Sample Swatch

Yesterday (err, Tuesday) I knit a large gauge swatch for my dream 70s cardigan.  I knit it in the orange because I was headed to Ariadne regardless and needed to wind that enormous skein into a ball.

I cast on about 40 stitches and then knit about two inches each of stitch patterns that refuse to be forgotten.  That slipped stitch pattern?  My friend Lisa told me about it in 2007.  That star stitch?  I saw that last fall on ravelry.  That fisherman’s rib?  Mollyann from Ariadne told me about months ago.   The coolest aspect of all of this is that I haven’t ever really knit any of these stitch patterns.

And interestingly enough, the gauges are really different:  from 3 stitches per inch to 6.  But my friend Mitali can attest to that!  I certainly was having enough trouble getting the star stitch to behave.  I’m a notoriously tight knitter so any pattern that requires that I knit through anything three times is a bit above and beyond my capabilities.  I think I may have to find a charming (yet identical in every way) sort of alternative.  That saying, I’m not sure if using a substitute will get this bug out of my ear.

In other news, my cat Patrick Purrswayze fell yesterday and twisted one of his hind legs a bit.  I know it’s not too serious because he’s still jumping from the floor to the windowsill with no problems (and also, because he sometimes forgets that it hurts and runs around like a totally healthy pussy cat) but his expression is the most tragic thing I think I’ve ever seen.

Doesn’t he look disgusted, yet contemplative, yet very sorry for himself?  Poor fella.

And without further ado (and from a special request from Princess Sonya via Mitali)…

It’s perfect:  a cat sleeping on drying hand knit socks that have been well loved on a beautiful spring day.

Insert Post Here

So, this Sunday before past, I came down with the lung infection that everyone in Montreal is coming down with.  I have never hacked so much in my life – and what’s more, my partner got sick at exactly the same time.

I’m one of those people that turns into an enormous baby when sick, but I did manage to take some pictures of my armbands which I sent off to Boston last Wednesday.  Unfortunately, my sneezing and coughing buddy managed to delete them by accident, so the post I was banking on sharing with you isn’t entirely feasible.  I feel kind of silly; I even got a ravelry message from mmeadow reminding me to post them on my ravelry projects page, and I can’t.

I did get an awesome email from the 146+ crew today telling me that they not only received but really liked my armbands, so hopefully I’ll be able to link to some of the pics on their reBlog once it’s updated.

I’m very nearly done all the knitting on my knitted neckerchief, and my friend Maddy is letting me borrow Melissa Morgan-Oakes’ book, 2-at-a-time Socks which is awesome!  I’m pretty excited about the cables in that book.  I’m really excited to get the neckerchief off of my superlong 2.5 mm needle so I can try this out.

And, because it’s kind of lame to have a post without pictures…

Mrow

Look at that:  a classic action shot.  I said, “Bazzy, don’t do that!” and my hand closed on the camera button as I reached to protect my new sweater.  Amazing, really.  More of a cultural portrait than a fancy knitting picture, but you can see the ribbing.  I think the best aspect of the picture is Bazzy’s expression.  He so clearly does not care what I think, but he can tell that I don’t want him to destroy my sweater, so he’s being tentative.  Jerk.

I think I have about 0.75 of an inch done.  The mission falls 136 in charcoal has been behaving a lot more nicely.  There are still loosely spun bits, but I don’t have to do nearly as much corrective surgery to fix it.  I ran out of my ball last night and didn’t bother to join a new one because it was 10 o’clock at night and I’m an early-to-bed kind of gal.  I also eat lots of fresh veggies and whole grains, which is much less boring than it sounds.

I’ve knit a bunch more on my vintage neckerchief.  I have no idea how big it is right now;  I just keep rubbing that gorgeous bamboo/merino/silk blend across my face and thinking about how much more awesome living in the 1800s would have been if scarfs were this soft.

It’s clear to me that I have to knit at least another two inches to make it wide enough.  I don’t want to rely on the edging to make this neckerchief big and bold, so I’m doing all the embiggening and enboldening now.  (I think I just made those two words up, but I don’t care.)

I like this yarn (crystal palace panda silk print in forest tones) and I like mission falls 136.  I feel as fancy and elegant as a cat washing his whiskers after a crunchy breakfast.

Mrow.

A Thousand Suns

This has been a really productive morning.  I feel awesome!  I finished all the things that I wanted to do, and I think I have time for a quick blog post before I go to work.

