November 2006 Archives

My latest purchase -- the Sterling Silver Waves and Swirls Shawl Pin from Chrissy at Scotts Mountain Crafts on Etsy.

I had wanted to get a shawl pin at Rhinebeck, but nothing did the trick. After starting Botanica this past weekend I knew I'd have to find something soon.

I've been meaning to buy something at Etsy -- supporting small business crafts seems like such a good thing to do. Plus, the chance of getting something unusual or unique is so much greater. I liked Chrissy's work, and I placed a order of Saturday. She's very easy to work with and she responds quickly. I requested a special order at 7 AM on Saturday and by 8:30 AM we had a conversation and my order was placed. My pin arrived today and it was exactly what I expected.

The quality of the pin is superb -- no burrs, no sharp edges, but it's still lightweight so it doesn't weigh down the shawl. It's obvious it's made by a knitter. I love how the hammered look and how it bows out ever so slightly.

Her prices are very reasonable too. With the holidays coming up, this would be a great gift for a fellow knitter, or a great add-on if you're making a shawl for someone else.

I'm already deciding what I might put on my wish list.

Each year around Christmastime, I try to pick a single project -- something special -- to work on during my time off. This year, my last workday is Dec 20th, and I don't return until Jan 3rd.

I only have a couple days of activities planned, and that's the way I like it. I'm counting down the days to being able to wake up, curl up in my leather chair, put on some Tivo'd Christmas specials, and knit knit knit.

But I don't seem to have THE project in mind for this year. The one that comes the closest is Pewter Coat by Shirley Paden (IK Winter 2006).

  

I *love* the lapels, and the gray color is perfect for going with so many outfits. No, there's no chance I'd make it out of 100% cashmere yarn, but finding a substitute shouldn't be too bad.

The sizing is a little awkard. It comes in a 40" and 50" (probably because it was easiest to layout the cables that way). So some thought on how to resize it will be necessary. Of course, that's after I figure out how wide I would want to make a knitted outwear piece.

I like the design a lot but I'm not 100% sold on it yet.

Another that comes to mind is the Tweedy Aran Cardi. Barbara's and Ei's are gorgeous.

Hmm...it seems like I'm obsessed with cables. Well, I do really enjoy them -- but they're not a must.

So, I'm looking for ideas. Things you've seen in magazines, as free patterns, pattern books -- whatever. If I like the pattern I'm OK with tracking it down via a library *cough*Starmore*cough*, but I need to make sure I have my yarn and pattern in hand by the 20th, and that's just over 3 weeks away (3 weeks!!!). I'm focused on sweaters -- intricate socks or lace wraps are a lot of fun, but Christmastime knitting is all about the sweater for me.

So I'm looking for inspiration people. What do you think I should knit?

You knew I wasn't done messing with this pattern, didn't you?

The more I thought about it, I became convinced the center and the edge were both pretty, but not together. I decided to keep the edge and swap in different patterns for the center.

I've always loved vine stitch, so it wasn't much of a leap to add that in. I swatched several patterns, but vine stitch won because it created wavy lines but the edges are straight -- it didn't compete with the waviness of the edge.

I also added in a little flower bud flanking the center. Although I didn't know it at first, this wrap has a strong garden motif -- the center vines, the flower buds, and the leaves on the edges. I'm dubbing this one Botanica, although it's just a working title for now.

On a side note, photographing lace is hard. Between the shadows and the eyelets taking the focus, as well as the difficulty getting correct color during the short sunlight of late autumn, these pics leave a lot to be desired. The lace looks much prettier in person.

And now that I've settled on the stitch patterns, I'm going to take a break to make a quick little something for my nephew.

I wanted to knit something new after finishing the first knee high (I know, second sock syndrome...blah blah blah). I've been thinking a lot about the lace knee highs I've been planning to make with the Sliver Moon Farm yarn I got at Rhinebeck.

I started swatching and before I knew it, the socks morphed into a wrap. It's hard to pick up in the pics, but the center area's pattern gives the outlines of hearts. I wish I could say I planned it that way, but it was really just dumb luck when I combined the stitch pattern that way.

