More! New! Patterns!

Well, not exactly new, but newly available...

First up: Flip

I knit Dev this skirt umpteen years ago (it now barely fits Boo), but then never got her to wear it and/or stand still long enough for pictures. Finally managed that in the summer of 2009. And then managed to work up a pattern for it last week - nothing like four years from object to pattern!

The pattern is written for any weight yarn - you need to knit a good gauge swatch, but then it's a matter of plugging in some numbers (I used my calculator, so don't feel bad if you do too) and knitting around and around and around until it's long enough. I used self-striping sock yarn, but anything would work well.

Second: The Harpswell Vest

My poor Dad. The man celebrated his 70th birthday last spring, so I wanted to knit him something big. Little did I know how slowly handspun colorwork would go. Plus, it was a little busy for him. So I decided to knit him a textured sweater (blue of course!) of my own design. Then I discovered how big it would have to be (I'm looking at you 24 inch arm length). Ehem. So Dad got a vest for Christmas instead of a sweater for his birthday. In any event, he seems to like it.

Same stitch pattern as the Harpswell Pullover (which went to my brother, who has shorter arms thankfully), same classic fit (2-4 inches of ease), but faster to knit because hey, no sleeves!

You can buy both of these patterns from the Pay Patterns page, which also includes loads of other patterns and more details about sizing and suchlike.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going off to finish my Waterloo...

FO: Boo's Elephants

My copy of Interweave Knits Summer 2011 arrived in its belated fashion last week (it goes through a corporate forwarding system from Houston), and as I paged through it the first time, I wasn't so impressed. But the girls were yelling at each other and the dog was chewing on a dirty sock, so I had to leave it and go deal with the chaos. And when I came back, I discovered in the very last section the perfect sweater for Boo, the future veterinarian.

A vest! With elephants! What could be better? So last Thursday I cast on, and today I've got this:

Pattern: Baby Elephant Vest by Melanie Rice, Interweave Knits Summer 2011
Yarn: Classic Elite Provence, 100% mercerized cotton, 205 yds/100 grams, 2 skeins in a lovely periwinkle that I picked up at the Yarns2Ewe Christmas sale many years ago.
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm and US 6/4.0 mm.
Gauge: ~5 stitches per inch in stockinette on larger needles
Start/finish: 12 May - 16 May 2011
Comments/mods: the modifications were many and huge with this sucker. To start off with, there was no way in hell I was going to get 6.25 stitches/inch with this yarn without making a bullet-proof, stand-up-by-itself sweater. So I threw gauge out the window (always a dangerous idea!), swatched a bit, found a fabric I liked, cast on for the smallest size (21" chest), and hoped for the best. I used the measurements for the Boo-sized sweater (27" chest) for the length to the underarm and the length of the armholes. That was the first major modification. Thankfully, the FO ended up at just about 27", so win-win.

Major modification #2: worked in the round instead of in pieces. I hate seaming, so I did this sucker in the round. I cast on the appropriate number of stitches with 2 extra (for seam stitches), and worked the garter stitch band back and forth. Then when I started the lace pattern I joined to work in the round. The two extra stitches (one on either side) were purled every row to make a nice side seam and to hide the jog that happens with garter stitch in the round.

Major modification #3 (which isn't actually so major): instead of casting off and seaming the shoulders, I kept the stitches live and used a three needle bind off to finish. Ta da! No seaming! Well, except for the bit at the hem and the neck band and armhole edges. But still, not too bad...

Are these not the cutest elephants you've ever seen?

And Boo seems pleased.

 

So that's May's sweater done. And it's not the one I was planning by a long shot. Maybe this will be a two sweater month???

FO: She asked for it

You can blame this overly-picture-heavy post on Elica82, who left a disparaging comment on my previous post. So in her honor, I am going to take you through the ridiculous details of this project, and you'll have to read the whole thing to get to the money shot. Well, you don't have to clearly, but she'd better if she knows what's good for her.

The First Step: admitting you have a problem. And then proceeding to ignore what this says about you person/knitter and blithely cast on the Ivy League Vest, a work of art by Eunny Jang.

