Persistent Knitter

I finished the knitting on my Cross Stitch scarf. I have very little yarn left.  Here it is pre-blocking:

The drape on this is really wonderful. I think I had less yarn left than I should have because I knit pretty loosely. The pattern didn’t give a gauge, but I went ahead and used the suggested size needles for it. Next time I would go down a size and probably have enough left for a decent fringe.

So what can I do to fringe it (I think it looks incomplete without some fringe) when I don’t have enough of that yarn left? Find a solid to compliment it? I have a little bit of the colors used in it so I could mix it in with a solid. I don’t want to order two new balls of this same yarn just so I can make fringe (well, I do, but I won’t).

Knitting Style

So why do I knit loosely? Well, my MIL was in town this weekend and she knits as well.  She knits using english style (throw yarn with the right hand) and I knit Continental style (hold yarn with left hand, like Crochet-ers do).  We sat down and compared our styles because the new sweater she is working on is also using Falk just like Hardangervidda and Bjerk use. Her stitches are really tight compared to mine, even on the same size needles! Wierd!

So sitting side by side, I think it’s because of the way she tightens the yarn after each stitch.  Because she holds her yarn in her right hand, she pulls on the yarn to the right and it tightens the stitch around about half the needle.  When I pull on the yarn to snug it up, it tightens around almost the whole needle and the yarn is going to the left. 

That was a horrible way to describe it, and I don’t have any pictures. Needless to say, I thought it was really fascinating that the different styles produced such different gauges using the same yarn & needle size.

Tada!

Ok, so it’s not a great picture. You can see the patterning in the lower right corner. It desperately needed blocking, so here it is in for it’s Eucalan bath. It’s drying right now on a sweater rack. I tried to take a picture of that, but for some reason it came out looking green, which was unacceptable for the final final picture. I will get my husband to model it for a real blog picture when it’s dry (which will apparently take about 10 years given how heavy it is).

Now that I’ve finished Hardangervidda. I want to do put down some thoughts on it.

Specs

Pattern: Hardangervidda, in Dale book 126
Yarn: Falk, Heathered Navy, Heathered Grey, Deep Red
Needles: Don’t ASK!

Gauge

As everyone reading this blog knows I had serious gauge issues with this project. To me, working on a tiny little swatch does not equal knowing what your gauge will be like when working on a large object in the round. In this case, casting on, and seeing where I was a few inches into it was the best way to go. Now I can use this information when I knit other sweaters with this same yarn (like Bjerk, which I cast on Saturday night!)

My sleeve gauge was different than my body gauge. I was using totally different needles, because you have to use smaller ’round needles (or DPNs even) on the sleeve. I had to compensate also for my row gauge (which is usually tighter than what the pattern calls for) and increase less often, or I would have had a gargantuan sleeve.

What was my gauge? 5.75 stitches/inch

The pattern called for 6 stitches/inch. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you’ve got 250 plus stitches, that extra .25 stitch adds up.

Body vs. Sleeves

It made sense for me to do the body first because I needed to find out how far down the body would go in order for me to make the sleeves the right length. I believe I ended up making the sleeves the same length as called for in the pattern size I was working on, however the body measurements around did NOT jive with what the pattern said. What do I learn from this? Hmm…. use common sense and all will come out fine. I also ended up making a smaller size than I thought made sense from looking at the pattern measurements.

Pattern

Pattern could apply to two things - the fair isle patterning or the written directions. We’ll deal first with the written directions.

This was not the clearest pattern I’ve ever followed. There are still parts of it I’m fuzzy about what they mean. The formatting sucks. Everything is all squished together. Thank god for the charts! I do like using the chart for the colorwork. Could you imagine? “K1 with Mc1, k3 with cc2…” Bleah!

As for fair isle patterning. I really liked it. It wasn’t hard to do, and I’ve gotten much better at knitting two handed fair isle. There is a bit of draw in for me, but not too much, and I’m sure that blocking will take care of most of it. (Can’t you tell in the picture above? :-P)

Color & Yarn

This sweater wasn’t made with the most exciting colors. Black (really dark blue) for the body and grey with some red for the accents. But it’s for my hubby, and it’s what he’ll like and wear, and that’s the most important thing isn’t it? I did try to substitute a heathered green for the red, because hubby said he didn’t like the red in the picture. He was wrong. It didn’t show any contrast at all, and the red is really what helps the pattern “pop”.

How much yarn did I use? How did it compare with the pattern specs?

MC body: 9 balls MC sleeves: 6 (bought 20. returned 4. keeping one for emergencies)
Not sure on the Contrasting Colors, but I think 2-3 of the grey and only 1 of the red.

