Sweater weather

We interrupt this blog entry to bring you an important News Item: 

I drove downtown without an experienced driver beside me for advice for the first time this morning, and lived to type this message. 

And now we will return to our regularly scheduled wool chat (with added adrenalin.  PANT.)

It's only September and usually the daytime temperatures at this time of year are suitable for linen if you're lucky, but the last few days have been cold.  I mean, jackets and full-length pants cold.  Cold enough for either of the two sweaters I haven't finished, and don't feel too justified about prioritizing again until the baby cardi is done for said baby's imminent arrival.  Which explains why I have been moving forward with the cardi (finished the back last night! cue the confetti!)

I have been making stealth progress on the Deco though:

Honestly, sweaters in progress look like such a puddle of loose strings, don't they.  The best I could do with this picture of starting-the-back was to position the needles in a cute 1930s tapdance-arms way. 

You may perhaps have noticed that all the loose stitches are on holders, save for one sad little front shoulder on yarn.  It made me crazy that I couldn't find the last holder I'd been reserving for this very situation and I searched and searched - wasting all the time I would have gained by using said holder - before giving up, but when I put it all out to photograph it...

Yeah.  I'd clipped it to the strap of the bag so I could find it.  Le sigh.

Free mystery KAL: imminent, details below

Yarn pic digression of the day:

I am so happy to have this green wool all spun! It's probably too scratchy for anything next-to-skin, but I'm thinking of the brown fiber that gave me so much trouble when I first started to spin and imagining how awesome they would look knit up together.

Not obsessing too much about that though because I have other things going on.  Like, I've finished the last test of the Escapist shawl for the mystery KAL, and will be posting the first clue on Monday.

That's Monday, August 1st, get yer needles ready!

Escapist Shawl
A triangular shawl in lace inspired by the rustic yet lovely versions featured in practically every BBC period production I've watched for escapism purposes over the last two years, released in four parts this August much like said BBC period productions.  Unlike said productions, you will get a choice of two alternate endings (both happy.)

Materials

Fingering: Twisted Fiber Art ‘Tasty’ self-striping or semisolid, (80% superwash Merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon, 380 yds/100g), 165g or about 630 yards

Sport Weight: St-Denis ‘Nordique’, (100% wool, 150 yds/50g), 210g  or about 620 yards

4 stitch markers 

3.5mm, 100cm circular needle or size to obtain gauge

Gauge

Stocking Stitch: 28 (21) sts/30 (26) rows = 4”, before blocking in fingering (sport)

Notes

- Use 1-4 solid, self-striping, or variegated yarns.  A single solid shows the texture beautifully, while a hand-dyed semisolid paired with a matching self-striping yarn treats the stitches more subtly. 

- For ease of running in ends, recommendations are given in each part for the location of colour changes; in the two-colour version, Parts 2 and 3 could be done in the second colour, in the three-colour, Parts 3 and 4.

- In Nordique, the gauge given produces a thick, warm shawl that stops an inch or so above the elbows (the fingering-weight shawl, if knit in a superwash yarn, will block out longer.)  If you have spare yardage to accommodate the change, you will get a larger shawl with a larger needle.

- I will be improvising my KAL shawl in a fairly bulky handspun on, I think, 6mm needles; if you want to do the same, I will share my adaptations as we go along!

Yardage Guide for Tasty or other fingering

Part 1 – 165 yards

Part 2 – 165 yards

Part 3 – 135 yards

Part 4 – 145 yards

Finished Size

This will vary based on yarn base and tension while knitting, but my shawls blocked out to approximately 56" for the wingspan, 26-28" down the middle, and  perhaps 80" along the bottom.

Difficulty

Not difficult, but not absolute beginner.  You will have to know how to K2tog, ssk, and yo.  Counting is minimal as the lace patterns do not form a motif and the lace repeats extend no farther than four rows, but you will want to count fairly frequently so you don't miss a yarn over.  If you do though, and you catch it before the next row, it's super easy to pick up a running thread as you carry on such that nobody will ever know you aren't perfect.  I knit my last test over 6 days (between 20-24 hours I think), aided by the luscious Tasty and a set of lace-tipped needles.

