season of mists

So I promised an update on the Autumn Rose.

I finished the knitting, crocheted my steek, cut, and tried it on…and the yoke was too large. By quite a good bit.

In true denial, I knit the neckband anyway, and then was somehow surprised to discover that the yoke was still too large. And this is no ordinary sweater, right? If the fit isn’t right, I’m not going to wear it, right? So I have to fix it, right??

So, I

• ripped out the neckline (this part was particularly painful)
• cut the black stripe just before the last red-orange band and removed everything above it
• recalculated the decreases from that point
• knit up from there (including a new steek), being extremely careful not to disturb the existing, already-cut steek
• cut the new steek
• picked up for neckband and knit that, thankful that Palette is so lovely and accommodating (the steeks stayed perfectly and it all blocked out)

I think it was worth it, though. This is totally my new favorite sweater.

And the October sweater?

I’m working on it.

Finished: Autumn Rose Pullover

Pattern: Autumn Rose Pullover by Eunny Jang

Yarn: Knitpicks Palette, in various colors (see my Ravelry project page for more details)

Needles: Addi Turbo US 1 16″ circular, Addi Turbo Lace US 2 29″ circular, Knitpicks Harmony DPNs US 2

Modifications: only two colors used in all corrugated ribbing, shortened yoke

More photos to come, and details of the surgical operation required to make this one work (don’t worry, doctor and patient are both doing fine).

Finished: mandu wrapper

Pattern: my own

Yarn: Zen String Serendipity (less than 1/2 skein used)

Needles: Knit Picks Harmony DPNs, US 2

Isn’t she the cutest model I’ve ever had? I never thought I’d knit a dog sweater, but Mandu has changed my mind. I’m thinking argyle. I’m thinking intarsia paw prints. I’m thinking…I can knit anything for eight inches.

I’ve been knitting up a storm (sweaters, a beaded lace shrug, dishcloths, a blanket), but no time to photograph! I’ll try to fix that this weekend, when my crack photo team visits.

And just for fun, here’s the photo my father sent when I asked for measurements so I could knit to fit:

Awww!

summer of my discontent

Did I finish the July sweater? Well, yes and no.

On Thursday night, I had it all seamed, ends woven in, ready for buttons…but where were the buttons? I looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. Finally I stuffed the whole thing into a bag and went off to bed in frustration.

Friday, while we drove to St. Louis (departure time: 5:15 a.m.), I knitted away on this:

What a lovely (though badly photographed) beginning of a striped pullover! Too bad that I’ll never make it to the sleeves without running out of yarn. I knit away, all the way home (return time: 11:30 p.m.), wondering where in the world I had bought the original yarn, and whether it would be remotely possible to obtain any more.

Meanwhile, this was sitting on my couch:

Yes, that is indeed the beginning of the Autumn Rose pullover, which I had waited to knit for months so that I could see the new Palette colors. I rashly cast on a few days ago, just before they released the new colors, which of course include one that might fix the overly-green cast of my medallions. The pullover is currently in purgatory while I consider whether to order a few new skeins and re-swatch.

Oh, and not pictured? That would be the Autumn Rose sleeve, which was about halfway completed until I noticed that I had used the wrong color for one of the rows just after the ribbing.

Regular blogging will resume when I find a project that is actually going well…

tutorial for the skinny-wristed

So, the July sweater: it’s Salina (rav link) from Rowan Vintage Knits (thanks to Indianapolis Public Library Interlibrary Loan department for making this knit possible). I’m loving it so far because it’s a stockinette-fest and perfect for work knitting, but the shaping gives you a feeling of accomplishment every 6 or 8 rows. You see the front and back in the photo above, with Kermit’s hood providing a backdrop (I realize that by coordinating my sweater color with my car color, I am exhibiting my oddness).

When I got to the sleeves, though, I realized that a small modification would be needed. Perhaps I have strangely skinny wrists (I also narrowed the cuffs on my Tangled Yoke Cardigan), but I definitely don’t need the 14″ cuff circumference that the pattern dictated for my size! Here’s how I did it:

1. Decide how long you want the sleeves to be; in my case, that was 18″, including a 2″ cuff added later. So, I needed to do my increases over 16″ of knitting.

2. Decide how wide you want the cuffs to be; in my case, that was 7.5″  circumference, keeping in mind that they might stretch out a bit.

3. Measure your gauge! I had already knitted and blocked the front and back pieces, so this was easy. I came up with 23 stitches and 30 rows to 4″ (or 5.75 stitches and 7.5 rows to 1″).

4. Do a little math. To find the number of stitches to cast on, just multiply your stitch gauge (5.75) by the desired width of cuff (7.5″) to get your cast-on number: 43 stitches (a side note: you can account for selvedge here if you want to, although I didn’t).

