Finished Object: Starsky

When I moved from suburbia to the big city, I knew it was a compromise. I knew that I was giving up things that I loved, such as my rose garden, my built-in bookshelves, and my sunny window seats. But I was gaining a better location, fancy-schmancy floors, and shiny new kitchen appliances.

However, it never occurred to me that I would be losing some other important things when I moved. For example, I don’t have a front yard or a back yard anymore. So I have no place to take outdoor photos. I don’t even have a driveway in which to take cheesy hey-look-at-my-cute-car photos. AND I don’t have a photographer anymore. Peter has been taken away by an alien species that calls themselves a “law firm.” He’s allowed to visit me briefly in the evenings before it’s time for bed, but by then there isn’t any good light for photographs.

So bear with me with my finished object photos. I’m still trying to locate a good location to take photo and I’m trying to master the art of using a tripod and the camera’s timer.

Pattern: Starsky from Knitty, size small
Yarn: Berroco Pleasure, 66% angora, 29% merino wool, 5% nylon, 130 yards per ball, 10-ish balls
Needles: US size 10.5 (6.5 mm) for the body and US size 9 (5.5 mm) for the belt and the belt loops

Comments:
1) I was between sizes for the sweater and I knew that I should probably size up, but I was my usual ultra-paranoid self and worried about running out of yarn. Technically, I had enough yarn for the medium size, but I still worried. I worried even more when I realized that I wasn’t even close to getting the right row gauge. Instead of 18 rows in 4 inches I was getting 23-ish rows in 4 inches. So, I reasoned, I would need to knit more rows than the original sweater. More rows = more yarn used. Did I make the right decision? I think so, I have less than a ball left and I don’t think it’s enough to make up the size difference.

2) As a result of my size choice, the sweater doesn’t fit quite the way I thought it would. I thought it would be longer and more jacket-like. But, oh well, it still fits and I still like it.

3) I must have incredibly short arms. I had to reverse-seam much more of the cuffs than the pattern said to.

4) Because my row gauge was so different from the original row gauge I had to rework the armcyes, sleeve increases, and sleeve caps. I started using math and being a good girl, but then I ended up winging all the shaping in the sleeves. Luckily it all worked out.

5) I made this sweater in 12 days, beating my previous record of 14-ish days for Grace.

6) My new lack of a driveway made it impossible for me to do the traditional shooting with the finger gun from behind an open car-door pose. (Yes I suppose I COULD do this pose in my townhome complex's common drive, but I'm not ready for my new neighbors to think I'm crazy. Yet.)

7) I put on this sweater today despite the 75-degree weather to be long-distance sweater twins with Rachel—even for just a few minutes. Hi Rachel!

BTW--does anyone know why the leading (i.e. the space between the lines) in my posts always gets smaller after I place a centered photo? How do I stop that from happening? I don't like scrunched up text.

Yay fixed! Thank you SuzannaBanana and Joanna!

For Rachel, with Love

When we last saw Lotus, I had finished the body and had been lured away from all that stranding by SHINY RED! As soon as Shiny Red was finished (which was last week), I cast on for a Lotus sleeve. I was a little sad about it because I had just come to the realization that I couldn’t knit both sleeves at the same time. Oh sure, I could do that “two socks on two circulars” trick but I know that four needle tips and four balls of yarn plus the need to keep track of the colorwork pattern would have driven me to the insane asylum. So one at a time. Drat.

After I cast on and knit a couple of inches, I did what I seem to be doing a lot of with this sweater. I frogged. I started the sleeve doing the magic loop and it was just not a pretty sight. I couldn’t keep floats loose enough particularly when switching from one side of the loop to the other. And fiddling with the loops? UGH. So I started again. This time with double pointed needles (DPNs).

The DPNs made me happy until Rachel happened to mention somewhere in this mammoth post that her gauge on DPNs was a full stitch smaller than her gauge on circular needles. I fearfully stared at my sleeve. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to approach it with my Knit Chek®. Would there be more frogging? Would this be the first project that ever truly elicits tears from my eyes? The answer is: No, not yet.

If anything, my gauge is off by about 0.25 of a stitch over two inches. Changing needle sizes won’t help that. Plus it will block out, right? (This is what I’m telling myself, don’t spoil the illusion.)

But the use of DPNs was still going to cause me problems—soon the work wouldn’t fit on my needles. I have stubby little 6-inch DPNs because, for some reason, I thought I liked short DPNs. I knew this impending doom was fast approaching and I knew that I wanted to get the work on circulars as fast as possible. So I ordered some 12-inch circulars. Well, the 12-inch circs aren’t here yet. What’s a girl to do? Cast on for another project, of course.

For months now, Rachel has been hounding me to start Starsky. I’ve been threatening to knit it since the pattern came out, but it never seemed to make it to the top of my knitting line up. But Rachel just won’t get off my case about it. “Knit it! Knit Starksy!” she says. The wheres, whens, and hows of me starting the cardigan have been dominating my conversations with Rachel because she can’t seem to let go of this obsession. Rachel claims that she wants me to knit Starsky so that we can finally be “sweater twins,” but I suspect that she wants me to knit the sweater so that she can lord the fact that I’m “copying her” over me at any time.

Despite my worries about Rachel’s true motives, I decided that it was Starsky’s time. I grabbed my bag of discontinued *sniff* Berroco Pleasure, knit a swatch and cast on. That was Wednesday. By Thursday night I had finished the back and started the fronts.

