by sock-knitter standards, but it's a lot considering I bought all of it before I had ever knit a single sock. Anyway, I went through all the yarn, photographed it, cataloged it, and entered the details into my Ravelry stash database. Right now I'm waiting for my pictures to upload to Flickr so I can plug those into the appropriate stash entries on Rav. Oh...shit...I haven't actually cataloged and photographed all of it yet. I've only gone through the yarn in my main stash bin and my cedar chest (which also holds all of my sweaters, so it's not all stash in there). There are still two flat plastic bins under my bed that I haven't gone through yet. Most of that is either Lamb's Pride or Berroco Comfort that I bought for the Mother Bear Project. (Guh. I suck. I have yet to knit bear one.......) But there's some other surprises lurking in there too...like some Reynold's Saucy that I bought back in 1997-ish, to knit a sweater for my now ex-sister-in-law, and then decided was too fugly and the wrong color for her. Then there's the dark green Classic Elite Cotton Chenille that I bought a year or so later, to replace the Saucy for ex-SIL's sweater, and then I divorced her brother before I finished the damned thing. You just can't hide from the secret history that lurks in your stash. Dig into it just a little bit and all of your knitterly sins pop out fresh as morning. (Speaking of which, it's time to get rid of some of the crap in my stash that I'm never going to knit. Most of it I love, but the Saucy and the chenille can bite me.)

In any case, I am seriously going to focus on knitting up as much of this yarn as I can in 2009. I almost never make New Year's resolutions, but I think I will this year--and that's #1 right there, in print, for all to see and tease me about if I fall short. To that end, I joined the NaKniSweMoDo (National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathon) group on Ravelry, thanks to Jessica's mention. This means that I have a concrete goal to go along with my vague resolution: to finish 12 adult-sized sweaters in 2009. I have yarn for...I think 11 adult-sized sweaters, so I'm on my way there (I thought it was only 9, but I found two batches of yarn that I had forgotten about--one was gifted to me, and the other is from a sweater I made in 1996 and frogged many months ago). In addition, I am going to start knitting more socks. Once I'm done with the two scarves I'm finishing up (Branching Out and the Noro Stripe Scarf), I will not knit any more scarves until I'm done with all these socks--they will be my bus knitting projects from here on out.

Old Dog, Meet New Trick

2008-12-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

No pics today, just blather about knitting. Lo, these many stitches...I'm getting the hang of continental knitting and really enjoying it as I work on my Noro Striped Scarf (I'm calling it "Continental Drift" because I'm using it to practice continental knitting--I'm so clever). The biggest improvement so far: I am no longer holding the yarn with a death grip, so my tension is getting a little bit looser. So far it hasn't made the emergent scarf look funny or anything, so that's good. I'm really enjoying the rhythm of the knitting, though--pick-purl-pick-purl-pick-purl etc. My purling has gotten a lot smoother, too. It has evolved from this big, swoopy push-down motion with my index finger (and with the aforementioned yarn death grip it was also a fear-laden motion, with anxiety focused on not letting the yarn fall off my index finger), to a more subtle and efficient motion. It's cool to know that I can still rely on my learning circuits, even though my recall circuits seem to be taking a beating over the last few years. (God, I hate that feeling of groping in my brain for the name of some stupid Hollywood actor and just.......not..........finding.............it.)

The other aspect of this project that is pleasing me is the pure gloriousness that is a Noro dye-job. This is my first time knitting with Noro. Who knew??? (Only everyone...I know...I am a late bloomer.) It is really fucking fun, watching the stripey colors change. I was not prepared to have this degree of fun with a 1x1 ribbed project, continental learning curve notwithstanding. I'm a foot into this project, and I have already gone from a brick red/deep navy section, to a brighter red/blue section, to a funky brownish orange-green/deep navy section; and now I'm in a deep teal/raspberry section. It's very 80's. :::LOVE:::

Mom's Cardigan + Continental Drift

2008-12-06T15:48:00.000-08:00

Taking a brief break from grading to post here--it has been over a month! Here are some pics of current projects, and a note about what's next on my needles.

First, the red cardigan I'm designing and knitting for my mom is coming along. It is somewhat similar, I have discovered, to a sweater in the current issue of knitty: Hermia, by Alison Green Will. There are several key differences, however: 1. I'm knitting this cardigan bottom-up rather than top-down; 2. I'm using a different lace pattern (fishtail lace, to be precise--though to me it looks more like gothic arches; see my previous post for a close-up of the blocked lace swatch); 3. my mom's cardigan will have a wide crew neckline rather than a v-neckline; 4. the body section of my mom's cardigan will be shallower (i.e. the "skirt" will start near the bottom of the ribcage rather than at the belly button); I didn't use a picot hem for the body because I wanted the hem to follow the scallops of the lace pattern; and 6. I'm going to use snaps instead of hooks (easier for my Mom to work with her arthritic fingers). Anyway, here's a pic of the body section with a little bud of the first sleeve (apologies for the blurriness--I took the picture without flash in order to better capture the color):