5. My desired number of stitches at the beginning of the sleeve cap was 79, according to the pattern (and I could have changed that too, but I would also want to change the armscyes to match), so I needed to increase 36 stitches over 16″. At two stitches added per increase row, that is 18 increase rows.

6. So, how to distribute those evenly over the sleeve? Just find out how many rows you need to knit to get the sleeve to the desired length (in my case, 16″) by multiplying row gauge: 16″ x 7.5 rows = 120 rows total. Then divide by the number of increase rows: 120/18 = 6.6666666…. What to do?

7. Well, I can’t increase every 6 2/3 rows, so I split the difference and chose to increase like this: every 6th row 12 times (ending with 67 stitches total and 72 rows knitted) and every 8th row 6 times (79 stitches total, 120 rows knitted). You can increase every 7th row if you want, of course, but that means that some of the increase rows will be on the wrong side.

Whew! I hope that helps another skinny-wristed knitter. It isn’t a difficult process at all (it took much longer to type up the directions than to actually do it), and it’s one of my favorite things about knitting: the ability to customize a project to better suit your particular preferences or desired fit.

finished: tangled yoke cardigan

Technically finished several weeks ago, but never before seen on an actual human.

Pattern: Tangled Yoke Cardigan, by Eunny Jang, from IK Fall 2007 (see this project on my ravelry project page)

Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed, color #165 (scree), 6 skeins exactly

Needles: Addi lace US 5 32″ circular, mystery US 5 circular with longer cable for magic-looping the sleeves, Addi US 4 short circular for buttonbands and collar, Addi natura US 1 circular for picking up neckband stitches (whew!)

Modifications: reduced stitch count on beginning of sleeves for better-fitting cuffs, and respaced sleeve increases accordingly; fudged something with the waist ribbing a bit, since the numbers in the pattern didn’t seem to work out perfectly for my size (wish I could be more detailed about what this was, but I honestly can’t remember)

General thoughts: Lovely design, and very well-written pattern overall. I find that I’m often reducing cuff sizes as a personal preference (it’s the same way on the July sweater; perhaps I just have oddly skinny wrists?), so that wasn’t a big deal, really. The worst part of knitting this was the discovery, two rows from the end of the cable chart, that I had miscrossed SEVEN cables about six rows back. I had to tink back two rows before I could drop down and painstakingly reconstruct each one; I don’t even want to think about how long this took to do. Worth it, though. The sweater came out beautifully, and I particularly like the double-thickness collar and three-needle bind-off. I might still sew a bit of ribbon onto the buttonbands to firm them up.

Here are a few extra shots of the sweater. I apologize for the dreadful state of my coiffure! When I called yesterday to make a haircut appointment, the scheduler told me that my regular stylist was “on sabbatical.” I was so flummoxed by the implications of this statement (who will cut my hair now? will he ever come back? and since when do stylists get “sabbaticals”??) that I was unable to make another appointment. I’ll have to try back today, clearly.

More Felted Tweed coming for the July sweater post (hint: it’s green), and an exhaustive (exhausting?) discussion of sleeves.

sometimes it is easy being green

Well, the past weekend was certainly eventful. The Professor and I are now the proud owners of this little Kermit:

This car is much smarter than I am. It has so many little computers and automatic features that I’m surprised there’s no “autopilot” function. It doesn’t even have a key! There’s just this little black box that you use to open and close the car, and when you want to start it, you just push a button that says “Pwr”. No cranking, no nothing. I hear the 2011 model will have an button that sends the car to Trader Joe’s and picks up your shopping for you. We’ll have to wait on that one.

Oh, the cardigan? Well, this was the state of affairs on June 30:

Still damp and full of pins, buttonless, but technically the knitting has been completed. I know, I know, if this were the Knitting Olympics, I would be nowhere near the podium. In this case, however (especially since I was playing with a handicap; the yarn didn’t arrive until June 11), it’s my project and I’ll cheat if I want to, cheat if I want to, cheeeeeeeeat if I want to… (you would cheat too, if it happened to you…)

Modeled shots as soon as I sew on the buttonband ribbon, and as soon as I can mentally prepare myself to slip on a wool-alpaca sweater in this heat.

And the July sweater? It’s GREEN, baby!

I dreamed a dream

Summer has come to Indiana with a vengeance: temperatures in the 90s every day and thunderstorms at night! It’s really too hot to do too much, but somehow we’re getting a lot of work done. Here are a few updates on some of my summer projects:

1. The June Almanac Sweater

It’s none other than the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, a pattern I’ve been wanting to make since I first laid eyes on it. I am using Felted Tweed, which I’ve never used before but I now love. Last night I got to the most exciting part of a yoked sweater (for me): the moment when you join the sleeves to the body and it starts to look like an actual garment instead of a misshapen afghan!