I've only frogged a half-repeat to change around the way the pattern works. I'm fighting my urge to change it again. Christy has been really helpful in pointing out my obsessive nature when it comes to designing something myself. I'm trying hard to just go with the flow and let this one happen, but I'm not convinced that I've picked the right border. The center motif feels too angular in comparison to the wavy edges*.

I could always cut the yarn and knit up a couple repeats with another edge for comparison.

I know...I'm hopeless!

* I wrote this post on Friday night, to post this morning. Now that I'm able to look at the pics with a fresh eye, I like the border more. Maybe it wasn't such a bad call after all.

Last year I finished a pair of socks over Thanksgiving weekend.

This year, I finished one really long knee high.

I learned a few things about STR Medium weight. The ball band suggests 8 SPI. 8 stitches per inch made for a very thick, very stiff sock. After knitting the foot at 8 SPI I considered selling off my STR stash because it was that bad.

Then I was over at Margene's, and she mentioned the same thing. Well, the next day she wrote that many people suggested going up a couple needle sizes. I gave it a try. much better

It's knit at 6 SPI but it's plenty dense, and wonderfully springy too. I am really curious if the 8 SPI is a typo. I don't see how that could be the recommended gauge.

I split the hank so I could use up every inch of yarn. When I finished the STR, I switched to a complimentary color of Koigu and 1x1 rib, and finished off with a tubular bind-off. It's the biggest sock I've ever made and I love it.

For scale, here's the full shot.

I'll do just about anything I can do lessen the amount of finishing on a sweater. So I knew I'd be doing the hem a bit differently. The pattern instructs you to sew the hem to the inside of the sweater when you're done.

Instead, I cast on provisionally...

knit the hem, the purl turning row, and enough rows to match up with the hem.

To make it easier to knit the hem, I pin it together so I'm not fighting the curl of the stockinette, and thread a smaller needle through the yarn holding the provisional stitches.

Then, I knit together one stitch from the front with one stitch from the bottom of the hem, as if I was doing a k2tog*.

A pic of the front and back...

It doesn't look any different, but I've skipped a couple hours of finishing. That sure feels different.

*edited - originally i wrote ssk but that's not what I do...I was writing this post a little too late at night!

The saga of this yarn continues, but I'm getting closer people!

I love working out sizing issues, but these are the most problems I've dealt with all at once.

• Finished Sizes are calculated with the center cable band overlapping. I'm planning to insert a zipper, so I have to account for that.
• Yarn Bloom is the most drastic I've ever experienced. hate the bloom But it's the bloom that gives the yarn its incredible loft. love the bloom
• Yarn Resilliency or lack thereof. Take a look at this example

pre-stretching	post-stretching

That was after stretching it a half dozen times, and not abusively.

Again, you readers bailed me out. Bigtime.

So here's the plan.

• Knit the fronts, taking into account the lack of cable overlap, yarn bloom and yarn stretch.
• Wash both fronts and see how much they actually grow.
• Stretch them a little.
• Decide how wide to make the back.
• Insert periodic self-doubt and profanity.

The things we do for pretty yarn.

I swatched and washed the Kathmandu yesterday. It took several tries before I got the gauge right.

This stuff blooms *a lot*. The recommended needles are 5 mm / US 8. After washing the swatch on those needles, I got 3.75 stitches per inch. Uhm, not even close to the 4.5 listed on the ball band.

I went down to a 4.25 mm / US 6 to get that gauge post-washing. I really didn't mind though -- I prefer the feeling of smaller needles in my hands anyway.

Several of you commented that the yarn bloomed when washing and stretched when wearing.

Since I was between sizes, I went with the smaller size. It should be about 1.5-2 inches smaller than the cardi I'm measuring against (a favorite from Banana Republic -- no I didn't knit this one!) when it's washed, so if it stretches a bit I should be OK.

Do you see what I see?

Here, take a closer look.

And no, it hasn't even been washed yet.

What gives? Well, it took me a while to piece it all together. I think I knitted my swatch tightly when trying to get the gauge to go down to 4.5 stitches per inch. But when I'm just casually sitting and knitting, I'm knitting at my more normal tension. The yarn is just about 4 stitches per inch.

This just isn't going to cut it.