The Second Step: Start off with enthusiasm and precision. Discover the joys of two-color ribbing. Marvel at the fact that your OCD with regards to color choices has paid off, at least so far.

The Third Step: Continue slogging away, but cracks are beginning to show. Will I make it?

The Fourth Step: After a brief Eureka moment and much exhilaration, it becomes more and more clear that no, I will not make it.

The Fifth Step: Maybe? Maybe? Maybe? Nope. Still not going to make it.

The Sixth Step: Acceptance, moving on, and slicing my knitting open with a pair of scissors. Which still gives me the cold sweats even to think about. Here's the montage:

Precutting:

Crocheted steeks (thanks to Wimbledon Sewing Machine Company, who charged me a whopping £1.30 for a crochet hook):

My demonstration to Devil as to the reasoning behind taking sharp metal blades to precious knitwear:

And here we go (some pix courtesy of my small Ansel Adams)!

Aaaaaaah!!! I can't watch!

Is it holding? I think it's holding...

All done.

Picking up for ribbing:

A more serious rundown of project and materials:

The Pattern: The pattern was, well...I'll be honest: this pattern and Interweave Knits' formatting were not a match made in heaven. I started off with the body chart and very quickly realized that I was going to go postal if I didn't do something to keep track of all the increasing and decreasing and steeking and shit that needed to happen. I solved the problem by copying the chart and writing all over it. I drew bright blue pen lines along the stitches vertically to show where the decreases and increases needed to happen, I made notations as to where steeks started, I wrote down and crossed off every neck decrease. The page is now completely illegible, and even that didn't save me from a few fuckups along the way. But I ended up being close enough to the correct stitch count at the end that I didn't have to do too much fancy hand waving to get it to all fit together. It's a complicated pattern, and not very clearly written, given the space constraints of the magazine. But it's not impossible either. Another option would be to rewrite the pattern with just the numbers you need for your size, and redo the charts so you've got the starting and stopping stitches on either side. But that seemed like too much work.

Speaking of sizes: I knit a chimeric monster of two sizes. For my bust measurement (40) I wanted the 37.75" size, since the pattern said each bust measurement would fit up to 5 inches larger with no problems. However, the 37.75" size had a hip measurement of 36.25 inches. Aka: far too small for my big ass childbearing lower half. So I knit the 41.75" size up to the waist decreases, then increased up to the number of stitches for the 37.75" size over the same number of rows as called for the increases for the 41.75" size, and then followed the directions for the 37.75" size. And damned if it didn't work!

My only other issue with the pattern was that it was very unclear as to which colors were the background and which were the pattern (important for the steeks and the side seam purl stitch). I noticed as I was working the ribbing that the colors fell in to two groups: marble heather, mist and fog versus iris heather, clematis heather and asphalt heather. So when I could, those were "background" colors and "pattern" colors respectively. I also decided that if I came to a steek or a purl seam, and using the designated color was going to mean weaving in a float (i.e. more then four stitches of the same color), then I'd throw in the other color to avoid having to manipulate yarn balls more then was absolutely necessary.

How I solved the issue of yarn balls getting all tangled up:

After the lower ribbing, I stopped breaking off each yarn when I finished with it - most of the colors were used at least every five rows, so I just carried them up along the side. My rationale was that 1) that would use less yarn and 2) give me fewer ends to weave in at the end.

The Yarn: I used Knit Picks Palette in this project. It was my first time knitting with this yarn, and I really like it for colorwork. I think anyone who knits socks with it is kidding themselves as it is a very loosely plied 2-ply yarn with low twist, and I can't imagine it would wear well as socks. But the colors are lovely, and it has that very useful "stickiness" needed for Fair Isle and steeking. A bit easy to split the plies while knitting, but nothing too terrible or annoying. I used less then one ball of each color in this project, although it was a bit hairy towards the end to see if I'd run out of the iris heather - I'd used a lot of it in swatches. But no worries. The final damage was marble heather: 43 g, asphalt heather: 34 g, iris heather: 43 g, clematis heather: 41 g, mist: 28 g, fog: 32 g.