New Techniques I Learned

Back stitch to put sleeves in. Putting a zipper into a sweater. Two handed Fair Isle. (I actually learned that for Ingeborg, but didn’t end up making the sweater) Steeks! (Both Sleeve and Neck steeks).

What Worked, and What Didn’t

What, you mean the sweater isn’t perfect? Ha!

There is a visible error in the pattern on the back. I will never tell my husband this, and will never point it out, but I know it’s there. That’s the mistake that was meant to be in it, so as to show God I’m not perfect. (I’m not religious, but find the Amish theory on this amusing).

I think I picked up too many stitches for the neckline. It’s a very wiiiide neck. This works out well, as my husband has a pretty wide neck. We’ll see how it fits him when I block it. I also did a funny thing with the turning edge on the neckline. The ‘right’ side of the neck is the block rib pattern. Then it tells you to knit two rows for a turning row and proceed to use stockinette on the back so it’s a double-thick collar. Where I ended up in the block-rib pattern there’s a short non-ribbed area on top before the turn. I decided it wasn’t horrible, and it was OK and did not rip it out to redo it. Amazing, I know.

The zipper I ordered was a full one inch too long. I measured before I was done with the facing because I was impatient and decided to mail order the zipper. Luckily I know how to shorten a zipper, and you probably can’t tell unless you grab the sweater off my husband and really really look. Again, this passes the galloping horse theory so I left it alone and did not order another zipper.

This is all really picky stuff. What worked? The rest of the sweater. The two handed Fair isle was easier than I thought it would be before I tried it. By the time I did the sweater I was comfortable enough with it that it didn’t draw in very much. (I did switch to a larger needle size during the color work as the pattern suggested). Steeks were a non-issue for me. Although next sweater for hubby, I’ll make the armholes about 1/2 to 1 full inch deeper (we’ll see how it fits him after blocking).

I’m really very very pleased with this sweater overall. If my husband does anything to wreck it, I will flog him. :)

Better pictures later. Remember you can re-read the whole Hardangervidda saga here.

I’ve decided to knit my nanny a sweater as (part of) her Christmas present.  I had her pick the pattern and the yarn color.  Here’s what I’m going to be using:

Yorkshire Tweed DK. Isn’t it gorgeous?

I’ve already warned her it might not be done by Christmas.  The pattern she picked is pretty simple though.  I’d show you a picture of it, but I couldn’t find one on the internet anywhere to steal, and I’m too lazy to take a picture of the book (it would have been faster to take a picture. I wasted a lot of time googling).  It’s a wrap around cardigan with cables and moss stitch and a really cool collar from Family Knits by Debbie Bliss. Drop shoulder, no buttons, zippers or anything. Should be pretty quick once I memorize the pattern.  It’s designed by Debbie bliss and the extra-small size is about 12" around too big for her.  I’ll definately have to size this one down given that my gauge on sweaters tends to grow just a teeny bit.

I’ve ordered the yarn and am anxiously awaiting it.  It’s coming from the UK, so I’m hoping it’ll be here next week!

I find myself constantly moving my knitting projects from one bag to the other. Part of the problem is that I don’t have enough bags!  I make these kind loose sack things out of slippery fabric with a drawstring closure.  The slippery fabric lets the yarn slide in and out easily without causing additional friction. It also means the bag is a lifeless lump:

It just lays there, and you really have to dig to see what’s in it.  I have two of these. This is the larger of the two. The other one is gold and is perfect for holding a pair of socks in progress. (Actually I have three. Another one that is burgandy, much smaller and I made with little pockets inside to hold a ball of cascade fixation each for working on socks two at a time with circs. I no longer knit socks that way and the bag is a tad bit too small overall.)

Bag version #2 uses some batting to stiffen up the sides slightly, and it can stand up even when opened:

You can see the little plastic clampy thing that helps keep the bag closed.  So far I really really like this style of bag. It currently contains three projects. Cross stitch scarf (seen peeking out the top here), Katie’s Opal socks, and my new Cashmere-y scarf which I haven’t started yet. It will only contain two once I start Cashmere-y scarf and have finished Cross stitch scarf.

The only thing which would make this bag better would be some sort of handle to carry it around with when it’s closed.

The handles I was going to put on it looked stupid, so I never sewed them down. I have a few ideas and I might have to make Bag #3.

