Prime Time Knitter

The Mother of All Weevils

Yes, I know that weevils and moths are different critters, but my attempts at an amusing blog title with MOTHer left me with several “mother” expressions that are not in keeping with the tone of my family-friendly blog.  (Ed claims I’d make a sailor blush when I utter knitting-related expletives, and this was one such occasion.)

Thora has been working out so well, that it has propelled me back to near project monogamy.  Despite my halting attempts to add some rows each night to my Rustic Silk jacket and swatch for additional sweaters, it is Thora that has captivated me.  There is the issue of having enough yarn to complete the project, and the possible problem with sizing.  Being somewhat compulsive about problem-solving, I needed to satisfy my desire to know how each would work out—and both seemed resolved around midweek.  I had started my fourth skein of Zara after completing the Viking knot cable, and the body width will end up being the 40 inches (total circumference) that I have decided would be perfect for this sweater.  And I seemed to be getting 6 vertical inches for a skein, and so it would leave me 5 skeins for the back, 5 skeins for the front, and 5 skeins for both sleeves.  I just envisioned the blog post with a picture of me beaming as I held up the tiny bit of leftover yarn while wearing my FO. 

Here is my WIP after four skeins, and that fourth skein will take me past the armholes, which will be shaped tonight:

 

And after I added side markers to the Rustic Silk jacket, it began to take on a “normal” shape.  It stretches a lot when blocked, and right now in its unblocked form the back is 20 inches and each front is 10 inches.  This yarn is hard on my hands and I’m only managing about 4 rows a night.

Then it happened.  Just as I was completing skein #3 on Thora, I saw a tiny bit of white, sticky stuff about the size of a grain of rice attached to the yarn.  I’m knitting from the inside of the ball out, and so this was on the outside.  When I looked closely, I saw that one of the twists of the multi-ply Zara merino was broken.  In denial, I just thought it was a flaw in the yarn, and I then selected skein #4.  It had lots of sticky, white, rice-sized bits on its outside.  So I balled it up, taking out the bad yarn lengths, and realized that this probably was a moth infestation.  I lost 10 grams from that 50-gram ball.  And now I’m worried. 

I bought the yarn from WEBS, and I am sure the problem is me and not them, since I’ve had the yarn for two years and it arrived in pristine shape.  Ten of the 15 skeins were packaged separately in a plastic bag, and I stored them in that bag, in a plastic box, with a bar of Irish Spring soap.  All those skeins are fine.  The other 5 skeins were near my knitting chair, in an open box where I keep the yarn I want to swatch, acting as an engraved invitation to a moth, I guess.  The odd thing, though, is that none of the other wool yarns in that box seem to be affected, and some are lovely, fuzzy yarns that ought to be just as enticing to any moth worth its salt. (And in the case of the other yarns, I have more than enough for any possible garment.) In fact, other yarns in that box are Zara too, for the Devonshire Jacket UFO that I hope to get to shortly, and they are untouched.   I guess I should consider myself lucky that not more yarn is damaged, but now I have only 14 skeins to use for the Thora, if I want to avoid knitting with the damaged skein (now languishing in my freezer).  And because I’m compulsive about more things than problem solving, I will go back to all my plastic boxes this weekend and check to see if those yarns are safe. 

On a more satisfying note, and the main reason my blogging has been so pathetically erratic, is that my garden has been using up my morning time usually earmarked for photos and blog writing.  I have been rewarded for my efforts.  Until this year, I thought I did not like beets.  I discovered that I didn’t like the way my mother cooked beets (and almost anything else that was supposed to be edible).  Ed wanted me to try growing beets, and I planted a row largely to please him.  But the variety called Chiogga is unbelievably delicious, and this weekend, I’ll be harvesting the current crop (alas, just 7 beets) and planting a second row.  My broccoli is plump and luscious.  When I took the row cover off after yet another storm, the droplets of water looked like diamonds on a field of green.