Other Details: Used US 3/3.25 mm needles for lower ribbing and body, US 2/2.75 mm needles for neck ribbing and armholes. In retrospect, I might have used US 2 needles for the lower ribbing too, as it tends to flare a bit (thankfully blocking took care of most of that). For the center neck decreases I used k2tog, p1 (center stitch), ssk to maintain the stripe of grey on either side of the center purl stitch. I liked that look better then the ssk/p1/k2tog that I originally tried. I whipstitched the crocheted edge of the steek down to keep it flat.

Neck decreases:

Nice screw up there porpoise...how did I manage to do that?

Gauge: pre-blocking: 7-7.5 stitches/7 rows per inch. Post-blocking: 7 stitches/7.5 rows per inch. Not surprisingly, my stitches were waaaaay wonky before blocking (gotta love Fair Isle, hunh?), and the ribbing was curling quite a bit.

But post-blocking, things smoothed out beautifully.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...The Money Shot(s):

I'm wearing it to work tomorrow. And quite possibly every day thereafter. Please bury me in this sweater. Or in Venezia, which has now moved it's way up my mental queue. Because I need more Fair Isle insanity, right? Maybe I can do it for London 2012.

I seem to have moved into a grey/purple phase, since yesterday I bought supplies for a big sewing project. Hmmm....

(Was that enough photos for you Carmen?)

Do you hear that singing?

I think it's the fat lady. Sadly, that means that

there is no way in hell I'm going to be successful at this Knitting Olympics challenge (again*). I'm halfway through the second of three pattern repeats (~40 rows each), and it's just not going to happen by tomorrow at 7:30 pm. I'm going to finish at some point in the near future next week, but given that I ended Thursday behind where I'd started that morning**, I was pretty much doomed. Couple that with a stomach bug and collapsing unconscious at 10:00 for the last two nights, and that's all she wrote.

But what she's been writing is awful pretty.

Neck steek shaping up

Close up of front

I can't wait to finish this and actually wear it, although I'm hoping that a good blocking will take care of the massive amounts of stitch wonkiness. It's started to warm up quite a bit over hear in southeast England, so I'm hoping it doesn't become summer before I get to finish it up. Congratulations to all the Knitting Olympians who were successful!

* Winter 2006: Adamas, my first lace project, and I had only about 10 rows to go by the end. Closest finish yet.
Summer 2008: Veil of Isis, which, as we all know, finally got finished as a Christmas present in 2009.
Winter 2010: as you see it. Oh well!
** Those pesky armhole decreases got left out, so I got to rip back about six rows on the train on my way home on Thursday. Not.A.Happy.Camper.

So about those shorter rows...

Shorter rows are apparently not enough to make me knit any faster. That's the bad news. The good news is that I've started the armhole steeks, so things are moving along. I've got one color that is starting to run a little thin, but I think it will be ok. That's the good news. It's still quite likely that this is not going to be done by Sunday evening, but so be it. It will be done before the end of the Winter Paralympics on March 21st (thanks to aquaphilic for the heads up!). Maybe even before the end of the first week of March - there are secret projects lurking in the wings that must be done ASAP, and they will pounce at 12:01 am on Monday.

So how's everyone else's Olympic knitting going*? Any winners yet? Or are we all in the same boat?

* I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Magdalena Neuner's Olympic knitting has taken a back seat to kicking ass in biathlon. But that's just a guess!

Hold the phone!

Now, when I was blathering on yesterday about rows/day and such like, why did none of you point out to (math-challenged) me that (ehem) the Closing Ceremonies don't actually occur until Sunday? Here I was thinking that I only had five days to go and was going to have to forgo basic hygiene to get this vest done. But as of right now (bedtime on Tuesday), I am on row 68, have started the neck steek, and have only 104 rows to go on the body. However, it seems that I am unable to do more then around 15 rows a day: today I was home with Boo (who managed to barf all over me and herself within seconds of my getting dressed this morning) watching Dumbo and Angelina Ballerina all day, and I still only got 17 rows done. WTF?

104 rows/3 days = 32 rows per day. Fuck. However...the rows are going to get shorter with the neck shaping, right? Hmmmm...further updates tomorrow evening.

58 rows down, 121 to go, 5 days. Hunh.