Why am I showing you this and giving you a timetable of the events? Yesterday, in an email conversation, Rachel indicated that she was jealous that I knit half a Starsky back in one day. So, naturally, I had to finish the back by the end of the day. In other words, I wrote this post with the sole purpose of driving Rachel insane with jealousy over my knitting speed. I have to do something to get to Rachel now because once I’m finished knitting this sweater, I’m going to have to endure Rachel’s taunts until kingdom come. What are friends for?

Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape

When I was a young kitten, not much older than Scout is now, my mother sewed a cape for me. It was made from red wool felt and lined with red satin. It had three buttons to keep it closed—red with white polka dots. I loved that cape. I wore it whenever I could. Even though the cape didn’t have a hood, everyone called me Little Red Riding Hood. Ever since I out grew that cape, I wanted another one. And now, I finally have one.



Pattern: Karis from Rowan 36, modified
Yarn: Kid Silk Night (67% kid mohair, 18% silk, 10% polyester, 5% nylon) in Dazzle (Shiny Red!), 3 balls
Needles: US size 6 (4 mm)
Modifications:

1) Obviously I made this into a cape rather than a poncho.

2) I worked the edges and the center similar to the way that many shawls are worked. Each edge had 2 garter stitch stitches followed by a YO increase on the right side rows. In the center, right side rows were worked YO, K1, YO. In order to do this modification, I had to add a stitch to each edge and decrease a stitch in the center.

3) I worked a single crochet edging along the front edges to neaten them up.

4) Added a button to close the front, but I didn’t make a buttonhole. I just shove the button through a YO close to the edge.




One more thing:
SHINY!

Feeling the Handspun Love

Remember when I went to Alaska and came home with some fiberly goodness? Well, I asked spinner extraordinaire Sarah of Morg to spin the fiber for me. Sarah—in her complete amazingness, spent months working on my fiber. It wasn’t the cleanest fiber in the world (that’s an understatement) so she had to do a lot cleaning and prep work before she could spin it.


Thanks to Sarah’s hard work and dedication, I now have over 300 yards of lace-ish-weight qiviut! It’s the ultimate souvenir from my Alaska trip: fiber bought in a fishing village from a local artist and spun by a dear friend. Sarah also sent me a copy of Arctic Lace aka The Qiviut Book. Soon I will use my lovely yarn to knit one of the patterns from this book. But for now I’m enjoying petting my skein of fluffy softness. It’s so light—holding it is like holding a cloud.

And as if all the hard work Sarah did wasn't enough, she decided to send me some more of her handspun yarn. The purpley pink hank is yarn that she spun from some Spunky Eclectic roving. I think it will make a nice contrasting trim on a sweater someday.

Thank you SO MUCH Sarah—for everything.

For you yarn p0rn addicts, gaze upon the fantastic photos that Sarah took. The photos show off the incredible spinning job that she did.

Red Hot Seduction

The day after I finished the baby blanket, I picked up Lotus again. That afternoon, I made a decision. I hated Lotus. Well, not exactly Lotus—just the knitting of it. I guess I just don’t like doing colorwork. I’ve known for awhile that hate intarsia, but I thought I liked stranding. Maybe not. Or at least I’m not a big fan of doing so much stranding.

Boy was I grumpy those first few days back working on Lotus. Then I fell into a nice two-handed stranded rhythm and I was happy again. Lotus was growing quickly. “It’s not so bad after all,” I thought. Then WHAM I hit the neck shaping. Dale of Norway sweater patterns are often written such that the body is worked back-and-forth (rather than in the round) after the neck shaping. I know that there is a way to work the neck shaping without casting off so that you can continue working in the round. However, I don’t know how to do that because I know precious little about steeking. I didn’t take the time to learn because I just wanted to finish up.

Normally, when I’m working a sweater, I’m very excited about starting the sleeves because I feel like I’m almost done. This time, I cast Lotus aside and started something new. Something that has been calling me. Something that has been tempting me. Something that I had to have the moment I saw it. Kidsilk Night in Dazzle, also called SHINY RED!

Shiny Red Kidsilk seduced me into buying it without a pattern in mind. I usually don’t buy yarn unless I know exactly what I’m going to use it for. That way, I get the right amount of yarn and I’m not building up too much of a useless stash. When Peter learned that the yarn was an impulse buy, he scolded me for becoming “one of those knitters who just buy yarn to have it.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that I have always told Peter that he should be happy that I buy yarn with projects in mind and that I’m really saving him money buy doing so, blah blah blah. It helps me justify spending so much money on yarn.)

As a result of my impulsiveness and Peter’s stern looks, I had to find a pattern for the yarn and fast. I looked at various shawl patterns and various KSH patterns until I saw the Karis poncho from Rowan 36. The photo in the magazine is terrible (out of focus), so I started Googling to find photos of completed Karises. I found some beautiful examples and I learned something interesting: Karis is knit flat and seamed in the back!

What I really wanted to make from this yarn was a cape, but I hadn’t found a cape pattern that I liked. From the photos of Karis that I saw, I felt that I could knit the pattern, not seam it, add a button or ribbon, and wear it cape style! Yes, it could be so. Right after I had my little revelation, I found that E had made her Karis into a cape! I emailed her to ask her how Karis worked as a cape and she said that it looked good. We emailed back-and-forth for a bit and I mentioned that I was hoping to find someone who had the pattern because I didn’t want to buy the whole magazine just to get one pattern. E kindly offered to let me borrow her pattern! I was so amazed and thankful.

Because I’m working this as a cape, I decided to “pretty up” the front edges. This involved some fiddling with the stitch count, and changing some of the unspecified increases to yarn overs. I also had to chart the pattern because I hate reading lace patterns that are written out. But it's working out and it's knitting up quickly. Yay me! Yay E! Yay Shiny Red!