Not comfortable committing to a mystery knit?  Too busy for a shawl in August?  Not to worry.  The whole pattern will be available in one unit, still free, in September.

The incredible shrinking sweater

The last time we visited the cardi I'm making for the Knitting and Tea and Cookies knitalong, I said I feared was making it a size too big.  Here's how far I got before I decided that this was, indeed, true:

And here's how far along I am on the next-smaller size now that I've realized it's still true:

I retook my measurements on the weekend and it looks like even my most feeble effort to peel back the consequences of two years of stress (no eating after 6pm) is bringing those numbers down. Assuming I stick to the 6pm rule into the fall - and I have to for a lot of reasons - I will swim in the cardi if I go on with the size I'm making.  And it is too cold to swim outside in October.

On the bright side, I'll have a highly visible motivator to keep me going, not least because I have just spent a ton on yarn for accessories to coordinate with this exact piece.

Unrelated news: I have pictures of glasses, as requested.

Old, with the cool engraved-in-red temples not quite visible:

New,with the bright white temples not quite visible:

When I look at these I prefer the old ones, but the new are a lot more functional.  The other new ones, when I get them, will fill the 'cool' gap.  I think. Gah.

(and yes, they will also match the knitalong cardi. I did say I'd been wardrobe planning, right?)

Knitting cardigans with friends

A bunch of us over at Knitting and Tea and Cookies are morally supporting each other over knitting a cardigan for the fall (whatever weight of sweater that means for each knitter's region and personal comfort range.)  Starting... today!

If you're a Ravelry member and want to join us, feel free to tag your cardi project with 'ktccardikal'.

I haven't done that yet myself though because I am not ready for the knitalong. (and not just because I have a big sewing project to start and finish before bedtime.)

My pattern is chosen: Deco, by the clearly totally brilliant Kate Davies.

Yarn: St-Denis Nordique, 100% non-superwash wool that knits like a dream and is soft after blocking.

Knitting Location: the sofa or the car - the yarn's on a cone and way too heavy to travel.

Goal: Oh, I shouldn't say this, but I really want to knock it out of the park by the end of the month.  Madness.

Problem: Gauge.

Apparently row gauge is important and I can't get it - I get to 1" 2 rows faster than I ought when I'm even close to stitch gauge.  In the night though it occurred to me that this may be because I'm counting the pattern's slipped stitch, which disappears into the back of the fabric.  I'm going to investigate that point this morning.  If I don't find out though, I'll just go with the needles I think will work and sort out the row problem as I go.

Bigger Problem:  Colour.

I still can't decide!!!  It's down to spruce or camel, and I have a number of criteria for choice, and none of it is helping.

Spruce is fabulous for my own colouring, camel washes me out.  But the cardi has a U-neck so, you know.  Not really relevant.

Spruce is darker and therefore more slimming, camel is the reverse but will also show the stitch pattern better.

Both colours look great with a selection of the Twisted yarns I'm also trying to decide about ordering (which means I'm not getting much help about them either.)

I still have a few hours before I have to commit - there's that sewing thing, and then the gauge issue - but gosh.  I keep telling myself this is a project I'm wearing, not displaying, and it should flatter me, not my knitting skills... but on the other hand, what else would I use the camel for?  A low-necked cardi I'll layer under more colourful things is the perfect neutral application.

Gah.

I just hope the sewing goes fast...

Mysterious Shawl: revealed

I was going to save this for a rainy day but you know what?  Turns out it's raining today. Plus, who doesn't need a bright green Zing in the middle of the week?

So here it is: I blocked the mystery KAL shawl.

Tough to get a picture of it on, by myself:

But rewarding, since there are so many different mystery stitches in it.

I got a friend to take up the camera, but only for a minute, so this is all there is of that.