Oh, and I have a seeminly infinite supply of this shiny fabric. I have no idea what it’s made of. It is washable, but it looses some of it’s sheen when you machine wash it. I originally bought it to make a really mod 80’s jacket in the late 80’s. I found the fabric at SAS fabrics in Phoenix AZ. It was a place that had huge bins of fabric (think dumpster diving through fabric) and you paid by the pound. It was an awesome store to shop at.  I think I paid maybe $15 total for four different colors of fabric. I used up all the gold & blue, I have about a yard of this blue-ish/green-ish color left and 2+ yards of the burgandy.

I’m making progress on my cross stitch scarf. Here’s a shot of what it looks like with the four wraps per stitch on the needle:

That is a lot of stitches (264*4 = 1056).  I read a hint that you should use a double sized needle for this row, then you only have to wrap twice instead of four times.  Gee, that would have been nice to know! I’ve loosend up my wraps quite a bit so they slide over the needle better.  I think I’m over halfway done with the scarf now. It’s easy knitting except for the row after the 4 wraps row. Then you have to concentrate on slipping and holding those huge stitches in line as you cross them over and then knit them in the proper order.

I can’t decide if I like the color combos or not (you can only see part of the colors here). The pattern calls for Color A and Color B.  I have seen only a few variations of this scarf. See here and here.  I wonder what it would look like with a solid and a variegated. So far I feel like I’m only really knitting with one color even though it’s really two.

Cashmere is Yummy

I have another scarf in the works too. So far it’s just balls of (cashmere-ish) yarn and a needle.  I’ll take a shot once I get it going.

Oh - and I haven’t had a buy a single needle (yet) for my scarf knitting, despite having only knit three scarves total (including this one). Yay!

I went to my knitting group this morning. As always a great time. Talking about knitting. Doing a little knitting. Passing Xander around. Looking at new yarns, seeing what everyone else is working on.  We got to talking about stashes. I thought I’d fess up and share what mine looks like. I have three stashes - spinning, knitting and quilting.

First, knitting:

On the very left are the more ‘active yarns’. The open basket contains stuff I’ve played with recently, or the other yarns for small projects (like my gloves) and a few other misc odds and ends. The two bins underneath that are the most recent aquisitions. The top one has actual sweater projects. Bjerk is waiting in there, as is Xander’s fair isle cow/sheep sweater.  The drawers hold my needles, yarn winder, ziploc bags (2.5 gallon size. Great for organising projects) misc spinning tools like my lazy kate, bobbins.  The umbrella swift is too big to fit anywhere inside, so it sits on top of the drawer unit. There is one bin on the very bottom back right that holds enough yarn for several sweaters. I went on an ebay kick after I first started knitting :)

Another of those bins in the back on the right is only half full, and it has spinning fibers in it.  The other two are mostly sock yarns.  Way too many sock yarns. 

So my spinning stash is both smaller and larger in some respects.

On the top: Olga (I think) a Corriedale/Something cross that is really fine. Under her, the dark fleece is Alice in both containers. The bottom container has batts that I created using a drum carder for Alice.  The box has Mission Falls cotton, a lot of leftovers from quite a few projects.  And under that - I have no idea. Some kind of fleece waiting to be prepared and spun up.

I’ll wait for another day to share the Quilting stash.  It’s a bit more sizeable because I’ve been working on it for a much longer time.

Yesterday I anxiously went to the mailbox, thinking I could sense yarn in it. I approached cautiously. There was nobody else around - the wind was blowing softly through the bare tree branches. Leaves were tumbling through the gutter playing a secret game of tag.

I place my key in the lock. It feels as if there is some resistance to the key as if the yarn is telling me it’s waiting for me. I slowly try and turn the key. and then try again. I curse quietly. I try again. I take the key out, and put it back in, and try again. Nope.

I curse again, louder this time. I stomp back to the house to get the spare mail key. Back to the box - try that key. No luck. I pound a bit on the front of the box thinking that might convince the box that I’m really serious about wanting my yarn. Nope.

The mailbox stands there, mocking me.

I walk home, again. Try and call the post office. Of course, they are closed.

Bastards. I bet they have their yarn and are happily knitting it!

I write down the post office’s phone number so I can call first thing in the morning.

Husband gets home. I have him try his key, just in case the cosmic universe has shifted and the box will now open.

*sigh*

The magic-lock-opening guy came today and indeed my yarn was in the box. And it was what was jamming the lock so I couldn’t open it! Ironic indeed. Here’s the yarn in all it’s glory:

Heather Grey and Admiral Blue. It’s destined to become the Ribbie Cardie. It’s the yarn called for, but in the colors I picked. The yarn was on sale at Elann for a mere $2.50ish a ball. What a deal!

From looking around at the different Ribbie Cardies out there, it seems that making the sweater with very little ease is key to making it look it’s best.