I’ve knit a few repeats of the lace pattern from the 1800s, and it doesn’t really look much like the engraving, so I did some investigating and discovered that the people on ravelry who had knit the neckerchief actually knit a different lace pattern for the main part.  That, to me, entirely negates the romance of knitting a pattern this old, but this simple eyelet pattern isn’t really making me fall in love – not that I was completely in love with the engraving either.  I’m going to take it to Ariadne today for input, but if I have to sub in a different lace pattern, I’ll probably pick something different altogether.  Or something.  I am interested in why the pattern calls for me to slip a stitch and then do a yarn over, though – it’s resulting in a very dense fabric.

The cats gave me a hand printing off the rough draft of my sweater pattern this morning.  I’m kind of proud of it, and yet, I’m anticipating one hundred thousand corrections.  In order to correct my anxiety, I’m listening to this:

I absolutely adore Hey Rosetta!, and I love this song.  I’ve seen them live twice, and each time they’ve played this song, and the whole audience held each other while they sang.  Not in a creepy way!  Just in a “we’re collectively recognizing our humanity” sort of way.  I hope you like it.

Taking a Break

I made up a pattern in September for a cabled sweater.  I’ve knit the damn thing twice – casting off the second one in the first week of January.  I have extensive notes and sketches and colour coded schematics on the pattern, and I just need to edit it and type it up.  But it’s so hard!  And I think faster than I can write, so I’ve skipped out little bits like a k1 here or a p1 there.  I have realized a few crucial errors that made writing up the pattern seem like an indomitable mountain of details so things are ticking along more easily than before, but hot diggity.  I have loads of respect for designers.  I’m about a third of the way through the yoke.  I was hoping to get a bit further tonight, and then pick it up again tomorrow for the win, but somehow, I’m beginning to doubt my stamina.

Regardless, I have a pretty blue and gold work in progress in Mission Falls 136 that is coquettishly sneaking in and out of my consciousness.  I may have to pay it its due later on.

I’ve tried it on every few inches to ensure a great fit.  I decided to knit four more decrease rounds (for a total of 40 stitches decreased).  I then knit another inch and a half or so and then started increasing by picking up the stitch knit below and knitting it.  I’m planning on increasing 40 stitches so the decreases are mirrored.  I have a strong personal preference for sweaters that are long enough to hit the hips because I have a short waist and I can pretend to myself that longer sweaters make me look taller.

I was looking at the projects page on ravelry.com, and I saw that one knitter said,

I increased until the total length of the sweater (along an increase) was 9”. It ended up being 72 sts for each front and back and 56 sts for each sleeve. I’m not entirely sure why it is no longer in the ratio that I cast on in, but it fits so I’m not asking questions.

Well, I can try to explain why.  If you cast on (as she did) 96 stitches with 16 stitches for each sleeve and 32 stitches for the front and back and end up with 256 stitches total (56 stitches for each sleeve and 72 stitches for the front and back), you have increased 160 stitches over 40 rounds or 20 increase rounds.

The pattern/formula instructs you to cast on a number of stitches that is both divisible by four (so you can do 2×2 ribbing) and three (so you can divide the cast on number into thirds; one third for the front, one for the back, and one sixth each for the sleeves).  You then place markers between the front and the sleeves and the back and the sleeves (four markers total).  Every second row after the ribbing requires that you increase 1 stitch before and after each marker – 8 increases per round – but the increases are unevenly placed so that the sleeves (only one third of the total cast on) get 4 increases per round and the front and back only get 2 each.  That means that one third of the stitches cast on is increasing at twice the rate of the other two thirds.  Get it?

Let’s try to express this algebraically.

32 + 2 (20) = 72 or, the cast on number plus twice the number of increase rounds (because there are two increases per increase round) equals the final number of stitches for the back or front. Simplified, this becomes…

1/3 C + x(R) = F where C = cast on stitches, x = some integer that represents the number of increases per round, R = the number of increase rounds, and F = the final number of stitches.  Applied to the sleeves on this knitter’s sweater, this becomes…

32 + 4(20) = 112 Don’t forget the final step though!  The sleeves were only 1/6 of the total CO amount, so we need to divide 112 by 2, ending up with 56 stitches for the sleeves.

Just thought I’d get that off of my chest.  What’s that Patrick?

My kitties bring all the boys to the yard…

and they’re like, “We’re cute as can be!”

This kitty montage is a placeholder for knitting content.  Until then, please content yourselves with ‘purr’s instead of ‘purl’s.

Don’t be fooled by the socks that I’ve got…

…I’m still a knitter that likes to block.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to show you the rainbow herringbone socks that I bound off yesterday.  The newly completed sock hasn’t been subjected to the rigorous stretching and fondling that its older sister has, so it looks much thinner.