As you can (hopefully) see from the blurry photo above, I tried a new technique with this sweater: knitting the sleeves two-at-a-time on one circular needle. I was trying to avoid a few things: first, a repeat of my mistake with the Professor’s sweater (hint for sweater knitters: most people prefer both sleeves to be the same size); second, the terrible monotony of knitting a 17.5″ tube with shaping every 10 rows (somehow a flat, seamed sleeve piece is much more pleasant to knit for me); and third, the possibility that I would hate knitting the first sleeve so much that I would never cast on for the second one (remote, but when you’re using wool/alpaca in the summer, anything is possible). I’m not totally convinced about this technique, though. It’s a little fiddly, since the two skeins are continually a bit tangled and the circular needle I was using was dreadfully twisty. It might be better with a less recalcitrant needle. I won’t publicly shame the needle here by naming it, mostly because I have no idea what it is. Also, I have to admit that I completely cheated on the cast-on by knitting about 2 inches of each sleeve on DPNs and then arranging it on the circular. The sleeves are done, aren’t they? Let’s move on.

The elephant in the room: it’s possible (some might even say likely) that I won’t be able to finish on time. In case this occurs, I pledge to document my failure in excruciating detail. I don’t rule out a dramatic moment where I fling the sweater, still barely on the needles, under the sofa at 11:48 p.m. on June 30 with a cry of despair. If this does occur, I’ll try to get the Professor to document it for my first ever video blog post. Stay tuned!

2. The garden

OK, technically this is the Professor’s project, but since I intend to eat at least 50% of the tomatoes, I figured it was fair game to blog. There have been a few minor setbacks, mainly from slugs, but we are already enjoying parsley, basil, tarragon, and sage. The peppers and even the beans are doing well, and look at these blueberries!

3. Socks (or, Why I Might Not Finish the Cardigan On Time)

For my birthday, in addition to chocolate truffles, Prosecco, and a delicious brunch, my wonderful Professor presented me with this:

That’s Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in the Ravenswood colorway. Upon receipt of this, I immediately channeled Susan Boyle (“I dreamed a dream of Monkey Socks…with picot edge and varigation…like Cara’s, but not Socks that Rock…O, this must be my next creation!”) and ran upstairs to wind it. Now I have this:

No pooling, no puddling, no funny business. I might not win Britain’s Got Talent, but I’ll have some great socks.

so much to say

Pattern: Clapotis, by Kate Gilbert, from Knitty (Fall 2004)

Yarn: Mondial Le Perle Gold Cashmere, a bit over 3 skeins, in color 953 (orange and hot pink with bits of greeny-grey)

Needles: Tahki “extra smooth” bamboo, US 5

My father brought me this yarn from Korea, and I really loved working with it. It’s soft, squishy, and a fun colorway. I’m several years late to the Clapotis party, but it still seems to be in full swing, and after knitting this pattern, I can certainly see why. I tried using stitch markers for awhile, but lost patience with them (and ran out of matching ones–am I the only one who worries about matching stitch markers?), so I tried purling the dropped stitch instead. After a few rows, I realized that I wasn’t too keen on that idea either, and that it was just a six-stitch repeat, for heaven’s sake! I ended up keeping track by thinking to myself:

“One, two, three, TWIST & SHOUT!”

Or, in knitting language: k3, k1tbl, k1, k1bl. Make sense? I’m obviously crazy, but this little tag-line somehow made the knitting even more fun. This was the perfect knit for post-UK jet-lag and kitchen remodeling blues. The only problem now is that I’m not knitting a Clapotis anymore. Clearly, that will have to change.

A few more random musings:

1. I’ve cut my hair. This is the shortest it’s ever been. I’m really enjoying it.

2. I’m still working on a massive blog post about our trip (especially the fiber-y aspects). Once we’re done with this renovation project (I should probably post about that too, eh?), I should have more time on the computer and less time calling contractors, cleaning up massive amounts of dust, etc.

3. I’ve begun work on the June sweater. Here’s a hint:

And now I am going to see if I can find some Cheerios. It’s pretty marginal around here, food-wise.

finished: grant park pullover

Pattern: Grant Park Pullover by Salena Lee, from Twist Collective Spring 2009

Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, in Mink Heather, about 14 skeins

Needles: Addi Natura US 7 32″ circular, US 7 dpns, US 5 circular, US 5 dpns

Modifications: I knit the collar twice as long and sewed it down to make a double-thick collar, because the professor tends to stretch out his collars a bit.

I’m really happy with this one. Great pattern, great fit, great model! The picture shows the professor in Bath, near the Pulteney Bridge over the river Avon, with St. John’s Church spire in the background.

(this project on Rav)