Blocking it was a challenge because I had insufficient horizontal space for this much wing (I'm sorry, but there is No Way Whatsoever that I will ever pin out a blocked item on my bed; naps take priority even over knitting.)  So I folded it in half.  This made it possible to keep each point symmetrical from one side to the other without any extra blocking wires - with which I have a traditional love/hate relationship - but it also left a fold line down the middle of the shawl

which I haven't steam-ironed out yet.  Been too busy knitting (and napping!)

The Pattern: Liz Abinante's Roxanne

The Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie's Super Bambou, in an exclusive club colourway

The Modifications: This shawl takes a whole whack of yarn as written, but luckily Super Bambou comes in 115g skeins resulting in more yarn for me.  Also it has a lot of bamboo in it, and bamboo will stretch during blocking, thank goodness.  So all I had to do was leave out the last repeat of the last chart - there should be another row of lace along the perimeter - and change the recommended bindoff to a superstretchy version.

The Farewell-For-Now:

(hope your day is lovely, even if you do have rain like me!)

September knitalong

September is officially Hand Knits month over at Knitting and Tea and Cookies - as in, knits to keep your hands warm. We've got mitts and fingerless gloves and I wouldn't be surprised to see some gloves pop up over the course of this knitalong, and hopefully they won't be mine because I can't see finding time for all those fingers.

If I were going to do gloves I would go for Julia Mueller's Knotty Gloves. Tammy made a pair and they are so gorgeous. As are Julia's Chimera fingerless gloves. I love the idea of layering gloves, but that's to be expected since I'm Canadian, and it does get chilly here from time to time.

Other knits in progress (or recently knit and tempting me - I'm looking at you, Paula McKeever's Cafe au Lait Mitts): Koolhaas Mitts by Meghan Coakley, and The Vicar's Fields Mitts by Karina Westermann.

I'm averting my eyes from those though, because it's more urgent that I get the charity mittens done. And look! It only took an hour yesterday to finish both thumbs on my first pair:


Interestingly, though I was certain I'd knit the hands with the white held in back and the blue in front during August's mitten obsession, it seems I did the reverse, and boy can you tell. If you think it looks like a trick of the light here, check out the inside:


Yep, it really does matter which yarn is close to the needles in stranded knitting and which yarn is far. Fortunately I quite like the way this looks, because I wouldn't want to be frogging any more of these mittens over a colour issue.

Which is not to say I won't be frogging these thumbs anyway: when I tried them on a passing child-sized person, they proved to be too short. Gah!

Did all this tragedy help you recover from the cuteness of the mitten links? If not, feel free to join in at KTC - there's a chat thread all set up and waiting for you.

August sock knitalong

Over at Knitting and Tea and Cookies, we're doing a Sock Knitalong so as to be ready for cooler weather - and some lucky randomly-selected participant will receive a prize of a skein of sock yarn from my personal stash, which is in intense need of destash activity (two birds, one feeder, yesss!)

Want to join us?

All you have to do really is add a comment to the Sockalong thread with or without your goals for the month to say you're in - at the end of the month I'll do that random number selector thingy to see who gets the yarn.

My goal - surprise! - is to stop being mad at Man Socks and finish them:


They really are so close, aren't they. And also, finish my variegated socks, which aren't close at all. Also I think I'm really not happy with the way I messed up the heel on sock #1 yesterday - really, I should frog back and do that part over. But will I?

Even if I don't, the two pairs should take me most of the month what with my other patterning obligations and spinning obsession but... um... I'm going to try to start another pair of socks too. There's just so much yarn, and I want to knit it all!

Another knitalong?

Well, after a lot of hard knitting yesterday I was able to finish and block and dry my travel scarf, destined to be a fall freebie:


I bought this Colinette ART yarn last September, lured by the gorgeous colours (plus, I think it cost $10) but then didn't know what to do with just one skein of a variegated wool/bamboo blend. Getting a 50" x 7.5" reversible scarf out of it in less than eight hours seems like a pretty good trade to me.