We’re big broccoli fans here--even the birds:

I doubt if my 44 plants will go as far as I’d like, but right now we have at least three solid weeks of serious broccoli eating ahead of us.  A second batch of broccoli is now in peat pots, which I hope to plant in the garden by August 1.  I have transplanted my Swiss chard into one of the spinach rows, and will be replacing the second spinach row with summer lettuce tomorrow.

And even with all the gloom and rain, the warm weather plants (peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, bush and pole beans, and cucumbers) are looking pretty good:

The Edge of Reason

I finally came clean with myself and admitted that I actually have no precise idea how big the bottom edge my next two projects will be.  Oh, I swatched with care, and I did the math (over and over), and I’ve measured each about 50 times, but until I knit further, and possibly not until I block the finished piece, I won’t be sure.

The schematic for Thora shows only the width for the part of the sweater over the cable godet. 

That is about 40 inches for me, and it is fine, considering that this is a jacket-style sweater that will be worn over a shirt and slacks or a skirt.  But the bottom edge looks huge when knit, but not so huge when I put it up against my body. 

The edges of the godet form a kind of pleat—which is very deftly accomplished by the combination of the 2k border and the decreases at the sides of the Viking cable.  That cable is decreased away at the waist.

Although this is an Elsebeth Lavold pattern, it was published in Knitter’s Magazine, Fall 1999 (and reprinted in Arans and Celtics), and so it does have a schematic.  Lavold’s Designer Book I, which has the pattern I used for Liv, has no schematics, and that was a source of frustration for me.  If I assume that the Thora schematic is drawn to scale, then the size of the bottom edge on my sweater is about right.  So for now, I’m knitting on assuming things will go right.  I know that is a dangerous idea.

I cast on for my Cherry Tree Hill Rustic Silk sweater, and it also seems big as I knit each of the 233-stitch rows. Here, I have no one to blame but myself because I am designing it.  The variegated yarn is very busy, and it is only suitable for something with very simple lines.  I’ve planned a Chanel-style shape with some minor decreasing at the sides, just to reduce the bulk.  Linen stitch breaks up the colors and gives the knitted fabric a hopsack texture.  When I blocked it out, it softened up and became drapy. But when knit it is stiff, and impossible to measure accurately.  Plus I haven’t gotten that far:

I am hoping this will be about 43 inches around the hip—also somewhat large because I will wear it over jeans for the most part. I am knitting this in one piece to avoid breaking the color at side seams.  There will be no buttons or button band, but just a simple row of single crochet to finish the edges, so this represents the entire hip circumference.  I’m using a 40-inch circular (the KnitPicks Harmony interchangeables), and when I spread the bottom edge out, it looks about right.  But again, not really exact enough for me to know for sure unless I knit on, and that is just what I’m doing. 

Rain Check

I finished NaKniSweMoDo Sweater #3 over the weekend.  I had less trouble working with heavy wool than usual because the last several weeks have been cool and rainy—so rainy that I can’t remember the last full day of sunshine.   Ordinarily, I don’t welcome the start of summer, but even I have had enough of the gloom.  (According to the weather forecasters, it is already our 7^th wettest June on record—and more rain is ahead for most of this week.)  Ed is swearing that we won’t see the sun until November, and I have stopped trying to cheer him up.  Although cool, it is clammy and damp.  Armies of slugs have invaded my garden, and if my tomato plants could talk, they would implore me to move them back inside.  My summer vegetables are off to a very slow start. 

And despite the coolness, it is not really cold enough to model the sweater.  And I’m not about to go tromping around outside in the damp, unmowed grass to find a place where I can take a nice photo.  So I’ll take a rain check on the modeling shot and store this sweater for the summer.  Here, instead, is my fallback picture on a hanger and ladder:

The sweater is my adaptation of a more traditional Morehouse Farms design.  I changed the ribbing at the cuffs, bottom, and neck edge to reverse stockinette, instead of ribbing.  I replaced the drop shoulders with fitted sleeves.  Also, I shaped the sides a bit, and I added some slits at the side seams.  I designed this sweater to wear when working, and it succeeds on that score.  