Since both Jacqueline and Julia mentioned that the yarn stretches out with time, I don't want to knit it so loosely. I'm going to have to experiment a bit more and see what I can come up with.

For those of you who have used this yarn -- what gauge (post-washing) did you get? What kind of needles did you use?

I changed my mind on the yarn I'm using for Arwen. The Aurora 8 was stuck in customs so I went down to Rosie's yesterday where Carol helped me pick out a great replacement -- Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran.

Replacement is really the wrong word, because I'm *much* happier with this yarn than my original choice. I think the less vibrant color suits the design better, and I've been wanting to try this yarn (or the Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran that preceeded it) for a few years now.

The color is a beautiful, shadowy shade of blue and green. I'll be swatching and casting on today. This rainy weather is a perfect stay-in-the-house-and-knit kinda day.

A few pics from my mid-autumn garden. While I love to garden, autumn and winter are my favorite seasons. I love the jewel tones that dot the plants, and I'll never tire of seeing berries pop out from underneath our first snowfall.

View the whole set in my flickr album.

Quite a while ago I promised you guys a pictorial of the tubular bind off. It took 8 months, but here it is.

I always think about things in terms of goals (do more of such-and-such, spend less money on this-or-that). I even do it with my knitting (just look at all my goals posts).

While visiting with Christy this weekend, Michelle mentioned all the life lists she's been reading lately.

So it got me to thinking, what about a knitting life list?

Here's mine -- a lifetime list of knitting-related things to accomplish.

Notes:

I plan to review and revise this list periodically, just like I've been approaching my yearly goals.

1. Approach knitting like a hobby and not a project that needs to be managed. In other words, keep it fun.
2. Knit St Brigid or another Starmore aran.
3. Start off each year with less stash than I did the year before.
4. Knit something special for everyone special in my life. I don't mean a pair of socks here. I mean something unique and treasured -- the perfect thing for everyone who matters in my life
5. Keep the stash organized and catalogued.
6. Knit what I love, and love what I knit.
7. Don't forget to let go of the knitting occassionally. A corollary to #1.
8. Go to camp.
9. Knit a colorwork project. I'm not talking a hat here. Something large, but something I'd actually wear. Jade Starmore's St. Aula (love the hood!), and Kaffe Fassett's Brocade from Rowan 38 come to mind.
10. Share the craft with others. This could be through formal teaching, or helping out a friend, or even tutorials here on the blog.
11. Publish some patterns. I realized this year how hard this is while having a job that takes a lot of my focus. But I know if I don't do this, I'll regret it. It may not happen for a while, but I don't want to lose site of the fact that I really want to do this.

So what about you? I'm curious to see what others think, so feel free to post this on your blog if you'd like.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I really have a hard time using a yarn that pools or flashes.

So imagine my delight when I re-tried the yarn with a slightly smaller stitch count (52 sts) and a plain stockinette foot.

NO POOLING

To compare the difference, here's the old sock in the diagonal rib with a few extra sts. I think there were 60 sts in the sock ( the stitch pattern made for a smaller sock). The pooling was just about as much as I could handle.

But this? This is behaving like Koigu, with its short color changes.

I'm not getting overly confident though -- I know this could change at any moment.

Toe-Up Cast-On

Debi asked in the comments which cast on I used.

I've been using Judy's Magic Cast-On since the article came out this past spring. I've tried lots of different cast-ons: provisional for a short row toe, figure 8, the rectangle method (don't know what that's called), Turkish, and a few others that aren't coming to mind.

I first tried knitting socks on DPNs. I preferred the short row toe then, because the other methods were a lot harder for me to execute with the DPNs. Once I switched to circs, I quickly became a fan of the Figure 8. It was quick, and after knitting the toe it was easy to go back and tighten it up.

When Meg Swanson's article came out in last fall's Vogue Knitting, I gave the Turkish cast on a try. I know a lot of toe-up knitters like it, but it didn't seem as smooth to me as the Figure 8. Everyone knits differently though, so don't discount that cast-on because of me. I think I'm in the minority. If you're curious how to do the Turkish cast-on, Debi did a great tutorial for it.