Scarf

What does 264 stitches get you? A very long cast on! I’ve started the free scarf pattern with my Koigu. Why? Because I can :)

I didn’t even want to think about how long to make the tail for the cast on, so I used both ends of the ball at the same time. I’ll have two extra ends to weave in, but the amount of grief I’ve saved myself was worth it. Nothing worse than getting to 240 stitches and realizing you don’t have enough yarn!

I haven’t forgotten Hardangervidda. The neck is taking forever. It’s on smaller needles and because I’m holding the whole body of the sweater, it’s harder to knit than I thought it would be.

I ordered this stuff forever ago.  Something obviously fell through the cracks because I had to call three times to see what happened. They got it all straightened out and now I have beautiful yarn!

I had to order the Chartlotte’s Web Shawl pattern. I don’t know that I’ll ever make it, but I really like the pattern/idea.  The other pattern (which due to my horrible arranging skills you can’t see) is the Cross-Stitch scarf pattern (designed by Queer Joe) which was free with the purchase of the Koigu yarn.  The koigu colors they have at this shop are way better than I see at my LYS.  If I were to do the Charlotte’s Web Shawl, I would have to mail order the yarn definately.

Must go wind the scarf yarn into balls so I can start on it!

A friend of mine who lives in a different city has a friend who wants to learn how to knit. We’ve been perusing patterns to see what might qualify under the interesting category, but still not be too difficult for a beginner to accomplish.

We’ve also been talking about online resources that show different knitting techniques. I thought I would list some of them here.

Videos on more ‘advanced’ techniques like using DPNs: http://www.knittingatknoon.com/demos.html

Videos on some basic techniques like casting on, knitting/purling etc: http://www.knittinghelp.com/knitting/basic_techniques/

(disclaimer: I have not actually viewed all of the videos at these sites)

The pattern wemost recently looked at to have friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) make: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall03/PATTponcho.html

Here are some resources on using charts: http://www.heirloom-knitting.co.uk/beginners_guide.html

To get some knitter’s graph paper free, download and print this: http://www.brownfox.com/PDF/knitgraf.pdf

This site has not only knitter’s graph paper, but hex paper, and lots of other cool graph-type paper: http://www.incompetech.com/beta/plainGraphPaper/

I have made stellar progress on Hardangervidda. I present to you a photo record of "How I steeked an armhole on Hardangervidda and survived":

"A" points to the outline around the steek marked with some pearl cotton. It’s a 4 stitch wide steek.  The "B" points to the satin ribbon I used to mark the center of the steek. I wanted it clearly marked where I was going to sew and then cut.  Measure 12 times, sew twice, cut once.

As I was machine stitching I realized it wasn’t really the cutting that was the big deal. It was the sewing those eensy teensy tiny stitches with the machine.  There was no way I was going to try and rip those out after putting them in. 

The view from the inside of the sweater from top to bottom: Pearl Cotton delineating steek area, two lines of tiny machine stitches, ribbon marking the center, and so on.

Just starting to cut…

And all finished cutting the steek.

I wanted to make sure it was going to fit. After doing a three needle bind off on the shoulders, I had Mike try it on:

He’s smiling! Does that mean he likes it, or he’s just humoring his wife?  I also wanted to check to make sure the sleeves were going to work:

I did a quick backstitch basting of the sleeve in and WOW. Talk about the perfect length on those sleeves.  I was a bit concerned that the depth of the armhole wasn’t quite big enough, so I had him hold his arm out:

He’s so tolerant :)  By this time there was no way he’d stay still for any more pictures. I managed to get both sleeves really sewn in (ripped out the basting on the first one. I had the facing showing on the outside a bit, so I moved where I was sewing it) and have picked up stitches for the neck.  There was one more steek I sewed & cut. That’s the scary one that is only 3 stitches wide down the center front. After knitting some facings, there will be a zipper there. I got it sewn & cut, no problems.

I had never backstitched a sleeve in before.  It was much easier than I thought it should be.  One thing I was concerned about is I was focusing on where the stitches were catching the sleeve so that the facing didn’t show. I was using my machine stitches on the steek to keep the stitches in the body a consistent depth.  However, it was difficult to tell exactly where the stitching was catching on the body. It came out pretty straight, but not perfectly straight.  It will pass the galloping horse test though, so I’m not redoing them.  Any hints/advice on how to do this better in the future?

Left to do:

• Knit collar
• Knit facings
• Find zipper close to the correct length & color
• Put in zipper
• Weave in ends (yes, those are yarn ends dangling down from his wrist) and whip stitch sleeve facings in
• Celebrate!