Second up, my new bus knitting project, a Noro Striped Scarf. I picked this pattern because I wanted a good project for practicing my continental knitting. This one is 1x1 rib, so it's just a bunch of alternating knits and purls--perfect for my purposes--plus I'll have a nice FO on the other side. Even after working only the first dozen or so sets of stripeys, my knitting has already improved. The biggest leap forward: figuring out the "right" way to hold the yarn, for me, which involves wrapping it once around my left pinky, taking it up the palm side of my hand, and then wrapping it twice around my left index finger, with the first wrap down by the big knuckle and the second wrap up closer to the fingertip. It allows me to purl with my index finger--as demonstrated by Lorilee Beltman, here--rather than using my middle finger to push down the yarn (see the knitting help continental purl video), which is extremely awkward for me. I just can't seem to get the wrap that Lorilee demonstrates, though, with the yarn draped over the backs of the fingers--I constantly have to stop and re-wrap because I keep losing tension. Anyway, the way I'm wrapping the yarn seems to work much better for my hand. It's actually pretty similar to the wrap used in the knitting help video, except that I wrap it twice around my index finger. (Maybe I'll post a video sometime...that would be fun.) Here are preliminary pics of the yarn (Noro Silk Garden) and the first few sets of stripes:

I'm a little worried about what's going to happen when I get to the lime green portion of the darker blue-black mix skein, because the red-pink-orange colorway also has a little bit of green in it, but I think they're different enough that even if they come up in exactly the same place the stripes will still look pretty.

Next up: my own rendition of A Cardigan for Arwen (Ravelry link). I am completely smitten with that reversible cable. I'm going to do several mods, though: I don't want a hood, so I'm going to do a wide collar instead; I want the knitting on the sleeves to be vertical rather than horizontal, so I'm going to knit the whole thing using seamless, bottom-up construction, and for the sleeves I will knit the cabled cuffs first and then pick up stitches for the stockinette portion. I briefly considered canning the cabled cuffs and instead knitting a vertical 3-strand braided version of the reversible cable up the sleeves, and continuing it into the collar, but that just seemed too complicated...and besides, I really like the cabled cuff. Oh, the yarn I'll be using is this: Berrocco Ultra Alpaca, worsted weight (scroll down--it's color #6295, Tanzanite Mix). I've used this yarn before, in a deep eggplant color, and really enjoyed working with it. I bought a sweater's worth of this blue colorway last August, when I was in Grand Rapids--I hadn't planned on buying it, but I bought a bunch of yarn at this shop near my parents' house that I ended up not wanting to use, and I could only return it for store credit or exchange. Ah, well. I'm glad I have it now, because I think it will look really nice knit into this cardigan.

This Week in Knitting...

2008-10-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

So this week I have only a few things to post about. First, plans for my mom's cardigan are coming along. I have decided to do an improvised, seamless, bottom-up cardigan with a smooth stockinette bodice, wide crew neck, and a fishtail lace "skirt." I want it to button only partway, from the neckline to roughly the sternum. I'm going to be knitting this with Plymouth Encore Worsted, which is 75% acrylic and 25% wool, thus machine washable and dryable--a must for my mom at this stage of her life. It washes up really nicely, too. Here's a picture of the swatch I have so far:

I "killed" this swatch by pinning it out onto my ironing board and hovering my iron over it (so as not to melt it) while pressing down the steam burst button. It seems to have worked like a charm. Before I did that, I had washed it and machine dried it, and the lace was all scrunched up. Now, as you can see, the lacework is nicely open. I should probably wash and dry it again, to make sure it's really "killed," before I settle on this pattern. I hope it works, though, because I think it's really pretty. The fishtails look more like medieval cathedral arches to me, and since my mom spent several decades of her life working as a church organist for the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese, the motif is very Mom-appropriate. Also, I just think she'll like it.

Here are a couple of FO's. First, a picture of the cardigan I finished in September:

Pattern: Strawberry Lace Cardigan, from Knitting Classic Style by Veronik Avery.
Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash
Needles: US7 & US6, Inox Turbos & Addi Turbos
I know this is kind of a bad picture, but it's the best I can do with this camera I'm afraid. For some reason I CANNOT get this color to photograph properly. It's a lot deeper, redder, and more heathered in person.

Here is the hat I completed recently. It only took 2 days to knit. Yay! Quick projects!

Pattern: A Better Bucket, by Amy Swenson of Make 1 Yarns.
Yarn: Mmmmmmmmmalabrigo Worsted in the Paris Night colorway--my first time knitting with this wildly addictive, supersoft, 100% merino yarn. (I just noticed that this hat is the exact same color as my eyes in this picture!)
Needles: US7 Addi Turbos + US7 Knitpicks DPN's (the nickel-plated ones)

And here's a new WIP. I bought the yarn for these socks at The Fiber Gallery on Saturday, and cast on for them the same day.

Pattern: Cable Twist Socks by Adrian Bizilia
Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash. Once again I'm having trouble getting the color to photograph properly. It's a dark olive heather.
Needles: US4 & US3 Knitpicks nickel plated DPN's.

Island of Misfit WIP's

2008-10-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

I just got the brilliant notion of gathering together all of my WIP's for a group shot. Here, gentle reader, is the result. I give you, The Island of Misfit WIP's:

Now I'll introduce you to each member of this motley crew, in approximate order of age (i.e. length of time on the WIPland).