The stitch itself is a dream - super easy and in a bulky yarn pretty fast to make. I'm eying some other one-off skeins to work up the same way, but I think I might need moral support to get through them, given all the socks I'm supposed to be working on and the spinning I want to do instead.

So - in these last few weeks of summer and consequent car trips or lazy porch sitting - anybody up for a knitalong?


Also: I finally got my blue hat up to the crown.


I've deliberately not photographed the detail on this hat so I can show it off later (or do I mean, make sure it doesn't look too dopey first?) but I will say that once I decided on what worked the best, the hat was super fast and dead easy to make. Another fall freebie for the holiday knitting pile, and a bit more unisex than the scarf.

It took a while to get these easy projects done because I was so obsessed with spinning the 4 ounces of roving left over from a Twisted Fiber Art splurge in the spring of 2009. Spinning and plying, that is:


This picture was taken before I skeined and soaked the plied yarn; it's dry now and ready to be wound back into cakes for some project or other. I have 113g of bulky yummy stuff which is a bit limiting, but not impossible.

Now, in addition to some solid brown and solid white that I want to knit with rather than spin and some alpaca I can't spin on my current heavyweight spindle, I am left with this 3 ounce braid of Fleece Artist roving:


I will either have to buy more roving after it's done or avoid spinning something that's already spun. By which I mean this:


This is the insanely thin laceweight I bought in May. I love the colour and fiber mixture beyond comprehension but I think it might really be too thin for me ever to get around knitting with it. What would happen do you think if I wound the cake into two equal parts and plied them for a shorter heavier yarn? Would I ruin it?

Let me know what you think - I'm going to go back to my hat so as to avoid temptation.

KAL progress report

On Saturday I cast on for my Baby Surprise Jacket with some random needles I like (Addi lace circulars in I think 4mm size) and got 5 stitches to an inch - that should be about the right size for the new neighbour-baby this coming winter, I hope.

Then I started knitting, remembering only at row 4 that I'm using two skeins of hand-dyed yarn and should be alternating them, so I decided I would just do that from there on rather than ripping back, whew. And both cakes fit perfectly in my little tinyhappy bag with room left over for the actual project, yay!

After that I got all the way to here:


before I got stuck. This is where the line-by-line instructions end, and an increase is introduced, but I wasn't sure whether it was meant to come here (row 9) or later (row 10? row 11?)

Thankfully this is a knitalong and arielzoe came to my rescue: row 11.

I'm not sure when I'll get back to this project, having another emergency/urgent one on the needles since the weekend, but it already looks weird enough for me to be anxious to find out what's next. Stay tuned!

Baby Surprise KAL starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow is big for three reasons:

It's Mayday,

I will be driving on the busiest highway in North America (thank you Carol for pointing that out) with my original driving instructor in my own car, and

It's the start of the Baby Surprise Jacket knitalong!

Here is the yarn I'm going to be casting on as soon as my hands stop shaking post-driving lesson:


It may be a mistake, using this Tanis Fiber Arts Aran-weight yarn ('Stormy'). The pattern calls for 5 or 6 stitches per inch, and I am getting 4, according to the gauge swatch I knit last year with needles whose size I didn't bother to note at the time, but which have produced a significantly snug enough fabric to make me not want to go down another two.

Apparently fewer stitches per inch will not ruin the proportions but merely produce a larger jacket; possibly in this case fit for a five-year-old.

I do actually have a baby in mind for this project - a little boy who will be about 6 months along when the weather starts to get nippy enough again to need a jacket. But I don't want to make a 6 month size; I want something he can wear when he's toddling and getting into the dirt and needing his sweater washed a lot (it's superwash wool.)

So maybe this is a good choice after all - a good dark blue that hides the inevitable stains, and can be brightened up with buttons. I know, I know, I can stripe it, but I'm reluctant to add to my tails-running-in-of task. And I don't really think the blue in that swatch up there is enough of a contrast to make that worth while, do you?

Bonus thought: if it takes me a year to finish it, it will still fit him, even though it will be rather late to go giving a new-baby gift.

