Nips and tucks and snowy snowy days

I am so sorry to see January closing out again as it's my favourite month. A friend asked me why and I realized my full answer boiled down to: I have an excuse to stay inside! In fact, at the moment one of our doors is frozen shut with heavy drifts beyond it, which is why there are no snow angels in this pic.

So pretty out there though... anyway, with snow comes cold, so some of my inside time this week was spent fussing over my newly felted sweater, which still fit like an off the shoulder gown. Time for neckline pintucks!

Thankfully I did still have leftover yarn for the purpose. 

There was no way to draw this in without the alteration showing, but I thought if I just added tiny pleats at the very top of the neck and had them face out, it wouldn't disturb the yoke pattern too much.

The extra texture is kinda cute, don't you think? Along with the uneven spacing, which I've decided is more organic than amateurish, ahem.

I figure I pulled in the neck between two and four inches with this hack. 

It's still not quite enough to make this sweater perfect, and I'm considering an extra tuck or two, maybe in the back where they won't show as much? 

But the sweater stays up above my shoulders now, which makes it wearable, which is in turn very timely. Now to make some felted wool pants to match!

(ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I kid. The crochet blanket is now telling me it will require the rest of my lifetime to finish, so there can be no other projects ever.)

Hope you have some good things coming up in your weekend! and thanks for making me a part of it. See you next Saturday... with blanket progress? who knows. Only eight stripes to go, and then it's border time! I plan to keep warm under it while I'm working on that part, while I admire the snow from inside... February being my second favourite month, for all the same reasons as January.

 

 

Duck Sweater Repair

So, there's this sweater I knit back in the 90s even though I had no clue how to do intarsia...

... which has been resurrected of late and worn so often that one of the baby ducks got a stain on his face and I had to renew my attention to it (you're seeing it clean, post-washing and blocking). The baby ducks, by the way, go all the way around the waist for reasons that made sense to me at the time. 

In fact, here it is in all its wrinkled glory: 

Once I had it clean and was looking more closely at it, I saw THIS

There's a hole in the sleeve!!!!!!!!

It's still small. The wool around it was holding and not giving up more stitches. But I can guarantee you I no longer have any scraps left from the yarn I used to make this thing. I spent about an hour on Monday pulling out all the scraps I do have and discovered that this particular shade of green is not one I've favoured since. Eventually though, I found some wool/mohair boot sock yarn with an almost correct shade of green between the blues and the acid greens. WHEW.

So that left me with the problem of how to mend the hole so it wouldn't show. 

Which is also something I have limited skills for. I did have some resources for research and testing, but when it came to the point I ignored them, convinced I could go it alone. Obviously that didn't go well. But after three or four tries I thought, in the spirit of this sweater, maybe I should just do my best with the skills I have today and make that endeavour part of the Duck Sweater's history? 

I did my best, and got this:

It's not perfect. But it's also in an armpit. And now the sweater can get out there again into the cold snap we're having.

That's what I learned this week. Sometimes something is better than nothing, and also, never toss your yarn scraps! Because you never know, amiright?

Hope you have some small win this weekend in the absence of any huge ones, though of course I wish those for you as well. I'm content with this one, personally, and will gratefully top that up with a cup of tea. Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you next Saturday!

 

 

What took me so long

Let's talk felting today! Specifically, on-purpose felting the sweater I made last winter, which came out huge and floppy and pilled a lot. Here she is when I first finished her:

Pretty colours, right? I love this combo and I love that I was able to find 100% wool yarn to put them together. Only the wool was so underspun it pilled like crazy, and the sweater was so oversized it just sagged on me. As you may recall if you were around this time last year, I even had to turn up about two inches on the hem or it woulda been a minidress.

In the fall I remembered that felting is a thing, and might just be the *very* thing I was looking for. And over the holiday I remembered that I would rather wear this sweater than let it hog a lot of shelf space in my closet. But before I could felt, I had to take out that hem...

 

... which was a very big job. And in unpicking all the ends I used to do it, I accidentally unpicked two ends that were really just a join between one ball of yarn and another. Oops!
 

It left quite a hole, but with effort I was able to remember how to restitch through the exposed loops, and the result was more than satisfactory. 

And then I had to run in the ends again.

What a mess inside, huh? Or, as a Canadian, I might say, eh?

Sorry about the colour change in these photos. The sweater really is that lovely rich green, but the light today is so uneven... truly grey and wintery. We've had snow!

Hence my desire for a functional sweater. Okay, moving along... 

I couldn't risk this baby on the washing machine, so I decided to felt by hand in a big bowl in the sink. I put in hot water and some Soak Wash (the better to avoid having to rinse out a lot of soap later) and started kneading my sweater like it was bread dough. When the stitches started to look a little blurred, I stopped, figuring I could felt more later. Then I set it out to dry. 

That was yesterday, so it's still a little damp. But check this out! 