First, we have Branching Out. It's a good scarf--good yarn (Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool), good pattern, interesting to knit. Really, there's nothing wrong with it. So why is it living on a stitch holder? Why?

Next, meet Endpaper Mitts, made from Louet Gems superwash (black) and Koigu KPPPM (multi). These were in permanent limbo until a week ago, when I got a wild hair and decided to knit a few rows. See if you can spot the place where I started knitting again. It might not be obvious to anyone's eyes but my own, but if you can see a slight change, where the knitting takes on a somewhat darker or lighter appearance (depending on whether you call the cuff up or down), that would be the place where I resumed knitting. See, I forgot which yarn I had been picking and which yarn I had been throwing. I had a 50/50 chance of ending up with the same configuration of left-handed and right-handed yarn grips, but I obviously guessed wrong because the difference between the two sections is palpable. (It is even more so if you look under the mitt's skirt.) This is because there is a huge difference in tension between my continental knitting and my English knitting. Most peoples' continental knitting is looser than their English knitting, but for me it's just the reverse. I don't know why. I'm weird.

Moving right along, meet the Lace Ribbon Scarf, #2. I started this last spring, as a bus knitting project, and until fall quarter started a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't touched it since June. Now it goes to school with me. It's getting very smart. (Yarn: Classic Elite Alpaca Sox)

Next up: Jess's Gansey, which I started last August while I was in Pennsylvania. It's an OK project. I adore the yarn (Dalegarn Heilo). I am less enamored of the pattern. It is spread out onto 2 circs in this shot because I wanted to try it on to see if it fits over my boobs and hips. It does, but it looks like it might end up being really baggy around my waist, and I don't particularly want to add waist shaping to the already complicated process of tracking 11 charts, each with a slightly different row count. I am strongly considering frogging this and doing something similar but of my own fancy with the yarn. Which is lovely, springy, and happy on my hands and needles.

Next we have the Oak Rib Socks. I don't have much to say about this project except that I have really enjoyed working on them, and that the first sock was a kick to finish--and it fits! I knit on the second sock every now and then. It feels as if the cuff is taking twice as long to grow to its requisite length. I'm sure that's all in my head. Either that or it's all my fault...or something. "It's not you, it's me." Seriously. I like the yarn--it's synthetic, but of the microfiber variety, so it feels nice and silky and is knitting up beautifully (the yarn label is in view if you're curious). I like the pattern, though maybe I am getting a little bored with the ribbing. :::sigh:::

Here are the swatches I have knit, testing gauge and fabric drape/texture for the cardigan I plan to knit for my mother, all laid out on top of a skein of the yarn--Plymouth Encore, easy care 25% wool, 75% acrylic. My mom lives in an assisted living facility, so this sweater HAS to be machine washable; it also has to be really easy for her to put on and take off, because she's almost 76 and is having a few mobility and memory problems. She has had both of her knees replaced, plus had back surgery 3 years ago during which ALL of her lumbar vertebrae were fused--yep, that's osteoporosis for you. Drink your milk! And eat your almonds and leafy greens. (Lately I've been reading that magnesium is more important in preventing bone loss, but I'm not completely convinced yet. Magnesium occurs naturally in nuts and leafy green vegetables.) You can sorta see that one swatch (the left one) is knit in the stitch pattern for the Strawberry Lace Cardigan. That's because I was originally planning to make a rendition of that sweater for my mom. The second swatch is newer--I knit that on Saturday, I believe. It is straight-up stockinette, one section on US7's and the other on US8's. I like the US8 fabric better. This second swatch might suggest to you--correctly, it turns out--that I have decided not to knit my mom a Strawberry Lace Cardigan after all. Instead, I'm going to knit something else. I don't know what yet. I'll keep you posted.

Last but not least, we have the Better Bucket Hat, which i'm making out of Malabrigo Merino Worsted in a color called Paris Night. This hat really doesn't belong on this island of misfits, because I started it yesterday and will probably finish it at Purlygirls tonight. It is just here for a visit. A temporary stay in a holding cell, nothing more. Soon it will live with my other finished hats, hopefully to enjoy the occasional warming of my head. I predict that it will get a lot of use--the yarn is gorgeous, very soft and moderately fuzzy, so it should be a good hat (if it fits--fingers crossed, please, because I didn't do a gauge swatch).

And that's it for my WIP's, but I have one quick thing to add. Here is a pic of some wonderful, natural cream colored Irish wool that I got from a friend. She knit up the partial panel of a gansey sweater that you see here, and gave up on it. She was tired of moving the bag of yarn and partially finished sweater guilt from apartment to apartment, so she decided to let go and give away the yarn. Lucky me! I plan to frog out the panel, which I haven't done yet because it was obviously a tremendous amount of work, and I feel somewhat bad ripping it out. What you can't tell from the photograph is that this panel is 29 inches wide. It's a lot of stitches, knit on what looks like about a US5 needle. After frogging the panel, I think I'm going to re-skein all of the yarn and give it a bit of a soak in some Eucalan to recondition it. I suspect the yarn has been living in these tightly wound balls for awhile, and I think it could use a break--not to mention some air.