Edit to add: Amanda the lurker who left a comment on the last post--please tell me your blog url. Email me (address in side bar) or leave another comment. New blogger seems to have lost your identity. :-)

Finished Object: Pinwheel Afghan II

Pattern: Oat Couture’s Pinwheel Afghan, DK weight, solid color version
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (80% Pima cotton, 20% Merino wool, 215 yards) in Alpine Lilac, 6 skeins
Needles: US size 6
Recipient: Allison and Greg’s baby
Modification: I did a provisional cast on and grafted the first and last row together.

Comments: I finished this baby blanket a week ago but didn’t get around to writing about it. As it turned out, procrastination was a good thing. Peter and I gave the blanket to the parents-to-be last night and I received the most enthusiastic response to a handknit gift that I have ever gotten—and it was from the dad-to-be, not the mom-to-be.

Allison unwrapped the gift (she knew what it was because Peter told her when I was knitting it—bad Peter) and was very happy and excited when she saw it. But Greg was fascinated. He kept studying the blanket and trying to figure out how it was made. At first, I gave a pretty general description of the construction, but he wanted to know more. He kept grilling me until I had explained how short rows worked and how to make lace.

After Greg understood the construction of the blanket, he suggested that the blanket could be made with different colored wedges. That’s right—a guy who knows basically nothing about knitting suggested a modification that is actually included in the pattern!

THEN, he suggested to Allison that the two of them learn how to knit. :) Allison didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but Greg was serious. He really wants to learn how knitting works. (I wasn’t sure if he wanted to learn to knit or just learn how the knitting changes yarn into fabric.) So, I suggested that he visit knittinghelp.com and look at the videos. I also told Greg that I would teach him to knit if he wanted.

Scout Happenings
Those of you who have sharp eyes may have noticed the chicken wire that now graces our stairwell railing. We have not taken to raising chickens in the house. (Though the idea of having fresh eggs is very appealing.) The wire is, in fact, known as Scout wire. Soon after we moved into our new home, Scout discovered that she could go outside of the railing and walk along the four-inch wide ledge—the four-inch wide ledge over a one-storey drop above a slate floor. Then, Scout learned that she could RUN along the same ledge. After watching her do this a few heart-stopping times, Peter installed the Scout wire.

Since the installation of the Scout wire, Scout has been keeping busy in other ways. Lately she has been reading Mockingbird by Charles J. Shields, a biography about Harper Lee. Scout was named after the main character in To Kill a Mockingbird—one of my all time favorite books. Mockingbird (the biography) was published last year. My parents went to hear the author speak and bought an autographed copy of the book for me. As Mr. Shields was inscribing my book, my mother casually mentioned that I named my cat after Scout Finch. So Mr. Shields added a little something for Scout. Now Scout thinks it’s her book.

Contest Results

I swear it wasn't rigged.

Contest 1 Answer: Hiawatha, Iowa. (And the knitting connection is the Song of Hiawatha Stole--one of the big lace projects on my to-do-someday list.)

Twenty-two people sent in the the correct answer. Good job everyone! I numbered the correct entries 1–22 based on the order in which the answers were received.

Contest 2 Answer: 9 years

Five people guessed the correct answer, but a lot of you were very close. Again, I numbered the correct entries 1–5 based on the order in which they were received.

This random number generator gave me two numbers:
5 and 4

And the winners are:
Contest 1: Rachel
Contest 2: Stoat

A Double Anniversary Requires a Double Contest

Somewhere in this month is my blogiversary. And today is my wedding anniversary. So it’s time for some contests.

When considering sponsoring a contest, I’m always torn. I’d like to get tons of entries like the contests that require the entrants to do nothing but leave a comment but I think a “contest” should involve more than drawing a name out of a hat (or a random number generator as the case may be). To solve my dilemma, I’m going to have two contests: one low-effort and one higher-effort.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The two contests have two different ways of entering! Please follow directions or your entries will not count.

Contest 1: Put a little effort in, in the nickelodeon
I went to visit my parents back in November. One of the purposes of the trip was to collect some of my stuff that’s been hanging out at their house. One precious object I retrieved was my first and only weaving project. I made this when I was in 4th or 5th grade using a loom that belonged to my elementary school. It has some mistakes (the biggest mistake is not my fault—someone screwed up when he or she warped the loom) but it’s a good beginner effort. You can see that I was already partial to pink at that age.

The elementary school that I went to had the same name as my hometown. And that leads us to the first contest: Name my hometown!

By hometown I don’t mean where I live now. I mean where I lived the first 18 years of my life. I have named this place in a post somewhere in my archives. My hometown has an unusual name and that name has a knitting connection.

To enter Contest 1: Send an email with your answer (city name AND state) to ScoutP (at) gmail (dot) com (Yes, that’s Scout’s email address, don’t abuse it!) A winner will be drawn from all correct answers.

Please forgive Scout’s grumpy expression, she just came home from the vet.

Contest 2: Take a wild guess
Another precious object that I took from my parents’ house was my wedding gown. It’s been living in this box since I got married, supposedly “preserved.” However, I notice that the veil and headpiece are turning funny colors. So much for preservation.

Nevertheless, I’m happy to have my wedding gown back in my possession. I’ve forgotten how pretty it is. I almost want to take it out of the box to wear again. And thus, the second contest: What anniversary are Peter and I celebrating today?

I’m fairly certain that I’ve never stated how long Peter and I have been married anywhere on this blog so you’ll just have to guess the number of years. You can take a wild guess or attempt an educated guess. I’m not giving any hints.

To enter Contest 2: Leave a comment on this post with your guess. A winner will be drawn from all correct answers.