If I had it to do over again, I’d probably make the back neck edge a bit higher, but I used the pattern motif as a guide to start the neck bindoff.  The bindoff begins at the end of a check.  Because this yarn is thick, I used mattress stitch for the seams instead of crocheting them, and I did feel the sense of inertia that seems to afflict many knitters when faced with finishing.  I guess I would have done better to knit in the round until the armholes, and for the sleeves.  But what’s done is done.

I used about 9 of the 11 skeins in the kit (it was cheaper to buy the kit than loose skeins), and I have already stored the excess in my box of “Morehouse leftovers”, which is a great place to look for small amounts for presents.  The remainder will be used for hats or mittens.

To both the trained and untrained eye, it looks as if I won’t manage 12 sweaters by the end of December.  I had hoped to surpass my personal best of a sweater from scratch in two months, and I’m only doing slightly better than that.  But the next project (Sweater #4), which I think will be Thora, is moving along nicely.  If I could finish it by the end of July, I’d still have a chance at 8, or even 9, sweaters for the year—and I’d be happy with that.

 

You Can Take It With You

Until recently, I didn’t knit much in public.  When I traveled for work in the 1970s and 80s, I knitted on planes, but that was when the only hazard was being hijacked to Cuba. No one troubled much back then about the dangers of knitting needles as lethal weapons.  And crushed against the window with only one person to see that I was knitting, it didn’t feel very “public”.  Most of the time, I knitted alone in the quiet of my home, as I pretty much still do.  After seeing others’ portable projects, I finally planned one solely for public knitting:  A simple scarf for Ed that is now done, except for weaving in the ends (why bother now—he can’t wear it anyway).   I carried it with me to various doctor’s appointments, and it worked pretty well to keep my anxiety low.  

I find it ironic that since the knitting kept me happily amused in the waiting room, I seldom waited very long.  In fact, it almost seemed as if the doctor was intending to interrupt the tranquility of my knitting with the annoyance of dealing with a medical issue. 

The current UFOs are too complicated for portable knitting. The blocked pieces of the basketweave sweater are ready to have the shoulders joined and neck rows knit. The Thora cables have about 20 rows to go for the complicated Viking knot, and I have to follow a chart to complete them.   

So midweek I started a sock project that I can take with me on Monday when I get my bone density tested and have the results interpreted.  (Now is when I hope all that weight lifting has paid off.) One of my Ravelry sock groups, Sock Knitters Anonymous, is knitting a Nancy Bush sock for June, and that narrowed my search for a portable project. I selected Conwy, from Knitting On the Road, and you can see some of the lovely FOs from this Ravelry link.

The only problem with this design was getting it started.  I played a bit fast and loose with the gauge swatch, using the size 1 (2.5 mm) needles in the pattern, and only knitting about six rows, flat.  And actually, I did get the gauge the pattern specified.  But I have skinny ankles, and I wasn’t getting enough negative ease to keep the socks up.  So I started anew with size 0’s (2.0 mm), and things are working out pretty well--four evenings later.

We had a week of dreary, rainy weather, and outdoor photos were impossible or fleeting, and so I had to tinker with the color on this picture.  The Shibui yarn is a beautiful magenta, and I do like it.

The sock is top down, but it has shaping at the top of the 8-inch leg.  Following the idea of a Ravelry knitter, I moved up the decreases so that they fall closer to the top, and the leg is narrower just below my shin.  I have one more decrease to go before this qualifies as a truly simple knit, and then it is back to sweaters. 

Don't Run Out on Me

Aside from running out of time, I seldom run out of anything.  Being a “glass-is-empty” kind of person, and pathologically conscientious, I always replenish stores of groceries, toilet paper, prescription medicines, etc., long before there is any chance of running out.  Even when I lived in a tiny NYC apartment, and had almost no closet space, I still managed to stock up on important things.  