Stalling Out

2008-10-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

I feel that my knitting has stalled out since I finished the Strawberry Lace Cardigan (which I'm wearing right now, actually--I wear it a lot). I can't seem to bring myself to start making the cardigan I want to make for my mom. I have the yarn (Plymouth Encore Worsted in a heathered cranberry color that I ordered from Webs). I was planning to make her a Strawberry Lace Cardigan out of it, but I can't get up the requisite enthusiasm for the project.

It's not that I haven't been knitting. I have. I have 5 projects in various stages of completion: a long-hibernating Branching Out, my second Lace Ribbon scarf, my first pair of socks (Oak Ribbed Socks), a long-hibernating (until recently) pair of Endpaper Mitts, and a rendition of Jess's Gansey (which I'm a little worried about, but that's a topic for a different post). I've made progress on all of these projects over the last week. The Lace Ribbon scarf is my go-to bus knitting project. I picked up the Endpaper Mitts the other day on a whim, and knit through the second thumb gusset increase on the first mitt. My knitting on that project is turning out a little wonky, though--I'm doing the stranded colorwork two-handed, and my tension is just really different when I throw vs. when I pick, with the latter being much tighter than the former.

I think my lack of enthusiasm is at least partly due to the fact that I've been knitting almost exclusively from patterns for the last several months. In fact...I think the last off-grid project I did was my black cardigan, which I finished last April. I think I'm in that stuck place, between my desire to go off-grid again, and my sense of obligation to my mom, and of course this stuck place is profoundly shaped by guilt. Specifically, I keep daydreaming about some lovely green yarn I bought during the Fiber Gallery's sale last spring. I even moved a skein out of my basement stash container up to the cedar chest in my bedroom, so it would be more accessible for my fond gazes, pets, and smooshes. I must be a bad daughter, if I would even consider knitting up the green project before knitting up my mom's cardigan! Of course, there's no reason I can't knit her something improvised rather than sticking to the original Strawberry Lace plan, but I worry. I worry that an improvised project might not turn out, either to her liking or to her size, or both. I have a decent amount of confidence in my knitting, but I am still somewhat uncertain when it comes to knitting for other people. I have it upside-down, for some reason: I worry about saddling a loved one with some kind of a Rube Goldberg knitted contraption of a sweater, rather than assuming that anyone would love to receive a custom handknit--and anyone who wouldn't love it is not worth knitting for or worrying about, right? So goes the conventional wisdom, anyway.

But the truth of the matter, if I am honest, is that I don't like staying on the safe path marked out by patterns. Despite my worry. So maybe I should just knit an improvised sweater (EPS or Walker-style) for my mom. Whatever I do, it has to be easy to care for (which the Encore should ensure) and easy to wear. Mom is getting up there, so whatever "creative" stuff I want to do has to be hung on a pretty basic infrastructure. Opening up the possibility is making me feel a little bit more inspired, I guess. I have the yarn sitting next to me on my desk. I should do some swatching, see what I can come up with.

Raisin (Strawberry) Lace Cardigan + First Sock

2008-09-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of my current (active) projects: the Strawberry Lace Cardigan from Veronik Avery's Knitting Classic Style--I'm calling it "Raisin Lace Cardigan" because of the color yarn I'm using--and the Oak Rib Socks from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks.

Today I finished up the right front of the cardigan. I already had the back, left front, and one sleeve completed. Then I did the 3-needle bind-off at the shoulders, to join the fronts to the back. Here's what everything looks like right now:

And here's a close-up of the lace and the turned hem (seen from the inside--shrunk down to the smaller Flickr size to minimize the blurriness):

Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash in a deep reddish mahogany color--the pics don't do justice to the color. The yarn is much redder in person, I think.
Needles: Inox Turbos in US6 and US7

Oh--2 mods that I have done so far: I added waist shaping (possibly too much--but hopefully the wrappiness of the cardigan will help to mask that) and I knitted the hems closed rather than waiting to whip-stitch them at the end--it's sort of like doing a 3-needle bind-off, but without the binding off step, if that makes sense. I just like the effect better.

Here are the socks (YAY! First socks!):

Yarn: Berrocco Comfort Sock in dark gray, which I won via a random number generator contest from the Rose-Kim Knits blog. I really like it--it's knitting up super soft and comfy feeling.
Needles: Knitpicks DPN's, I think they are a US1.5, but don't quote me (I don't feel like looking it up right now).

That's it for today. Two posts! I'll probably be pretty quiet for the next little while, until I finish this cardigan...

February Lady Sweater

2008-09-09T11:05:00.001-07:00

I finished my February Lady Sweater while I was in Pennsylvania--I completed it on 8/2, to be precise, and I've worn it a LOT since then. I love it. I even got a random compliment on it from a cute teenage girl working the Starbucks booth at the Rivertown Crossings mall in Grandville, MI. She said, "I love your sweater! Where did you get it?" When I told her I had made it, she made a disappointed face and said, "It figures." A teenager liked my sweater--I was so flattered! Here are some pics of the FO:

Here it is on me:

Here it is on a hanger:

Here's a somewhat fuzzy close-up of the buttons (I ended up using the ones on the right):

DETAILS (already posted elsewhere, but here they are again):
Pattern: February Lady Sweater, by Flint Knits (All the rage on Ravelry!)
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool in teal, just under 6 skeins
Needles: #6 Inox Turbos (for the yoke--it's a 29" circ) + #6 Addi Turbos
Gauge: ~5.6 st/in