Prizes!
I supposed you want to know what you’re playing for. The winner of Contest 1 will get his or her choice of the three prizes shown below. (Yes, three prizes for two contests, I can count, I just wanted to give the winners options. Only two prizes will be awarded.) After the Contest 1 winner selects a prize, the winner of Contest 2 will select a prize.

Prize 1: A slightly used copy of Vogue Knitting Accessorize. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought this book. I don't usually knit accessories. It does have some very nice patterns in it, but nothing that I'm dying to knit.
Prize 2: Yarny surprise! At least 4 full balls/skeins/hanks of yarn mostly left over my past projects. You know that I like to knit with natural and good quality fibers, so that’s what will make up most of the yarny surprise. (No, the yarny surprise is NOT in that bag, I was too lazy to pull out the yarn from my stash and that was the only plain brown paper bag that I could find.) I will say that Brown Sheep and KnitPicks will be represented in the yarny surprise.
Prize 3: Jewel-toned cotton yarn. This yarn was partly used then frogged from sweater that I never finished. I planned to use this yarn for knitting toys, but I’ll never get around to it.

Deadline: Have your answers in by noon CST on Saturday January 13, 2007. Winners announced soon after that.

Edit to add: I have enabled comment moderation for the duration of this contest. So don't worry if your comment doesn't show up immediately. Remember to follow the rules for Contest 1!

You all are . . .

. . . too kind
Thanks for the comments on Gathering Intentions. The sweater has already gotten a great deal of wearing time—and even endured it first stain. Lucky for me, the chocolate ice cream came out in one wash. Yay, for machine washable sweaters.

. . . too funny
After I expressed my desire to knit something simple, some of you recommended knitting socks. hahahaha! Ok, I could knit socks. I even looked at some of my stash sock yarn and considered knitting socks, but something much better came along.

A friend of mine (ok a mostly a friend of Peter’s) is expecting a baby. Peter had told me that said friend was due in February. Over the summer I completely ignored the impending baby, thinking that February was so far off and that I had plenty of time to knit up a baby blanket.

Of course, now it’s practically February and I just learned that the friend’s doctor now thinks the baby will come early. Eep! So I began a baby blanket a little over a week ago. It’s Oat Couture’s Pinwheel Afghan again. Once again I must say that I LOVE this pattern. I could rave about all of its great qualities, but then I would be repeating myself. I said it all before.

I took this photo last week when I thought I was going to blog. But then I didn’t. I’m now nearly 5/8th of the way finished with the blanket. With any luck, I will finish this week and the blanket will arrive at the friend’s house before the baby does. This baby blanket is a dusty lavender color. I was going to knit a pink blanket, but Peter talked me out of it reminding me that the friend’s next child might be a boy. Oh well, everything can’t be pink.

Oh, and the blanket is being display on part of our new sectional. What do you think? It’s big and fluffy. The dark brown bits are leather (not the dark brown pillows) and the cushions and pillows are microfiber. It’s my attempt at finding furniture that the cats can’t completely destroy.

Tune in next time for a contest. Yes you heard right. You too could win yarn! Or at least something yarn related.

Finished Object: Gathering Intentions

Excuse the wonky colors in photo. The colors in the photo below are more accurate.*

Pattern: Gathering Intentions from Inspired Cable Knits, smallest size +
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (50% cotton, 50% acrylic, 100 g) in pink, less than 7 balls used. Yarn was a gift from Barbie.
Needles: US size 7

Modifications:
1. I wanted something between the smallest size and the next size up, so I added a few stitches to the fronts and back. Then, I adjusted for the extra stitches in the shoulder shaping.

2. I did the set up rows as described for the back on the front and both sleeves. I asked Fiona Ellis (the book author) why she didn’t include the set up rows on the other parts of the sweater and she gave me a wholly unsatisfying answer. If you want to know the details, email me.

3. Instead of making two I-cords for the hem and sewing one to the inside and one to the outside, I made one long I-cord and threaded it through the knitting. I did the same for the I-cord tie at the sleeve.

4. Adding stitches to the front and back and using short-row shoulder shaping created a mess at the shoulder seams. Normally, I decrease two stitches across cables when I reach the end of the cable, but this didn’t look quite right. After much messing around, I ended up doing cable crossings on my 3-needle bind-off row. The word fiddly is an understatement. I needed to grow at least one more hand. Unfortunately, the nuclear radiation from my smoke detectors was not enough to cause a spontaneous mutation and I had to forge ahead with just two hands.

Bone-Head Move: As you can see, only the left sleeve has a tie. I knew that I wanted to put the tie on the left sleeve because I’m right handed and a tie on my right sleeve would be sure to end up in any food I ate or cooked while wearing the sweater.

Naturally, when I started setting in the sleeves, I didn’t bother to look at the sleeves because, as we all know, sleeves are interchangeable. That’s why most patterns say, “make two.” You see the flaw in my logic, don’t you? I did a great job sewing the left sleeve to the right side of the sweater.

General Comments: I love this sweater already. Wearing it is like wearing a comfortable old sweatshirt. (The ties are reminiscent of the shredding cuffs and hem of the sweatshirts that I refuse to throw out.) A cotton sweater is much more practical in Houston than wool sweaters. However, if I did this sweater again, I would make the body a bit longer.


* It's interesting that this photo looks greenish on one of my computers but looks okay on the other computer. And the sweater looks practically fluorescent on the first computer and just find on the second. Oh well. It's not a scary pink sweater.

The Good, The Bad, and . . .