The stitches no longer have big airy gaps in between. And the heft I wanted in the fabric is there - just a little heaviness, still with some floop. Plus: SO SOFT. I honestly don't think I'll see much pilling with the new finish.

Here's a closeup of the before and after, again with iffy lighting quality and poor placement planning:

 

The size shift, by contrast to my photography, is near perfect! The chest went from 46 inches down to 43, still huge but workable; the swing hem from 54 inches to 52; the overall length from 29 inches to 28. My ideal length is 27, but even that one inch reduction makes such a difference to how this thing hangs. 

Weirdly, the sleeve length got worse. It was 27 inches, and now it's 29, covering my hand to the knuckles. However, since the dream was always wear this sweater with loads of layers underneath to sub in for a winter coat on less than freezing days, the extra hand coverage is not unwelcome. The rest of the time, I can just roll up the sleeves, amiright?

I was also pleased to see the inside looking super neat and tidy after a bath:

So I'm asking myself, what took me so long? Felting the sweater took less than an hour. Unpicking the hem and repairing the hole? Maybe ninety minutes. I'm not sure I'd ever make an oversized sweater on purpose again, and I might felt this one a second time in the future if I find I need it to be smaller still, but right now I'm just so pleased. Not least because I just bought a cute pair of walking shoes that match it perfectly, ahem.

(If the link is no longer active when you're reading this, the shoes are Birkenstock Londons, in suede, in the colour Thyme. This is my third pair of this design as I absolutely love them! All the perks of Birks with the added security of a totally closed shoe. Obviously I will not be wearing these in the snowy conditions we currently have going on, but once the roads are clear in spring, and the weather is still chilly enough for this sweater, this outfit is happening!)

I hope your weekend is lovely and hopefully a bit escapist, as we all need that break, don't we? Thanks for spending this time with me, and I'll see you next Saturday. Probably still not with a finished crochet blanket though, sigh.

 

 

Sweater makeover

Hello again! Gorgeous and sunshiney here today and I am... not going outside to enjoy it. I mean, I probably will, but I'm more than usually preoccupied with this sweater. Remember her?

 

The super pretty yoke sweater that broke the nerve running down my right arm while I was knitting her? 

I wore this thing a ton in the few weeks of cold weather we still had after I finally finished, and it shows:

Don't ask me now the name of this yarn but it's one of those super underspun and luxuriously soft 100% wool options, so underpriced for what it is you should know there's going to be a problem. See above: Underspun.  And oh, the pilling!!

All that work and it looks like a sloppy sweatshirt already. In fact, it is sloppy. 

What is that, a 46-inch bust? A tad more generous than I require. Plus, the length. If you remember this sweater, you remember I accidentally knit it so long I had to hem it rather than rip back from 'finished' to under the yoke. Like, by this much:

Yep, that's three and a half inches there extra. If I unpick that hem, I'll have a mini dress. Which is not a practical wardrobe item in heavy underspun wool.

It does however complete the ingredients needed to knit something and then felt it.  

I'm not committing to that just yet. I mean, right now, I can wear this sweater. If I felt it in the washer, I might need to pass it down to a neighbourhood child. Or maybe it will turn so dense and stiff I'll have to use it as a wall hanging or carpet. I'm just quietly debating whether to felt it gently by hand in a sink full of warm, soapy water.  

Got any thoughts about this? Because I can tell looking at her, this sweater doesn't trust me not to mess up.

 

Oh, and...

 

The Halloween socks are done, except for the grafting! 

That's me you hear, squealing with delight over having finished a pair of socks this quickly again. 

... and now, quietly squeaking in panic. I really need to get on the ball (ha - geddit?) about my next knitting project, now that it's dark early enough to curl up and binge watch films and other stories before bedtime.

 

Hope you have a great weekend and as always, thanks for coming to spend this time with me! See you next Saturday.

We have sweater sorta

I finished knitting! not sure my right arm will ever recover... this thing is HEAVY and a poster child for why to learn continental knitting rather than 'throwing the yarn'. 

Though maybe picking at yarn held in my non dominant hand would not make a difference. I am used to knitting with fingering yarn now, and look at the difference in stitch size! 

 

(I tried to get a shot of the two yarns side by side, but the bulky stuff kept leaving a massive shadow owing to its massiveness. hopefully you get the idea.)

In any case, the knitting is done and I am on to the running in of ends and armpit grafting.

I could not be happier with the way the yoke came out. I was envisioning something loose and beatnik-y with a wide sloppy neck, and that's exactly what I got. Except...

This sweater, as a whole, looks TERRIBLE on me! It's far too long and it's weirdly clingy through the body.  My idea to add two inches, do slits up the side, and work a flat border rather than ribbing just did not pay off. Maybe if I'd made the slits about three inches longer? 

I was feeling pretty low about it until I thought of the *sweater* being *shorter*. I experimented by folding up the bottom, which was encouraging enough to actually stitch it up...