MODIFICATIONS:
I adapted the pattern for DK-weight yarn (it's written for worsted weight yarn). I cast on 110 stitches, followed with 4 rows of garter stitch. I then did 5 sets of short rows to shape the neck (for 10 extra rows), with the wrap&turns staggered across the front of the sweater. The result is pretty cool looking--it gives the garter stitch a "grain" at the neckline. I did 23 sets of raglan increases (I worked these at the same time as the short rows) -->294 st, followed by 40 YO increases (every 7 stitches, with 8 stitches between 2 YO's at center back) for the eyelet row-->332 st. My button bands are 12 st wide, and on the eyelet row each button band got a YO 10 stitches in from the edge, which worked out fine. Because the yarn is DK weight, you can barely see the eyelets anyway. I followed the eyelet row with 7 garter ridges (14 rows) and 1 lace repeat before separating off the sleeves--63 st for each sleeve, 54 for each front, and 98 for the back. My last buttonhole ended up being in the last right-side row before I started the lace pattern. You'll notice that I added 5 extra stitches to each front panel, to give some overlap ease for the button bands--I'm very glad I did this, because I didn't like how close together the raglan seams looked, otherwise (I re-knit the yoke). For the body, I cast on 7 st for each underarm -->220 st (12 for each button band, 196 lace st or 28 horizontal repeats) and I ended up doing 26 lace repeats vertically, followed by 11 garter ridges (22 rows). For the sleeves, I picked up and knit 9 st at each underarm, and decreased the 2 extra st's in the next row ---> 70 st/sleeve (10 lace repeats). I did 28 vertical lace repeats followed by 8 garter ridges (16 rounds).

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS:
Bust: 35"
Sleeves: 12" from armpit to cuff
Body: 18" along button bands, ~13" from armpit to hem
Shoulder: (measured along raglan seam from front neck to armpit): 8"

Grand Rapids, MI

2008-08-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be staying in Grand Rapids for a week longer than I expected. I'll be flying home (to Seattle) on August 19th, next Tuesday. I'm here to do as much work as possible toward cleaning out my parents' house, getting it ready for sale (probably--I can't imagine what else we might do with it, though it's a really bad time to put a house on the market).

I've been frequenting the LYS's here--mainly Threadbenders in Wyoming, MI (the suburb of Grand Rapids where my parents live) and City Knitting, up in Eastown (that's a neighborhood in Grand Rapids near the East Grand Rapids border). Yesterday I went over to City Knitting to look for a nice machine washable yarn for the cardigan I want to make for my mother. I had been planning to use Cascade 220 Superwash, but I didn't like the results when I ran my swatches through a typical machine wash/dry cycle, to simulate the kind of care my mother will be giving the sweater. The swatches held up OK, but they lost a fair amount of stitch definition, and I think they would pill after a few more wash/dry cycles like the one I gave them. I bought a bunch of heather gray Berocco Comfort at Threadbenders on the 9th (Saturday?). I really liked the yarn, but when I looked through my mom's wardrobe I found a lot of gray stuff. When I asked her what color she would like, she actually asked for burgundy, which I also think would look much nicer on her than gray. So...I decided to exchange it.

I found a nice heathered burgundy colorway in the Plymouth Encore Worsted--it's 80% acrylic and 20% wool, fully washable and dryable--and bought a skein of that to try out. Alas, they only had 4 skeins, so I can't buy the whole sweater's worth there, but I decided to get a skein to swatch with anyway (I'll use it for something else if I can't get the rest in the same dye lot). While I was checking out, the owner, Lorilee, invited me to their Tuesday evening "knit night." I decided to go--I'm so glad I did. I had a wonderful time. There were about 15 people there, and the conversation was lively and interesting (as were the projects everyone was working on). It was just the thing I needed, to take my mind off the emotional ups and downs I'm experiencing. So--thanks to everyone who was there, once again, for being so welcoming and funny, and for making good conversation with me!

Today I went over to Threadbender to try to exchange the Comfort (they do returns for store credit only)...hoping they might have the burgundy Encore, but they didn't, and nothing else really screamed "Mom!" to me either. So I ended up exchanging the Comfort for a bunch of heathery blue Ultra Alpaca, to make a sweater for myself (probably), and I will just look for some of the burgundy Encore when I get home.

In other news...I finished my February Lady Sweater (FLS) on Saturday, Aug 2nd. I only had one sleeve left to go when C and I left Seattle on the 1st, so I worked on that during the plane and train rides, and completed it in the car on the way from Harrisburg to Williamsport in Pennsylvania. I bought a small bottle of Eucalan at City Knitting yesterday, so I have finally washed it, and it's blocking now--it looks great. I also gave it a few pre-wash/block wearings, and I love it. Washing seems to have opened the lace up a little bit, which is good. I think the fit will still be OK; it's hard to tell when it's laid out flat. Oh, and I decided to go with the silver vine-y buttons that I bought at the Fiber Gallery. They look really nice on it.

I also started my rendition of Jess's Gansey during this trip, and I have about 2" of the body completed (which includes a picot folded hem). So far it's turning out nicely. I thought it would be more of a pain to follow all of the charts, because they are all different lengths, ranging from 6 row repeats to 24 row repeats, and there might even be one chart with a longer repeat than that (I don't have it in front of me right now), but it's not bad at all. It might get harder once I'm through a full repeat of the longest charts. We'll see.