The Good

Bliss had a contest recently. It was one of those contests that I like entering (just leave a comment!) but never rarely win (random drawing). Amazingly, my named was picked. I think it was fate. The prize was sock yarn, but not just any sock yarn. No! This sock yarn is the exact same yarn as the yarn with which I made my only pair of adult socks. Does this mean that I have to make the same socks again? I hope not.

Anyway, my prize arrived yesterday and it made me squeal in excitement. Bliss sent more than just the sock yarn! She sent a little pattern booklet, a Pop Top needle holder thingy, and chocolates! I had to take this photo right away because I wanted to eat the chocolates. *burp* Thank you so much Bliss!

The Bad

Last time I was here, I promised to do some complaining. You see, lately, I haven’t had much desire to knit. At least I haven’t had much desire to knit the projects that are currently on the needles. Perhaps ripping Lotus three times was starting to get to me. Perhaps knitting pink cables is starting to get boring. (That can’t be true!) Who knows why I have the knitting blahs? For days I’ve been poking at Lotus and Gathering Intentions hoping that they would either magically finish themselves or magically turn into something that I want to knit.


The sad part is that I don’t know what I want to knit. Or at least I didn’t know what I wanted for days. Just the other day I realized what I want to do—I want to knit some plain boring stockinette. That’s right! I want to knit without looking at my hands! I want to knit without thinking about what I’m doing! I want to knit something so quickly that it amazes everyone around me!

I think this is the first time I’ve ever wanted to knit nothing but stockinette. And that, my friends, is a problem. I have yarn for a couple cabled sweaters. I have yarn for a couple of lace sweaters. I have yarn for a few lace shawls. I do not have yarn for a stockinette sweater. In fact, I don’t even have any stockinette sweaters in my “to do” list. Sure I could find a nice stockinette sweater pattern and the buy the yarn, but my stash is so out of hand right now. It needs to be knit down.

Sigh.

I can’t abandon my current projects. That would not be good for me. One of the biggest motivations in my life is the act of finishing things. And I can’t start a new project. With two large works in progress, starting a new one would drive me batty. So I’ve decided that I have to push on and finish up Gathering Intentions. Perhaps finishing something will give me a knitting high.

Since the last time you saw this sweater, I’ve finished the front and most of the sleeves. I already attached the front and the back together because I was messing around with the getting the cables looking good with the shaped shoulders. FYI—cables, short-row shoulder shaping, and the 3-needle bind off is not a good combination. Much fiddling happened. (Perhaps that’s why I’m not so thrilled about this sweater anymore?)

With any luck, this sweater will be completely finished next week.

The No Longer Ugly

I ripped and reknit the offending rows on Lotus. Then, I duplicate stitched the flowers. I know some of you thought the previous flower didn’t look so bad, but don’t you all agree that this flower is millions of times better?

Rip, Rip, Rip Little Stranded Sweater

First, listen to this. (At least the beginning of it, okay?) That’s where the title came from.


Well, I was sailing along on Lotus for a good while. Naturally, that fact meant that I was due for another session of sweater ripping. I had reached a point where two not so good things were happening. First, the spaces between the brown stitches were getting long. In other words, the brown floats were getting long. Secondly, the pattern required me to use three colors in a single row. And to paraphrase what Theresa said here, knitting with three colors is much harder than knitting with two colors.

So I came up with one of my brilliant-in-theory-but-ugly-in-practice solutions. I would do a quasi-intarsia-stranded knitting thingy. (“Thingy” is a very technical term. It is similar to that other highly technical term, “stuff.”) The idea was that I would cut a strand of the brown yarn, use it to knit the narrow brown section, drop the brown yarn, knit around the sweater repeating the process. Then on the next row, I would carry the brown yarn backward from the end of the brown section back to the beginning of the brown section and knit across again. Brilliant, no?

I reasoned that these “backward floats” would not look much different from the regular floats AND, if I was successful in keeping the floats loose, the knitting would look no different than regular stranded knitting. I was correct on the first point, but not correct on the second point. Although my backward floats were sufficiently loose enough, the knitting looked weird. A little pinched. See? (Again, if you don’t see it, just pretend that you do.)


Now I know that it’s not THAT bad, but I can tell and if I leave it that way, I will forever glare at that section of the sweater and will always imagine that it is much more pinched than it actually is. So the offensive section has to go and I have to decide on how to rework these rounds.

My options are these:
1. Duplicate stitch those brown sections.
2. Have long brown floats AND somehow make 3-color stranding work for me.

I’ve decided to go with the easy way option 1 first, particularly because I already have strands cut to the duplicate stitching. Also, if I decide that I don’t like it that way, ripping out the work will be a lot less painful. If I were to do option 2 and then NOT like the way it looked, I would be cursing loudly as a ripped each and every triple-stranded stitch out.

Tooting my own horn

By the way, did you all see my “Extreme Weaving” in the most recent Knitty? Scroll down! That's the wrong side of my Moni. I believe that Theresa thought I was a bit touched in the head for doing that much weaving. But then I give everyone lots of reasons to think that I'm touched in the head. Why should this be any different?

Tune in next time when Laura complains about being in a knitting funk and attempts to resurrect the stalled out Gathering Intentions.

A Partial Meme

Barbie and Valerie did a Christmas meme and I thought I’d join the cool kids and play along, too. However, as I was considering the questions, I decided that one question in particular would make a much more interesting story than the entire meme would. So here’s my answer to:

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:

(Well maybe not a “favorite” memory, but certainly a very memorable memory.)

When big brother and I were young, we played a lot of “let’s pretend” games. One of our favorite games was Fort. We didn’t have a permanent playhouse or anything like that, so we had to construct a Fort every time we played the game. Our Forts were sometimes two chairs with a sheet over them, sometimes the space behind the couch (with the couch cushions pulled up to provide extra walls), sometimes old boxes, and sometimes the tree in the front yard that we liked to climb. Basically anything that we could get our hands onto could become a Fort.