I think it's time to declare sleep obsolete, meals that include anything other then cold cereal and nuked baked beans a luxury, and stock up on the coffee and chocolate. But definitely not the wine - after knitting row 19 for the fifth (!) time, I've come to the conclusion that I can not knit fair isle and pay even the slightest amount of attention to anything else. But,

I still like the colors, and it's moving along. I've finished the waist shaping, and am onto row 36 of the chart. Which has 70 rows, 48 of which need to be worked a total of three times. 121 rows/5 days means 22 rows per day. That doesn't include the neck and armhole edgings. Hunh.

Ok, 121 rows/3 days means 40 rows per day. Seeing as how I got from row 19 to row 35 last night in a couple of hours, it's not impossible. But, let's be honest, it's also probably not going to happen. Hmmm...I think I may be lugging six balls of yarn and a big bag on the train with me for the next few days. Stay tuned...

Ribbing done, umpteen gazillion rows of colorwork to go

It took two nights to do 25 rows of the ribbing. I'm hoping that the straight fair isle sections go a bit faster!

On the upside, I'm liking the color combo a lot. And I'm getting perfect stitch gauge (!). My row gauge is off (on the loose side) by about 0.1 rows, so I'm not going to worry too much about that. No, now my worries will center on running out of yarn - given the pattern sizing, I'm knitting the bottom half at a size 41.75 and the top at 37.75 (let's hear it for big butts and small boobs!). I've got 230 yds of each color. It may be a white knuckle trip to the end!

The Knitting Olympics

You may have noticed a new, un-photographed project that has shown up in the sidebar over there to the right with an intriguing title. Because this is exactly what I need - a hole in the head. Or another project, in this case.

But, but, but...it's the Olympics! Today's the day! And Stephanie is on board again! How could I say no? For the previous Knitting Olympics in 2006, I knit my first lace shawl, Adamas (pre-Ravelry, as if such a thing were even comprehensible anymore!). I was not successful, but it was the first lace thing I'd ever done, and I got most of it done during the Olympics, so it was a good experience.

This year, I've decided to tackle a project that has been on my list for a long time - the Ivy League Vest. Here's why this is a challenge for me: I have a serious Fair Isle/colorwork planning block. The knitting of this will not be a problem, and I've done steeks once before, so that's not a huge deal, but I despise don't really care for the colors used in the original. And figuring out which colors look good together is not my strength. So I knew that I wanted to do different colors, but it was a huge inertia block for me to actually do the work to figure out how to change them.

Enter this week: Ironman has been in Australia for work, so I've had the freedom to play around with the bazillion colors of Knit Picks Palette I bought for this exact project, and make teeny swatches with lots of ends hanging off of them. Here's the first, knit on the recommended size 4/3.5 mm needles:

Final gauge: 6 stitches/inch, so those needles won't work. More importantly, the combination of Eggplant, Clematis Heather, Fog, Mist, Bittersweet Heather and Hyacinth won't do. Next:

This swatch was knit on US 2/2.75 needles using Ash, Clematis Heather, Mist, Fog, Lipstick and Cream. Stitch gauge, 7 stitches per inch, color combo, ick.

At this point, it was 11:30 on Sunday night, and it was well past time for bed. Except that I went to bed and lay there for an hour obsessing about colors and what should go where, and so on. Silly Porpoise. Since IM was away, I found myself downstairs at 1:00 in the morning scanning black and white images of different colors of Palette. Because I seem to remember reading somewhere that an important issue in colorwork is contrast. And if you're substituting colors, it will come out better if you get similar contrast values between your substitutions and the originals. These contrast values are easiest to see in B&W.

I also realized that the pattern uses two colors in each of three families: white, tan/brown and green. Green was out, and I'm not so taken with the tan/brown option. Whites, fine. Tan/brown became greys and green became either purple or blue.

The grays down the left side will be ok, but the navy was too dark.

This was better.