Sweaters full of ME

2008-07-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

So I took some pics of several FO sweaters on my bod. I'm not going to re-post all the pattern and yarn information, just the pics. They all look much better on, though for some reason my red-eye reduction doesn't seem to be working, so I look like Satan's spawn...

In reverse order of completion:
1. Green Gable, which I love wearing:

2. Ebony Seeded Cardi (my own design), which I also love wearing:

and...

3. Wicked.
First, a close-up of the neck with my smiley mug. I could not get my camera to stop overexposing my face when I tried to photograph this sweater, for some reason. I should really get a better camera. Oh well, it got the color of the yarn right (it's more of an eggplant color--the second pic, below, makes the yarn look more purple than it looks IRL.)

Next, a pic showing off that handy kangaroo pocket:

Feburary Lady Sweater Progress

2008-07-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm making good progress on my February Lady Sweater. I'm well into the lace pattern now, and I'm really enjoying the knitting process. The yarn, as I've said before, is delightful to work with--springy and light, with a nice, dry hand; and the pattern is both easily memorized and fun to work. I love watching the little gull wings emerge, row by row. Here are some pics:

First, the full sweater, modeled by Iphi. This is a really nice picture of Iphi--she doesn't usually photograph very well (mainly because she won't sit still when a camera is pointed at her), so I was happy. I think this pic captures her personality very well. As for the sweater, though, the pic doesn't really do the color justice. (I am thinking of buying a better camera...) The pics from my previous post are much truer.

And here's a pic showing the lace in more detail:

And that's about it for today. Happy knitting, all.

2008-07-08T19:53:00.001-07:00

OY! I haven't posted here in a long while. I have pics to post, some WIP's and some FO's. Most of the FO's are pictured "empty." I'll photograph them full of yours truly when I get a chance. I'll start with the FO's:

First and foremost, because I'm really proud of it (even though I'm not crazy about how the yarn is behaving--I seem to have gotten an extra-fuzzy, extra-pilly batch of Lamb's Pride, or maybe it's the black dye), here's my Ebony Seeded Cardigan (oddly, it has been completed since late April, but I don't seem to have a pic of the finished object):

Pattern: Ebony Seeded Cardigan by ME! :-) It's a top-down raglan, with little seed stitch diamonds against a border of stockinette stitch, edged with seed stitch collar, cuffs, hem, and button bands. I knit the button bands along with the sweater body. For the collar, I picked up stitches around the (crew) neck, increasing at each edge, every other row until I reached the desired depth, though I still might like to have a little bit more collar at the back of the neck. We'll see. I might decide to open it back up and knit a few more rows.
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted in Ebony, 6 skeins
Needles: #8 Addi Turbos, #8 KnitPicks nickel-plated DPN's for the sleeves

Here's my finished Wicked:

Pattern: Wicked, by the Zephyr Gals
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca, Eggplant, 4 skeins (I'm pretty sure I only used 4))
Needles: US#7 Addi Turbos

Here's my finished Green Gable:

Pattern: Green Gable, by the Zephyr Gals
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, Holly Green, ~2.5 skeins
Needles: US#6 Inox Turbos and Addi Turbos

Here's my Lace Ribbon Scarf (also completed but lacking a finished pic). I LOVE this scarf!

Pattern: Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery
Yarn: Fleece Artist Superwash Merino, in Ocean (?), handpainted
Needles: #3 Inox Turbo (though I figured out yesterday that my #3 Inox needles are incorrectly sized--they are 3mm needles, which should be a US2 or 2-1/2)

Aaaaaand here's a couple of hats:

Pattern: Foliage, by Emilee Mooney
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Black
Needles: #8 Addi Turbo 16" + #8 Knitpicks Nickel-plated DPN's (for the top--it's a top-down hat)
I love this hat! I am thinking about knitting another with some Malabrigo Worsted that I got at the Weaving Works during the Destination: Yarn event a couple of months ago.

Pattern: Based on An Unoriginal Hat, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka The Yarn Harlot), but adapted for a worsted-weight yarn
Yarn: Frog Tree Merino Worsted in pea green
Needles: #7 (I think) Addi Turbos + #7 Knitpicks Nickel-plated DPN's
I knit this hat for my friend L. I think she likes it, but it's slightly too small for her. I liked it when I tried it on (my head is slightly smaller than hers), and I fully intend to knit a bulky-sized version of this hat using some lovely Malabrigo Chunky yarn that I got at the Fiber Gallery.

I think that's it for the FO's. On to some WIP's:

First, a sweater (cardigan):

Pattern: February Lady Sweater, by Flint Knits (All the rage on Ravelry!)
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool in teal
Needles: #6 Inox Turbos (for the yoke--it's a 29" circ) + #6 Addi Turbos
I have started this sweater twice. I'm adapting it for DK-weight yarn (it's written for worsted weight yarn), and I didn't like how the front raglan seams looked. They seemed too close together to me, because the pattern doesn't include any extra stitches for the overlapping button bands. I have preserved my first attempted yoke, and I'll compare it with the second, once I get that to the same depth, to see which one I like better. I love working with this yarn. It has a nice, dry hand and it feels lively in my fingers. Garter stitch really shows off its depth of color and tweedy goodness. Anyway, I'll post details of my modifications when I have the sweater done.