Ed also stocks up on most things (but not clothing—running out of shirts, shoes, or pants forces him to spend his time disagreeably at a mall, or in a fit of frustration as he tries to figure out what size he needs from on-line retailers).  My son, however, has inherited none of our forward-thinking habits. In fact, had he not been the only infant in the delivery room, I would have sworn I took home the wrong baby.  He does his own baking for dietary reasons, and has the habit of looking for sugar (it always seems to be sugar), only to discover that there is none and has to run to the store in mid-recipe.  Ed and I simply roll our eyes in disbelief.

And so this brings me to Thora, which is now on the needles.  I suspected some problems even at the swatching stage because I nearly used up one of my 15 skeins of Zara just by swatching—not a good sign.  I planned to knit the medium size, which requires 15 skeins of Rowan DK. It seemed that I could substitute Zara without any problem.  And foolishly, I bought just 15 skeins.  The Rowan yarn is 127 yards per 50-g ball, and the Zara is 136.5—close enough, I thought.  And I figured that going down a needle size would get me the sweater I wanted.  The problem seems to be that gauge in the original uses sizes 3 and 4 needles, and I don’t get gauge unless I use size 1s (actually sizes 2.50 and 2.25 mm).  I’m about 3 inches up from the bottom of the back, and I have just 15 g of a 50-g ball left.  So will it work?  I’m not sure.  I have the sense that if I knit it quickly, I might just have enough yarn. 

Then I’ve tried to calm myself by thinking, “get real”.  You have more than 2000 yards, and surely that is enough for a cardigan.  And you’re planning to shorten the length of the body and sleeves.  When I check sweaters knitters posted on Ravelry, knitted out of Zara, I have at least 2-3 more skeins than I need.  But they’re using much bigger needles (3.5 to 4 mm), as is suggested on the ball band. 

The knitting itself looks great—the nice stitch definition I hoped I’d get.  There is a big cable, rather like a godet, positioned so there are two in the back and two in the front.  I’ve just begun it.

 

And here is the beginning of the small cable that goes up the back, front, and center sleeves:

 

Measuring is tricky at this point because the bottom is almost pleated and eventually narrows so that the circumference of the body will be about 40 to 41 inches (just what I want it to be, since this is a jacket-type cardigan to be worn over a shirt). 

I would never have considered a sweater knit on size 1s to be a quick knit, but I’m rather intrigued to see if I have enough yarn, and I hope to barrel through it. 

For the moment, while the basketweave sweater is blocking, I’ll proceed with Thora.  I should know how things will work out after finishing the back.

I’m playing another game with myself, and that is to see if I can sustain homegrown vegetables until the end of October.  The spinach is about 2 or 3 meals from being eaten up, but the lettuce is abundant.  Here is my mesclun—my personal selection of several lettuce varieties, and spicy greens (the Japanese mustard greens, mizuna, komatsuna, Osaka purple, and tatsoi; some arugula; a small head of radicchio). 

I hope that by time they’re eaten up, the broccoli is ready for harvest.  Then it should be on to Swiss chard.  Ed’s deer-proof cage is ready for me, and I’ve put in my cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and zucchini.  I have direct seeded pole and bush beans.  The tomatoes, aside from two cherry tomato plants, will go in next week.

And the shiny bits are aluminum foil under the zucchini to confuse the squash borers.  I sure hope it works.

A Matter of Timing

I am not doing well juggling my knitting, gardening, work, and the ordinary tasks of everyday life.  The knitting is moving along, my garden looks wonderful, work is slow and steady, but blogging has fallen by the wayside. 

The problem is that I like to post in the morning, after taking photos with the best light for accurate color.  But that is just the time that also is best for tending my vegetables—watering before the sun gets high enough to evaporate the water before it sinks into the roots, smashing slugs with my trowel, weeding before the heat of the day, and getting the grubby things done before a shower.  Ed and I are having a hard time eating fast enough to keep up with the spinach, which I pick in the morning. 