Like all forts, our Forts were in constant peril. Occasionally we had to defend our Fort from heavily armed unnamed attackers. Other times we had to survive a long brutal winter on meager supplies. Or perhaps we had to fight off wild animals while exploring the surrounding wilderness and living off the land.

One afternoon in December, big brother and I were left alone to amuse ourselves. Dad and gone out somewhere and Mom and gone to lie down because she had a headache. We were instructed to stay inside the house and keep quiet. (No, don’t call CPS on Mom, we generally didn’t get into trouble.) Big brother decided it was a good time to play Fort. I was either four or five at the time and big brother (as always) was a year older.

Back then, our family had an artificial Christmas tree. It was one of those old style trees with branches that had to be inserted one-by-one into the tree “trunk.” If you’ve ever seen one of those trees, you know that they weren’t full and lush like the artificial trees that you can buy today. You could see through that tree.

You know where this is going, right? Well, big brother took one look at the Christmas tree and declared that it would be our Fort that afternoon. We were rather small, there was a gap between the tree and the wall, and lots of space under the tree—it was perfect. Soon we were well established in our Fort and began the daily chores that residents of all Forts had to perform. We were cooking and cleaning and repairing the crumbling walls of our Fort.

Suddenly, the unthinkable happened. TIMBER! We surveyed the damage: the tree had landed on the coffee table, the lights and the paper chains were still on the tree, but tinsel, paper “snowflakes,” and odd-shaped ornaments made by childish hands were scattered all over the floor. Some of the tree braches had even come out of the trunk. We were horrified. No only did we destroy our Fort, we destroyed Christmas!

I started to cry. Santa would never come now! Where would he put the presents? Why would he even bring presents to a pair of bad little children? But big brother grabbed my hand and bravely marched down the long hallway to Mom and Dad’s room. We crept in and climbed on the bed. Big brother nudged Mom and said, “Mommy? Mommy? A disaster happened!” (Yes, those were his exact words according to Mom.)

I don’t really remember what happened after that. Mom probably helped us clean up our “disaster.” I’m sure we were scolded and punished. But Santa came anyway. Perhaps he knew it was just an accident.

I'm Stranded

Believe it or not, I’ve joined another KAL. But don’t worry, I’m not becoming a joiner. Like the other KALs I’ve joined, this KAL is one that happened to coincide with my knitting schedule. I’ve joined Stranded: The Colorwork Challenge. So here’s the first bit of KAL-age:

What are your projects for this knitalong?

Dale of Norway Lotus. I think that will be enough of a project for me. After all, I’ve frogged the entire thing once and frogged back several rounds a second time.

The second frogging incident was a result of my laziness. I had read all about yarn dominance and began my project with the yarns held in appropriate hands: the background pink in right hand and the dominant white in my left hand. All was right in the world. Then, I reached a transition point in the pattern—white becomes the background color and pink becomes dominant.

Of course, this transition doesn’t happen in one round. Oh no! That would be too easy. The transition happens over about five rounds and in those five rounds, part of the pattern repeat has white dominant and part of the pattern repeat has pink dominant. To keep the appropriate colors dominant, I would have to switch the yarns back and forth in my hands several times as I worked the rounds. Naturally, I found the switching annoying and didn’t do it. I simply picked a round in which to switch hands “once and for all” and knit on my merry way. Bad choice.


You can plainly see where I switched hands. Looks bad, doesn’t it? Okay, I know you’re all thinking that I’m being crazy and seeing things again, but humor me. Tell me how awful it looks. Don’t worry, I’ve frogged the offending rows and reknit and all is right with the world again.

Is this your first colorwork project? If it isn't, what was your first, and has it survived the test of time?

My first colorwork was also my first knitting project ever—a Sweater Curse sweater. I have no idea if the sweater is still around. I’ve done other colorwork since then, but Lotus is my first project involving steeks.

Random Knit Blog-age:

The fate of the Swallow Tail Shawl has been decided. Rachel offered to send me replacement yarn in exchange for the shawl. I’m sure it’s no secret that I’m a process knitter. Why else would I knit a gazillon wool sweaters that are horribly impractical for life in it’s-too-hot-here-Houston? So, I jumped at Rachel’s offer. Weee! Now I get to knit with cashmere AGAIN! To show my gratitude to Rachel, I won’t link to a goofy photo of her (like I did here) or remind her about how she’s a failure at being an apathetic sock knitter.

Cat Blog-age:

I never quite understood why so many of you accused me of having a stuffed cat (or a drugged cat) whenever I showed a photo of Scout mugging for the camera. That is, I didn’t understand until now. I went to my parents house for a visit at the end of last month. While I was there I tried to take a photo of my “other” cat, Sam. Sammy was my cat until my mother decided that she liked him and wouldn't let me take him to Texas when I moved here. Considering the fact that Mom has never liked any animal before Sam*, I allowed him to stay with Mom. While I was home, I tried to take a good photo of Sam. I particularly wanted show off his pretty blue eyes. He didn’t seem to understand what I wanted.

Yes, his eyes were open and he was looking at the camera each time I pressed the shutter button! After chasing him around with a camera for a couple days, he had enough. But anyway. See the bit of blue carpet next to Sam? That’s the color of his eyes. Although Sam and the house were obtained separately, they are a matched set. I tried to talk Mom into letting me take Sam this time. Dad was ready to pack him up and toss him on the plane with me, but Mom said, "Sam is used to being an only cat." I guess that's a no.