Here's a blurry close-up of the buttons I'm considering:

The ones on the left are shell; the ones on the right are a silver colored metal. I'm not sure which I prefer. I'll wait and see which looks best when I've finished the sweater, or at least when I've done a substantial portion of the lace section. (Whichever ones I don't use will get used soon enough--I'm thinking of making a v-necked cardigan with some grassy green Cascade 220 I've got in my stash.)

Now a couple of scarves:

Pattern: Branching Out by Susan Pierce Lawrence
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool in charcoal gray
Needles: US7 Addi Turbos

Pattern: Lace Ribbon Scarf (see above--I loved this pattern so much I wanted to knit another)
Yarn: Classic Elite Alpaca Sox in a terra cotta color (my photo sucks ass, and doesn't do the color justice)
Needles: US3 Inox Turbos (see above--this is a 3mm needle, which kind of torques me off)

And finally, these:

Pattern: Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang
Yarns: Koigu KPPPM, merino hand painted (the variegated yarn) + Louet Gems superwash merino (the black yarn)
Needles: US2 (3mm--how I love properly marked needles!) Knitpicks Nickel-plated DPN's
I really like how these are turning out, but the pattern is a pain in my ASS! I'm just not very proficient with either continental knitting or colorwork. (I'm doing the colorwork 2-fisted, so these two facts are interrelated.) Pictured is my first mitt, and I haven't done any work on these for several months.

Whew! All caught up. I'll try to post more regularly--it gets time-consuming, what with duplicating updates to my Ravelry projects page, which is easier to update. I still want to keep the blog, though...I just think I should come up with something more interesting to do with it.

wicked, in progress; and shedir (FO)

2008-02-29T14:24:00.001-08:00

here is a bad pic showing the sweater i'm currently working on, wicked, by zephyr knits. please forgive the quality of this and the following photos; i need to buy some lens papers and clean my camera's lens! this sweater has been relatively fun to knit, though i have to admit that i prefer knitting sweaters without a pattern. it's just a little bit more exciting. i'm knitting the pocket now, but before that i was kind of lost in stockinette hell. also i had the flu for a solid week--i was too sick to knit!--so i was forced to take a hiatus from working on this project. hopefully i'll finish it in the next week or so--the sleeves should go pretty quickly.

and here's a couple of pics of my rendition of the shedir, from knitty.com. (i can't link to the pattern because it's not on their regular site--you have to download the breast cancer awareness "surprise" supplement.) i really enjoyed knitting this hat--the itty bitty cables were relatively easy to keep track of, yet interesting to knit. there was always something going on, with this hat--i knit it on #3's, and i cabled without a cable needle, so it required my full attention. still, i screwed up the last row of cabling before the crown, and had to rip back 4-5 rows. that was exciting! it worked out OK, though.

here's me in the hat:

and here's iphi with the hat:

and here are some specs on the project:

pattern: shedir, by jenna wilson.
yarn: anny blatt merinos, purchased at the fiber gallery. color: some kinda deep yet bright turquoise/teal blue. it's really nice in person.
needles: addi turbo #3, 16"; did the crown on 2 needles, the second one being a 16" inox #3. didn't use a cable needle.

i like the finished hat quite a lot. it's a little tall for my head (the pic of me modeling it doesn't show that aspect), but otherwise it fits nice and snug. i also liked working with this yarn. it gives beautiful stitch definition, and it's wonderful on the needles. sproingy and soft. and superwash!

mom's cardi

2008-02-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

alas, my camera battery is dead, or i would post a picture of the yarn i purchased for my mom's cardi. i'm designing this one myself. i plan to knit it seamlessly from the bottom up (no reason to do top-down construction, since she lives in michigan and won't be able to try it on while i'm knitting it; instead, i'm knitting to her measurements, and i think it's easier to do that with bottom-up construction). anyway, i'm using cascade 220 superwash for the project, purchased at the fiber gallery. i prefer knitting with regular cascade 220, but i think that a sweater for my mom needs to be machine washable. i just don't think she'll remember to hand wash it.

if you want to see a color sample for the yarn, click here for their online color cards. i'm using color #863: scroll down to the 11th color card; it's the second sample from the right. unfortunately, the photo doesn't do the color justice: it's a beautiful burgundy/mahogany heather that i think will look really nice against my mother's porcelain skin. (she's a "winter" in that 1980's seasonal color family lingo; i, OTOH, am somewhere between a "spring" and a "summer," i'm not sure which.)

my plan is to knit a v-neck cardigan. i think i'm going to use a seed stitch button band, and i might hem the bottom of the body and the cuffs, for a neater edge. i haven't decided yet whether to include pockets. maybe. if so, i want them to be slit pockets (aka afterthought pockets) rather than patch pockets, so i'll be adding them at the end. i'm going to knit it mainly in stockinette, and i'm looking for a nice leaf panel pattern to run up both sides of the front, up the sleeves, and up the back to the shoulders. i think i've found a good candidate in my copy of the harmony guide to aran knitting. this will complicate doing afterthought pockets, because i'll have to mark off, clip, and unravel a bunch of stitches for the pocket, preferably centered right on the leaf panel. maybe i'm exaggerating the difficulty...don't rightly know since i've only ever done an afterthought pocket against a background of stockinette...we'll see.