The heathered black is a good yarn whose ball band was lost years ago, but the bright rainbow sock yarn is Zitron Trekking (XXL) in 1001.  It’s a great yarn – I liked knitting with it a lot.  This is actually the second pair of socks I’ve attempted using the same ball of yarn.  The XXL in its name is apt.

The pattern was improvised by yours truly.  Knit from the toe-up with a standard houndstooth pattern, they’re pretty and soft.  I took no heed of trying to make them match.  Fraternal socks are much more delicious (in my humble opinion).

Next time, I will use another kind of heel.  While I am generally more than satisfied with these socks, I’m unimpressed by how tight the heels are.  I know that blocking will rectify the problem (after all, I’ve knit basically this pattern before) but I want to wear them now with no problems, and if the socks were my invention, shouldn’t they comply to my every need, whim, or desire?

A secret part of me is thinking that it’s not the heel’s fault.  After all, I do have EE width size US 5 feet.  Do most hobbits use short row shaping on their heels?

I like them lots.  I’m extra pleased that I’ve managed to make a pair of socks for, y’know, myself.  I think I’m allied with most sock knitters when I say that someday I’d love to have enough handknit socks to replace all the crummy machine knit ones I got from the grocery store.  At this point, I only have three pairs for myself.

But, until I cast on for the next pair, I’ll have to block these.  Not tonight, though;  I’m hoping to have a dinner party tonight, and I can’t just leave my socks hanging around.  I feel that’s poor etiquette.  Patrick is already waiting by the window.

Striae

I’m still chugging along on my striped raglan pullover.  It’s coming along nicely;  I really like how the colourways (charcoal and curry) go together.  My friend said that they reminded her of streaks of mineral deposits in shale, so I’m calling this blog post striae in her honour.

I’ve been having some troubles with a single ply in this batch of Mission Falls 136 being too loosely spun or not properly dyed.  I’ve been rectifying it by pulling out the extra merino and twisting the yarn until it sort of looks normal.  I’m hoping that, as Mollyann from Ariadne said, it’ll just make the sweater look more handmade.

I apologize for the velvety ear in the picture.  Sometimes, curiosity just gets the better of my cats.

I measured and estimated and knit, and slipped all the stitches onto scrap yarn not once but twice to make sure the yoke fits reasonably well.  The boundary with which I am currently dealing with is, erm, well, my bust line.  It is (as the kids used to say) busting my groove – see what I did there?  As is true of the bustier ladies, the widest part of my chest is lower than my armpit, so I’m going to have to figure out some way to subtly increase so as to accommodate my, ahem, Bat signal… if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.

I’ll detail my solution on ravelry and here on this blog.  I’m sure it’ll be brilliant.

I did it!

I totally knit those mittens.  In fact, I finished the second one on Monday and wore them (triumphantly) to work.

I even managed to put the thumb on the right side.  My mind is blown.

Bazzy seems pleased as well.  Warm paws are a requisite chez nous.

So much to say

I’ve been rocking through yarn and needles as of late, and have been very nearly too busy to blog properly.  I’m also working on a top secret project, and can’t take pictures of it lest it find its way onto the internet.

That said, I have explored new territory in the world of textiles.

I have breached the barricades of needle felting.  And after a few hours on a lovely Tuesday afternoon, I was left with a sweet little penguin friend.

I think she’s just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.  I’m also amazed at how simple it was to make her.  After all, this was the first needle felting project that I’ve ever attempted, and I was alone when I started it.  I’m amazed and impressed  - and I’m also trying to think of some practical applications.

The best wool for needle felting is minimally processed and has this delightfully sheepy smell.  The smell attracts cats like a magnet.  That is why I’m glad this little penguin is going to live at Ariadne Knits, away from my little kitten friends.  It was nearly impossible to take a good shot of this penguin without a cat face in the picture.

I’ve been chugging away at my raglan top-down sweater.  I’m doing it in Mission Falls 136, and while I’m loving the colour combination, I’m not loving the number of knots in every ball.

I’m one of those picky knitters that will cut out sections of yarn if a ply has been severed and rejoin for knitting.  I’ve had to do that a couple of times.  I understand that other knitters may not care about things like that, but I just can’t imagine missing a ply not affecting the finished garment.  Having had to do this process six times and only having 6.5 inches knit, I’m a tad wary of picking up this project.  Hopefully, the next few balls will work out better.

In other news, my partner has finished his first knitting project!

Doesn’t it look marvelous?  I’m very proud of him and his sticktoitiveness.