* Mom has to be in the running for the Best Mom Ever for her tolerance of all the pets that big brother and I had. Mom really doesn't like pets at all. When big brother and I were growing up, she wouldn't interact with our pets and flatly refused to touch them unless absolutely necessary (such as when they were bothering her). Officially, big brother and I had one dog, two cats, three rabbits, two hamsters, two chicks, and a bunch of fish. Then there were the countless number of animals that "followed us home." These "foundling" animals were usually dogs but we ocassionally found cats and I once found a feret. (The feret was immediately sent packing by Mom.)

FO: IK Swallowtail Shawl

. . . and I'm back! Okay, I came back home last week but I've been extremely busy since then. As a result I have lots to say, but I'll limit my blatherings to knitting.

Swallowtail Shawl


Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl from Interweave Knits Fall 2006
Yarn: Belisa Cashmere in pink (100% cashmere, 500 yards/ball), less than one ball
Needles: US size 4, 3.5 mm
Finished Dimensions: 57 inches wide, 25.5 inches tall

Comments:

1) I cast on for this project because I needed airplane knitting. Lugging big sweater pieces on airplanes was not my idea of a good time. Plus, my sweaters are on long metal circular needles, the possession of which would have marked me as a terrorist when going through TSA security. If I hadn’t been flying, I probably wouldn't have made this shawl at this time.

2) I’m not terribly excited or pleased with the way the shawl turned out:
• I still have 9 grams of the original 50 grams. That means a whole 90 yards of this delicious cashmere is going to waste.
• The gauge is a bit too big for the yarn. But going down a needle size would produce an even littler shawl. Plus, I only have one TSA approved set of knitting needles and they are size 4!
• The shawl is pretty tiny and it’s bigger than the dimensions given in the pattern! Scarf would be a better name for it. Here’s a size comparison between the Shaped Triangle Horse Blanket and the Swallowtail Scarf. The Horse Blanket doesn’t even fit on the bed. The Scarf, on the other hand, is a good size for a Scout Blanket. (In fact, Peter calls this shawl Scout’s Shawl.)

3) Is the Swallowtail Scout Blanket destined for the frog pond? Maybe. Probably. I’ll keep my eyes out for a better pattern. I know what I’m looking for now: a rectangular lace scarf that has a very short row repeat and no border so that I can use up every last bit of cashmere goodness. Yes I’m serious about frogging it—I didn’t even trim the ends so that I could pick them out when the time comes.

See you soon!

I'm going on a short vacation starting tomorrow. Internet access may be spotty. I'll answer emails and such when I return at the end of next week. Scream at me if you want special attention.

Happy Turkey Day to all!

Paying penance for sins against the Fair Isle gods

For give me Fair Isle gods, for I have sinned . . .

Some of you may remember that I purchased a kit for the Dale of Norway Lotus sweater waaaay back at the beginning of the year. I had intended to knit that sweater during the spring and summer figuring that it would keep me occupied during my long “no buying yarn” months.

Right.

As all of you probably noticed, I did not knit the sweater over the summer. In fact, I didn’t even take the yarn out of the bag until this past weekend. What took me so long? Well, honestly, I was a bit fearful of starting the sweater because I did not want to swatch for it.

Normally I am a very dedicated and compulsive swatcher when it comes to working on pieces where size matters. (When size doesn’t matter, I pretend that I don’t know what the word swatch means.) I knit good-sized swatches, I wash them, block them, and then measure them. If a swatch is not up to snuff, I repeat the process.

Now that I have sung my own praises about my excellent swatching technique, I have a confession to make. I don’t swatch in the round—not even for pieces that will be ultimately knit in the round. I know the swatch police would like to arrest me for this practice, but they shouldn’t. I have learned, through experience, that my flat-knitting gauge does not differ from my in-the-round knitting gauge. So no problems! Usually.

Lotus is obviously a Fair Isle sweater and, like all Dale of Norway Fair Isle sweaters, is knit in the round. Now I may think that I’m the most perfect even stockinette knitter in the world, but I am not foolish enough to think that my gauge knitting Fair Isle flat is exactly the same as my gauge knitting Fair Isle in the round. On the contrary, I know without even trying that my gauge knitting Fair Isle flat will be drastically different from knitting it in the round. That’s why I didn’t start Lotus sooner—I didn’t want to swatch Fair Isle in the round.

But over the weekend I bit the bullet. I started swatching for Lotus. And I really, truly tried to swatch it in the round. I tried the long-float-across-the-back method and the knit-tube-to-cut-open method but both methods were so fiddly for me that I was sure that I wasn’t going to get an accurate gauge measurement anyway. Plus the swatches looked like crap. So the swatches were frogged and I knit the dang swatch flat. Shame on me.

I know that I was asking for trouble but I felt that the troubles that I was inflicting on myself for knitting the swatch flat would be equivalent to the troubles that would happen if I depended on the gauge from an ugly swatch produced by an overly fiddly method. And, I reasoned, at least if I knit the swatch flat, I wouldn’t be irritated making the swatch. I’m sure many of you would tell me that doing Fair Isle on the purl side is rather fiddly as well, but at least it’s a fiddliness that I have dealt with before and that I can manage without wanting to throw the knitting across the room.

So I knit the swatch flat. Initially the gauge was a bit tight, but a nice bath and overnight air drying caused the swatch to bloom to just the right size. I cast on with only minor anxiety.