But back to business. If you want to join in on the knitalong, feel free to join us at Ravelry, code name Knitting and Tea and Cookies. Or just watch me flail along right here!

A non-mystery knitalong

A bunch of us over at Knitting and Tea and Cookies have decided to motivate each other to knit a Baby Surprise Jacket - care to join our knitalong?

This is one of those Elizabeth Zimmermann patterns that, apparently, everybody makes at some point. My excuse: people I know keep having babies and I keep not having gifts put by for them. Something about babies always makes me want to knit something, too, and by the time the gift is done the child has outgrown it, as I have learned to my cost. If I knit up a few BSJs though, it won't matter if they fit now or later, and I can mix up the colours to be fairly gender non-specific.

Of course, around the same time that I realized I could knit baby presents in advance and with no particular baby in mind, I chatted with a friend who has been knitting hats for a Canadian adoption agency that works with orphanages in Russia and Bulgaria. Most of the children are under three, right down to newborn, and they greatly need warm things. Warm handknit colourful things are especially appreciated.

So now I'm thinking my knitalong project will head out to one of those children in the luggage of a Canadian family en route to picking up their child. And I expect to be throwing a few hats and scarves into my travel knitting agenda as well. If you're interested in doing something similar, e-mail me and I'll give you the contact information.

Wherever your jacket may go, you're more than welcome to knit along with us, and you can do it without joining Knitting and Tea and Cookies or even telling me; I'll be posting about it here as it goes along, and that may be all the company you need.

Start Date: May 1st

Pattern: you can buy it for $3 here, or buy the book, The Opinionated Knitter.

Yarn: apparently there's not much left over in your stash that won't work. So go wild!

Mystery knitalong - the fourth clue

If you've been keeping up with the clues it will be obvious to you with this last one that you have a summer accessory set - but more on that next week.

Meanwhile, click here for the fourth clue, and have fun!

There's one correction to the text version of the instructions:

Row 30 should read: Sl1, P1,sl1, P2, sl1, P4, sl1

(it's currently K stitches instead of P ones.)

Mystery knitalong - the third clue

Much excitement during Clue Two about slipped stitches: purlwise, or knitwise?

Any slipped stitch is going to be purlwise unless the pattern says otherwise - that way, you're just moving it along in its current state to the next needle without changing its orientation. If you slip it knitwise, you're turning it on the needle so that it's twisted.

If you're doing a decrease like 'slip slip knit', you want to twist the slipped stitches - that's how you get them to lean in the correct direction when you do the decrease.

And if you're doing a decrease like 'slip two together, knit one, pass slipped stitches over', as you will find yourself doing in this clue, you are definitely slipping knitwise.

See? I know all these rules.

So how come I added a note to the directions of every clue that makes it sound like the slipped stitches in an 'ssk' decrease should be slipped purlwise, when they shouldn't? If I knew, rest assured I would be berating myself for this specific reason and not just generally.

And I couldn't change it in this clue in time to get it posted so here's the deal:

Slip your stitches purlwise unless you're doing a decrease. And if you're doing a decrease, do them knitwise.

Now go forth and knit Clue Three in good health! And if you're having any trouble at all, just e-mail me.

Mystery knitalong - the second clue

Ready for more twists? Click here for the second clue!

Mystery Knitalong - the first clue

And here we are!

Some people write mystery knitalong clues that lead you through an investigation, and when you consider how many short stories I've written in the mystery genre you'd think I'd be one of them. You would, however, be wrong. I'm much more interested at this moment in the knitting.

Specifically, in whether or not the many lovely people who expressed enthusiasm for this knitalong are going to continue speaking to me when they see how many right and left twists they are in for.

This concern has led me to source some technical support from The Knit Witch, though not for the right and left twists. She does have a marvelous technique for this but when you get a little into the pattern you'll notice you're doing something at the back of every twist that may or may not look right with said technique. So I made my own tutorials. They're not as good of course, being still photographs, but they should help.