And then try it on. What a difference! It now hangs perfectly and doesn't cling at all. It's the Beatnik-shaped sweater of my dreams... with a very big hem.

 

If you squint you can just see on the fold where I accidentally went up a row with my stitches. Thankfully I am still just basting, and it won't be a problem to rip back and redo.

If I knit another, I can copy this one completely apart from making it *four inches* shorter. Oh, my sore arm, how I could have spared you.

(spoiler: you know I am totally going to knit another, though what colour I'd pick, I have no idea.)

 

Meanwhile, we're into an overnight snowfall that should make our front lawn ideal for a snow village with snow people in it, complete with town hall, rather than one lonely snowman. It's making a very pretty pattern on the back deck.

Hope you're staying warm wherever you are, and having a lovely weekend. Thanks for dropping by - see you next Saturday! 

We have yoke

Brace yourself:

I not only finished the sleeves on my giant Icelandic-style sweater, I moved on to the yoke! 

What do you think of the colour pattern? I ended up improvising, owing to not being able to choose from the options at hand.

This one seemed too pointy...

And this one, too busy...

This one looked just right but I had to finesse because the pattern repeat required a different stitch count.

 

Then, when I got up to the first round of decreases, I didn't like where they went, or how. I mean, K2tog, put in some colour, K2tog? I felt like there was potential for something more balanced. I ended up with a left-leaning increase followed immediately by a right-leaning increase, centred on a patch of the main colour, which gave me some texture. Nothing so extreme as a bobble, and it might go flat after blocking, but I kinda like it.

The next band in the pattern didn't seem to be centred on the points below it, so I moved them over. Then I realized the other colours I picked to go into the mix were too bold for the green/gold combo, and decided to ditch them. Instead I flipped the main and contrast colours. Shifting the design over a few stitches made the next round of decreases much easier, but when I finished the band I wasn't sure what to do next. 

Answer: keep wingin' it! I have officially given up on the pattern grid apart from counting how many rounds fall between decreases. 

The top two pattern bands are me, knit without referring to anything but the stitches themselves. I just hope it'll all come out right in the end.

I can't help thinking how gorgeous a sweater like this would be on small needles... you can get so detailed then. This one is chunky yarn is just enormous and sits on my lap like an overfed cat. Everything but the purr, basically. No idea where I'll even store this monster when it's done, and not on me. 

But that's a problem for another day, when I've finished the neck and run in the ends, which I hope will be very soon. Hope you have a great weekend lined up and thank you for including me in it! See you next week, maybe with a finished sweater to show off... wouldn't that be exciting??

 

We have sleeve

The ol' carpal tunnel issues are acting up, but I am obsessed with my Icelandic-adjacent sweater. I managed to get the body up to the point where you have to wait for sleeves... and I'm mostly done the first of them!

Not kidding about the carpal tunnel though. I really need to pace myself. 

I won't show you the completed body because it's impossible to photograph while still on the circular needles - just a big lump of green. Instead, here's a cuff detail:

Managed to match the cuff on the body of the sweater, despite the temptation to go another quarter inch.

Hello lumpy increase seam!

 

The sleeve increases took some planning. I am using a vintage pattern I actually knit several times back in the day, and I can see now that the increases were written for convenience, not because anybody actually wants a six-round run of one width, then a sudden jut outward of two additional stitches. Instead I opted for an increase at the end of the third round, then one at the start of the sixth, and so on. 

I agonized for over an hour about how to do these increases, because of course everybody's going to see the inside of the arm while I'm wearing this thing and care one way or the other, sigh. I got my Principles of Knitting doorstopper off the shelf and pored over my options, before settling on a bar increase for the end of row one, and a right raised increase for the ones at the beginning of the row. 

It was impossible to photograph the result of this for you but essentially, the actual bar of the bar increase makes it *so* much easier to count which round I'm on. It pushes the column of knit stitches to the right, away from the increase line, and since there's no corresponding left-leaning bar increase I picked a right raised increase to push the other column to the left, also away from the increase line. 

Here's the result, which I'm hoping will be a lot more polished-looking once it's blocked and ready to wear:

With luck I'll finish this sleeve today and get a good start on the second one tomorrow. Wouldn't it be exciting if I was up to the yoke in time to show you something pretty next Saturday? Exciting and daunting, because having adapted the sleeve size to suit the profile I wanted (the original is very much oversized) my stitch count isn't going to match the pattern's when I get there. 

I was going to improvise the colour design anyway but now I'm really gonna have to start from scratch. And decision-making is not my strong suit! See the aforementioned hour of agony over stitch increases that barely show.

I'm going to leave you today with a photo of my reference bookshelf (excluding two small stitch guides that didn't fit, and The Principles of Knitting, which is so heavy it has to live elsewhere!) 

I hope you have a wonderful sunny Saturday - we've got sun but also extreme cold, so I plan to settle in at whatever desk has the best sun patch - and I look forward to seeing you next week!