3 WIP's and a FO

2008-02-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

lots to blog about today. i'm working on 2 hats and a sweater, and i finished my earthy raglan pulli last sunday. here come some pics, starting with the FO:

this is the earthy raglan pulli after washing and blocking. actually, i think i had worn it once before snapping this picture, too.

this is me in the sweater. i used my camera's timer to take the picture. i think the color looks closer to its actual shade of brown in this picture, except you can't see the lighter bits inherent in a natural, undyed yarn. here are some stats on the sweater:
yarn: cascade ecological wool
skeins used: 2 (estimated), maybe a little bit more or less. (each skein is 480 yards, and i'd say i used less than 1000 yards. if i had a good scale, i'd weigh it, but i don't. i had some left over, but...i initially bought 3 skeins, which i wound into 6 approximately equal-sized balls on the yarn shop's ball winder. plus i used some of the leftover yarn to knit the pair of slippers i'll tell you about in a minute. anyway, it's difficult to estimate how much i actually used.)
needles: US #9
gauge: 4.5 st/in (much tighter than that recommended by the yarn's manufacturer, but i very much prefer the feel of the fabric at this gauge.)
pattern: from the armpits down, i'm following the mr. greenjeans pattern from knitty.com. sort of. that sweater is a cardigan, so i had to adjust the cable & rib pattern to work for a pullover. the number of repeats is different, plus i placed the cables differently so that they would be centered in the front and so that the two cuffs would be symmetrical. for the neckline and yoke, i simply followed barbara walker's instructions for the "classic raglan pullover" in knitting from the top. when i started the sweater, i wasn't yet certain what i was going to do from the armpits down. i knew i didn't want it to be a plain pullover, but i wasn't sure how i wanted it to look. at the same time, i had been thinking about making mr. greenjeans from the first time i saw it, when a friend introduced me to knitty.com back in december. (an auspicious occasion, indeed--from there i learned about the HUGE knitting blogosphere, and ultimately found ravelry.com, which is just...the best, most comprehensive, interesting, and entertatining online knitting resource ever.

anyway, i'm very happy with how this turned out. the sweater is very comfortable, and warm without being too heavy. i made it so that the hem of the sweater hits just above my hip, and the sleeves hit just above the wrist (which i think is called "bracelet length"). i really enjoyed working with this yarn. immediately after finishing the sweater, i cast on for a pair of fuzzy feet, also from knitty.com, using leftovers of this same yarn. those knit up really quickly, and i felted them and gave them to the intended recipient before i had a chance to take a picture of them! they were for a close friend, so i will probably have an opportunity to take a picture of them at a later date. i wasn't thrilled with how the felting process went...i think to be optimal, i would want to knit a larger version of the slipper pattern and felt them longer. that way the fabric would be thicker, smoother, and warmer. (and yes, because i'm obsessive, i'm going to knit my friend another pair.)

here's my second take on C's orange hat. someone stole the first one i made for him (see earlier blog post about that), which is a bummer, but...what are you going to do? he loved the hat so much that i can't not knit him another one, especially since i had a full skein of the same yarn sitting in my stash doing nothing, earmarked for nothing else.

here are the pieces of the tillie hat i'm making for my roommate, A. this pattern is so cool! i love all of the thought that mk carroll put into crafting the little details of this hat--the chained "hem" at the edge of the brim, the way the crown increases are worked (the hat is knit from the top down), the fact that the brim is knit on the bias...just everything. she's a great designer. i am very happy with how it's knitting up, though it's difficult to say how well the final product will fit. i subbed the yarn, and i've never knit with peace fleece (the yarn called for in the pattern), so...we'll see. i'm knitting it with mission falls 1824 wool, a superwash merino that is very soft with a nice luster to it, which i'm knitting on #6's, as specified in the pattern. (yes, i got gauge with this yarn and needle combination.) i love the nice, firm hand of the final fabric; i just hope it has enough give in the finished hat.

and finally, here is the neckband and the first few rows of my newest project: wicked, by zephyr style, aka sarah and rachel. so far i'm really loving this pattern, too, for the same reason i love mk. carroll's hat pattern, above: attention to detail. i'm rapidly realizing that this focus is what characterizes my knitting. i like to pay attention to the details. in this pattern, i'm all about the way they staggered the twists in the cable-y ribbing. i also like the raglan increases they selected--it's a basic KFB(x2) increase, with no seam stitches in between; very simple, but also subtle and attractive, it doesn't compete with the texture of the yoke. i also like that this pattern can be made in many different styles. i intend to make it long-sleeved, with the pocket on the front (though i'm planning to knit/attach the pocket differently from how the instructions say to do it). i'm using some deep eggplant colored berroco ultra alpaca worsted weight yarn. it's knitting up beautifully! i already knew i loved the yarn, because i have made a couple of different swatches with it since i purchased it in september or october. i have 8 skeins of this stuff...i will probably use 5-6, which means i'll have a bunch leftover to make a scarf and/or a hat--yay!