I knit the bottom border. Hmmm. Seems a bit too wide. Oh well, you can’t really measure a narrow piece like that on the needles. La de da. After knitting the border, I measured the length of my needle—it’s supposedly a 40” Addi, but it’s really a 38.75” Addi. Cheaters. But at least that explains why the piece will fit on the needle when joined in the round. Perhaps the piece isn’t too wide after all. La de da. I started the Fair Isle bit. I knit and knit and knit. 270 stitches + 6 cutting stitches every round is a lot to knit.

Then, for some reason, I felt compelled to measure my gauge. It is TOO BIG. Imagine that. It’s off by one lousy stitch over four inches, which is close, but as my junior high history teacher always said, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” One lousy stitch over 270 stitches is 1.5 inches. That’s 1.5 inches of extra ease on something that will already have about 3 inches of ease. Also, that gauge was measured before washing and blocking so the final gauge is probably off by more than one lousy stitch. Nope. It isn’t going to work.

It shall be frogged. I will go down a needle size. I will measure my gauge again and hope and pray that it will be right.

One shining point in my sad trip to the frog pond—I’ll be able to replace the ugly, curling mesh border pattern with a simple, sturdy, non-curling garter stitch border.

What does one do after she’s offended the Fair Isle gods? Go pay homage to the Cable gods, of course!

Baby Aran and Ruffles: Two FOs for the Price of One

I finished two projects last week but never got around to blogging about them. I guess I was distracted by the bobblectomy. Without further ado, I present a sweater and a scarf:

Baby Aran


Pattern: Heirloom Aran Baby Set (but just the sweater, not the hat) from Interweave Knits Spring 2004, size 12 months
Yarn: Rowan 4-Ply Soft in color 370 “Whisper,” 100% merino wool, 191 yards per ball, 3 balls used
Needles: US size 3
Recipient: Nephew Loganberry
Comments:
1) I didn’t do any modifications to this sweater. I didn’t even use a 3-needle bind-off for the shoulder seams because the sweater has saddle shoulders.

2) You’ll notice that Scout is not modeling this sweater. Putting a cat into a pullover and getting her to pose for photos is much harder than draping a cardigan over her back. Unfortunately for Scout, I still tried to get a torture modeling photo anyway. Yes, that is the only photo that I managed to take before she started trashing around. I had to get the sweater off her FAST.

3) I still need to find some good buttons to put on the button placket. However, I find the button placket position to be a bit weird.

See button placket.


See saddle strap covering up entire button placket.


Uh, aren’t you supposed to sew buttons onto the button placket? If I did that, the saddle strap wouldn’t sit straight. I’m confused. Should I sew the buttons right where the placket meets the front of the sweater? Is the placket there just so that one doesn’t have to sew the buttons right on the top edge of the front?

Ruffles

Pattern: Ruffles scarf from Scarf Style
Yarn: Handmaiden Silk Maiden in Berry, 50% silk, 50% wool, 300 yards, 1 hank
Needles: US size 7
Finished length: 56 inches, a decent length for a “decorative” scarf
Cat: Scout (I love it when she cocks her head like that)
Peter’s Sarcastic Comment: “Wow, it looks so warm!”
My Comment: I washed the scarf and now I wish I hadn’t. The yarn became much more drape-y and my nice tight fusilli spiral is now floppy. *sigh* But I still love it because it’s soft and curly and red.

Bobblectomy Tutorial

Instructions on how to remove unslighty bobbles.

Remember my bobble-ful Serenity sweater? I threatened to cut off all the bobbles when I got the sweater back from Yarntopia. Well, the sweater is still there, but I decided to try some practice bobblectomies to see how annoying it would be.

So here it is, just for you, my first bobblectomy!
(click photos for biggie versions)

The starting swatch. I made a few practice bobbles (just in case I screwed up) and then started the Serenity cable pattern. I'm using some very bright, leftover Encore.


First, anchor the stitches above and below. This will prevent the stitches from dropping and will give you some guidance after the bobble is gone. Leave the stitch markers in place until you're happy with your work.

Put a stitch marker in the stitch below. This bobble was started by k1, p1, k1 into one stitch. So here's a marker in that stitch.


Put a marker in the stitch above. Note that the marker goes through both legs of the stitch above! This bobble ended with sl1, k2tog, psso. The big-ish stitch below the marker in the photo was the last stitch of the bobble.


Find the middle stitch of the bobble. I put a marker in just to show the stitch. You don't have to find the stitch exactly in the middle, but you should be close. CUT one of the legs of the middle stitch.


Unravel both ends. The bottom will unravel easily, but the top will need to be picked out. When you're done, you should have one end on the right of the hole and one end on the left.


Now you need to replace the bobble with a stitch—in this case a knit stitch. I'm starting with the end on the right of the hole. First, thread the yarn up (from back to front) through the stitch below (your stitch marker should still be there to help you).


Next, thread the yarn through the stitch above—go through both legs of the stitch! Again, use your stitch marker for guidance. (Your needle will go down through the right leg and up through the left leg. Photo shows both happening at once.)


Finally, thread the yarn down through the stitch below.


Tada! A new stitch where the bobble used to be! I removed the bottom marker but left the top one so you could see where the new stitch was created.


Now thread both ends to the back of the work and weave the ends in opposite directions. The end that was to the right of the hole should be woven to the left, and the end that was to the left of the hole should be woven to the right. Use this article by the s'wonderful Theresa for help in weaving ends.


Weave through a few stitches in each direction, making the back of the work nice and tidy. Trim ends.


And here's the cable pattern with one bobble removed. I followed the same technique that I showed above except I replaced the bobble with a purl stitch.


The whole process worked as I anticipated it would, but I'm not sure I would want to repeat it so many times for the sweater. Plus, the thought of cutting all that beautiful yarn into short bits makes me cry.