Although the knitting is moving along, the changes in the garden are far more dramatic. The current crop (ok two rows) of lettuce has fulfilled its purpose as a natural mulch for my broccoli.  It is time to eat it and let the broccoli have the planting rows to itself. 

The basketweave sweater is progressing nicely, but not nicely enough to get me three sweaters in five months.  I’m working on my second sleeve, which is actually going very quickly now that I’ve figured out where to place the increases for the arm part and decreases for the cap.

I completed my collection of Fair Isle books (more on the reason for that in another post) with Ann Feitelson’s book and Ann Bourgeois book, intended to help me with the Philosopher’s Wool kit in my stash.  

Two other notable purchases were Cookie A’s sock book and Margaret Radcliffe’s book on color knitting, both of which deserve posts of their own.  And I’m still waiting for Wendy’s toe-up sock book, when Knit Picks restocks it. 

I am feeling a real need for knitting with tweed yarn, and I bought color cards from KnitPicks and Beaverslide Dry Goods. Both have lovely yarns that are paralyzing me with indecision.

But I need to regroup and organize my stash a bit before buying another sweater’s worth of tweed yarn, especially because I also enrolled in the two Stitches East classes on working with Japanese stitch dictionaries and patterns (and June is a tax month, so some fiscal restraint is in order to compensate for my indulgences over the last two months).  But I convinced myself that Knit Picks organic cotton for washcloths (my summer portable projects, and as sample pieces for modular knitting) would be prudent and the 16" Harmony circulars rounded out my collection of fixed and adjustable 24" and 32" circulars :

It will be another week, or even two, before I can plant my warm-weather vegetables.  We’ve had some very cool nights, and I’ve had to bring in my tomato, pepper, eggplant, zucchini, and cucumber plants, and a couple that were so cold, the flats of lettuce and Swiss chard couldn’t remain outside either.  Ed is putting the final deer-stymieing touches on the cage that will keep them from eating those plants—attaching the netting and making doors.  

The next thing I’ll do, even while he is working, is plant my pole bean seeds after I restring those towers and read up on ways to keep the squash borers away from the zucchini.  I’ll start with the row covers that I use to shield the other plants, and then try the aluminum foil approach of covering the stem.  I’m determined to join the ranks of the gardeners who have so many summer squash they don’t know what to do with them.

Sumer Is Icumin In

The hot week we had a month ago, and the sporadic hot days that have been interspersed with some cool, rainy weather and some quite delightful days have kept this tune in my head.  Until I checked Wikipedia for a link, I thought it meant “summer is coming” and that it was a madrigal.  (And when my college chorus learned this song, our conductor did not enlighten us about the flatulent stag.)  Well, regardless, my thoughts have turned to summer projects, and it beats having some dumb advertising jingle stuck in my head.

The Cherry Tree Hill Rustic Silk in linen stitch blocked out well, and it will definitely work for a July-August project.  I need to try out edging and decide on the sweater shape, so it is still in the planning stage.

A better project to knit now is Thora, but I think the design will need some massive changes to fit me.  Blocking my “perfect” seed-stitch swatch made it less perfect.  It is no longer 4 inches wide, but nearly 5 inches.  

I don’t know why this works.  I usually knit a medium size sweater for me.  If I’m not getting gauge, I find that if I knit the number of stitches for the small size, I get the finished size I want.  A quick check of the pattern instructions shows that this will be the case for Thora too, but the row gauge also isn’t working out, and it matters.  The cable motif that goes down the back, front, and arms will help me adjust.  According to the instructions, those cables should be 1 inch for each repeat, and I’m getting about 2 ¼ inches for two repeats.  So I’ll need to shorten.  But once I do this, and draw a much more careful schematic than appeared in Knitter’s Arans and Celtics, I will be ready to cast on.  Zara is thin yarn (it says DK, but I’m knitting it on size 1’s), so it will be ok as a summer project until the heat and humidity descend.  It looks as if this will be NaKniSweMoDo Sweater #4, unless I finally get inspired and finish a WIP. 