This one had the same contrasts as #2, but with a purple heather instead of the blue. So then it was time to swatch. By the time I finally went to bed on Sunday night/Monday morning, I had half of this done:

The observant among you may realize that this is none of the combinations that I meticulously scanned. I decided to try a purple version (with Huckleberry Heather and Iris Heather) and a blue version (with Pool and Blue Note heather). This swatch was also done on US 2/2.75 mm needles, but my final gauge came out at 8 stitches per inch, so I think I'll be going with a US 3/3.25 mm needle.

I like these combinations much better then the ones I first started with. So the B&W option was very helpful in narrowing things down. I've got my needles ready to go - some lovely bamboo circulars* - and I will be casting on as soon as the girls go to bed tonight** with these yarns.

Clockwise from lower left: iris heather, clematis heather, marble heather, mist, fog (now called silver apparently) and asphalt heather in the center. There's got to be a little bit of mystery in this, right?

Citius, Alitius, Fortius!

*  I'm hoping to be able to get this project on to the plane for our trip on Monday - that's three hours knitting time right there.
** I realize this is not kosher. However...the Opening Ceremonies will be starting at something like 1:00 am Saturday for me. That's the loss of an entire, unencumbered evening's worth of ribbing. And given that we leave at 8:30 Monday morning for seven days half-term holiday in North Africa, I feel that missing out on this chunk of time will doom me from the beginning. So...I will aim to finish by the same time minus half an hour on the 28th (the Closing Ceremonies start 30 min earlier then the Opening Ceremonies).

FO: It's not a V neck!

It is, however, blue. A step forward however...

Pattern: Bramblewood Vest, by Christina Wall
Yarn: Some random, recycled from a Goodwill sweater, navy yarn. I had 750 yds/300 gr, and I used ~670/268 gr.
Needles: US8/5.0 mm for body and bottom I cord edging, US 6/4.0 mm for arm and neck I cord edging.
Gauge: 4.25 sts/7 rows per inch, slightly tighter then recommended (4 sts/6 rows)
Start/finish: 7 Oct - 19 Oct 2009
Comments/mods: First off, the yarn. I have no idea what this stuff is, but it could be Cascade 220? Hard for me to say, since I've never knit anything with Cascade. Relatively coarse, 4 ply worsted weight, in dark dark navy blue. It was fine to knit with - the cable came out great - but my fingers got really really sore on the tips. The only thing I can really pinpoint as a potential culprit is the coarseness of the yarn. Perhaps I'm becoming a delicate lily of the valley in my old age, but this is a first! So, the yarn worked well, and was cheap, but I'm not sorry I'm done knitting with it. And the few balls I have left over will become...maybe nothing.

The pattern was a fun, quick knit. Top down, which is my new fave, mini-raglan seams, fairly mindless, but with a cable every so often to keep you on your toes.

This was my first I cord edging, and I really like how it turned out. What a nice option for finishing off an edge.

I didn't block this very emphatically. Just soaked it in some warm water and Soak, and laid flat to dry, smoothing it out to even out some of the stitches. I suspect that I could have gotten stitch gauge if I'd pushed it a bit, but it's fine as it is. A hard color to photograph in October in London, but it's a cosy vest that is going to see quite a bit of use.

Green stuffs

After a disastrous attempt to start the Aleita Shell (Rav link) last week at Knit Night (I cast on the entire thing, counted, had the right number of stitches, knit several rows and discovered I'd twisted the row before joining. Mobius Vest is not my thing. Ripped out. And by then, what with the talking and gabbing and screeching and such, it was time to go home), I made it past the first few rows. In fact, thanks to five hours on the confocal microscope yesterday, I've made it all the way up to the bodice and am working my way through p4, k1 ribbing galore.

This one is a fun knit. I like the yarn (Silky Wool), the pattern is fairly straightforward, but interesting enough to keep me from getting bored. And my new toy is making finishing one skein and having to start another a lot of fun.

However, this evening I am casting on something new (slut!). No project monogamy here, no sirree. This is the only yarn I picked up in London on our house hunting trip:

Indie Dyer Mini (fingering weight 100% superwash merino), in the colorway Dad's Den. Purchased at I Knit London, right by Waterloo Station. Given that my commute will involve changing from the train to the Tube at Waterloo, I suspect I may be stopping by on a weekly basis. This could get ugly...