So, back to Judy's magic cast-on. It's become my favorite because (like the Figure 8) it's not fiddly, and (unlike the Figure 8) you don't have to go back and tighten anything up. It's as tight as it should be from the very beginning.

Just like I promised, I started knitting a pair of socks with the fest yarn. It's STR in Rocktober.

I always obsess over a pattern when I'm using variegated. I tried several and then remembered the Diagonal Rib socks on the Interweave Subscriber-only section.

I gave it a whirl and it looked good. I've been working on them on and off all week.

I modified them to be toe-up, and decreased a couple stitches on the instep. I don't think I have narrow feet (they're 8.5 inches around the ball of my foot) but I always seem to need to make socks narrower around my foot than the pattern says.

But guess what? As much as I love how it looks, I hate knitting it. All the twisty knitting to get those lovely diagonal lines? Pure torture.

So last night I finally admitted how I felt about them.

So. Much. Better.

Life's too short. Knit what you love, and love what you're knitting.

No matter how great a design is, I always need to make some mods to make it fit my body and style preferences.

The biggest mod I'm planning is to change the sleeve type. Arwen's sleeve is knit together with the body. Something like this.

At first I was excited to try out a new sleeve type, but after thinking about it, this sleeve will not work well for me.

Let's take a look at a traditional set-in sleeve.

On the left, a pretty standard armhole for a set-in sleeve. On the right, what my armhole looks like.

When you're busty, you have more stitches to decrease before you get to the shoulder width. See the difference in the widths of the pink shading?

So, let's go back to the Arwen sleeve.

At first I thought I'd add a dart between the arm and the body, to ease in the additional fabric under the arm. Like this:

I think it will work, but I'd have to play around with the numbers, and possibly buy some cheap knit fabric and cut it up as a sample first.

I've been doing a lot of futzing around with design elements lately. So I'm feeling lazy.

Instead, I'm going with my tried and true raglan sleeve. I know I can make it work, and it gives me an excuse to write up a tutorial on how to create the right raglan for your body.

There are 2 or 3 other mods that I'm planning:

• Lengthen the body.
• Add a closure -- probably a zipper .
• Add in some body shaping. I'm not sure if I'll do short rows at the bust, or waist shaping, or a little of both. But just like I would need to add in some shaping to bridge the size differences between my body circumference at the armhole and shoulders, I need to bridge the difference between my hips, waist and bust.

I want to stress though, there is no problem with the pattern as written. These are mods for my body, so it will fit my proportions and style preferences.

In fact, a really nice feature about this sweater is that modifying its width or length is super-simple. It's a great sweater if you want to ease yourself into modifying a pattern to fit your body.

If you're between sizes and want a more custom fit, you can cast on a few less or more stitches and get just the width you want. Since you don't have to worry about armhole sizing, you don't need to plan for how to deal with those extra stitches when you get to that point.

Who's in with me?

There are no rules to this KAL, just a bunch of knitters enjoying a great pattern. I created a Yahoo Group so we have a place to talk, ask questions, and share advice.

I've already ordered my yarn -- Aurora 8 in a dark, bright blue. It should be here next weekend.

If you're interested in joining the KAL leave a comment here (to get in the list on the sidebar) and then go to the Yahoo! Group to become a member of the list.

Oooh, I can't wait to get started!

My Interweave Knits Winter 2006 issue was in my mailbox this evening.

The quick scoop:

• This issue is heavy. There's a whole lotta projects in there!
• Like always, even though I saw the preview, I'm so much more excited after flipping through the magazine itself.

Favorite Project - Kate's A Cardigan for Arwen

This project has so many things going for it.

• It's clever with its reversible cable along the front and around the hood.
• Its namesake is one of my favorie LOTR characters.
• Its hood is pointy in a playful sorta way.
• It's a cardi so it's great for layering.
• It's versatile and will be as nice paired with khakis at work, or with jeans and a t-shirt for running errands.

Remember when I said I might not knit another sweater this year? Well, I'm seeing me knitting this very soon in a vibrant sapphire blue.

Added Later: About 20 minutes after I wrote this post, I came across NaKniSweMo -- National Knit a Sweater Month. I don't have to tell you that I've been looking online at yarns since then, do I?