And if they don't, just get a cable needle. You're only worrying about two stitches - to twist them right, hold the first stitch in back on the cable needle, and to twist them left, hold the first stitch in front.

I'm also feeling a bit sad about the really, really lame looking chart in this clue. The other clues all got lovely charts but MS Excel kicked up a terrible fuss about this one and it was either an ugly patch or a delayed start, which I thought might be even less appealing than an unattractive (but functional) chart. Sorry guys.

One last bit of housekeeping: the clue is a .pdf file, and I still hear from people who aren't able to download those - if the link doesn't work for you, please do write me and I'll e-mail it to you directly.

And without further ado...

The First Clue

Note: slipped stitches should be slipped purlwise, with the yarn held to the wrong side of the work (which is to say, in front.)

Technical Support Links

k2tog

left twist

right twist

ssk

yo

pure panic

Spring 2010 Mystery Knitalong

I have a new pattern that I love so much, I wanted to make a little party of its debut. You don’t have to tell me you’re knitting it if you’re shy, but if you do participate, I hope you have fun!

This group knitting fest is for a mystery pattern that is:
A form of garment
Inspired by nature, with a nod to glamour
Dual-purpose
Produced with a very small amount of yarn and a few buttons
A little silly, yet
Useful – if not for you, then for somebody you know
Worked flat, and
Presented in a series of 4 clues.

Start Date

March 2, 2010, unless people really aren't ready and want me to push it out a week.

Links to the clues will be posted here on the Tuesday and Friday of each of the Knitalong’s two weeks (unless everybody finishes early and wants the next one sooner.) I am an e-mail or comment away should you encounter any difficulties, but for further technical support, there will doubtless be some group chat at Knitting and Tea and Cookies, Hugs’ online knitting group. Please feel free to join us if you haven’t already!

Materials

120 yards of summery worsted weight yarn (10 ply, 9wpi) in a colour flattering to you and with sufficient stitch definition to show off twist stitches, such as

Americo Linen Tanguis [50% tanguis cotton, 50% linen; 218 yd/199 m per 100g] - color I158 (a grey/blue/green tone) used for sample - or

Lily Sugar’n Cream [100% cotton, 120 yd/110m per 70g] or

Anything else you like and can get gauge with.

(you can knit it in wool, too – it will just take longer to be able to enjoy it if you're coming into summer where you are.)

Solid colour versus not: I used a solid, but if you are in love with something variegated, go for it. It's just for fun after all.

1 set US #6/4mm straight needles, or size to obtain gauge
(you can use circulars as straights if that’s what you have)

1 tapestry needle to run in ends

1 sewing needle to sew on buttons

2-3 clear plastic buttons, 5/8” wide

Optional, for fourth clue only:
3-4 buttons, small sizes, clear and interestingly shaped or faceted would be ideal

Gauge

20 sts/24 rows = 4" in stockinette stitch

Level of Difficulty

If you haven’t learned left- and right-facing decreases, or tried a twist stitch or a yarn over, you’ll get educational support and a lot of practice here.

* * * * * *

Updated To Add:

The link to the first clue

The link to the second clue

The link to the third clue

The link to the fourth clue

Knitting along - or not

Ugh. That genius inspiration I had for how to structure a Thing I really want have finished knitting? Wrong. I spent most of the weekend's knitting fussing over it before I finally ripped out the stitches and put the (gorgeous) yarn away until my brain is behaving better.

However, I did wake up Sunday morning with another genius inspiration: a mystery knit along for my next free pattern as a preview for the actual release.


It's a smaller project than usual but little more complicated, so it should be a fun knit. It takes less than 100 yards of cotton/linen blend but could really be made with anything, and the gauge is 20 stitches and 24 rows of stocking stitch to 4" with, in my case, 4mm needles. My tension is super loose though so your mileage will almost certainly vary.

Sound interesting? E-mail me so I can put you in the loop for a start date and other details - or just watch this space, because I'll post again when it's set to go.