I’ve decided to practice project polygamy, and not stick to one sweater only for the summer.   One reason is that I can suit the project to the temperature.  Another is that I’m ready to tackle a major intarsia sweater. 

This is Susan Duckworth’s Deco sweater, which I had fiddled with before. 

The colors in the photo don’t look much like the heavenly colors of the yarn, which is a mix of Rowan Designer DK (the discontinued variety) and Kid Silk (not Kid-Silk Haze, but a DK weight).  You can see the fuzziness in the swatch, which is a mix of the DK and the Kid Silk.  The swatch is a little crude, but I learned a lot about the yarn tension from knitting it, and I didn't take the trouble to weave in the ends.

 

Aside from being boxy, the pattern comes in only one size with a 51-inch chest circumference.  That is bigger than any bathrobe I’m likely to own, and so after some deft adjustment of the motifs and sleeve shaping, I came up with what looked like a plan (my crude, pasted up schematic).  I’ve also spent the last few weeks studying Lucy Neatby’s DVDs on intarsia knitting, and she wisely recommends knitting intarsia only for a short time, when you can pay attention to the work.  And so, this can’t be my only project. 

These projects were planned before my Japanese stitch dictionaries arrived, so also on my Official Swatch List are yarns that have enough yardage for trying out many different stitch patterns.

The maroon is Brooks Farm Acero, the pearl gray is Jo Sharp Alpaca-Silk Georgette, the light pink is Tess Designer Yarns Silk&Ivory, and the rose is Brooks Farm Solo Silk (merino-silk).  And on the bottom is some purple Blue-Faced Leicester yarn I got at Maryland Sheep & Wool two years ago, from Spinning Flock Farm (unfortunately, no web site).  I had considered for some time knitting a simple sweater in the BFL with edging from one of Nicky Epstein’s books, and that is still possible.  Although mostly (or all) wool, at least a couple of these should get me through the summer.

One thing that is not disagreeable about summer is my garden.  This is the first year I managed to keep my spinach from succumbing to leaf miners. We’ve been pigging out on fresh spinach salads for a week, with a few more to come. 

I spent most of the weekend weeding and thinning beets and carrots, planting herbs, and watering. And I started two flats of summer lettuce to replace the spinach (150 plants—I’m planning to eat a lot of salads). 

Ed has been working on our massive new cage to protect not only our tomatoes from the deer, but pole beans, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplants, and peppers. 

Row covers (with the boards to hold them down) are protecting two rows of broccoli and lettuce (bottom left), one row of mustard greens, and my spinach (upper right). The rows that don't look like much yet have beets, carrots, and herbs (chives, sage, parsley, and basil).  

Getting Ripped

Stupid mistakes always sap my enthusiasm.  One reason I don’t like to knit anything too easy is that I get lulled into complacency, thinking that things are really simpler than they actually are.  I should know by now that even plain garter stitch and stockinette are susceptible to glitches that can be even more subtle to detect than some glaringly incorrect YO smack in the middle of some intricate lace or a cable twisted the wrong way.  So I did not notice a mistake in my “simple” basketweave pattern until I had proceeded for three additional repeats. 

Yes, no one will see that the vertical woven bit is one stitch off, but I will never forget that there is a mistake plastered on my chest.  So the only thing to do was frog, and now I’m just a bit past the former error, and on my way to perfection—until the next time. 

I didn’t quite lose my mojo after all this, but it did irk me so much that I put everything aside when I realize the mistake and watched the first episode of Damages. I had recorded the 13-episode season in its entirety but had not yet seen any of it.  I’ve given up a lot of TV for my goal of 12 sweaters.  And all it took was one Damages episode, and I was hooked.  Please do not tell me how it ends.  I still have two episodes to go, and then I'll get my extra knitting hour back. 

After our ridiculously hot week in late-April, I decided that I needed to plan my summer projects.  A dumb mistake might derail my enthusiasm, but I still did keep knitting, albeit at a pathetically slow pace.  Hot weather makes me do bizarre things like buy fun fur, and we can’t have that if I’m going to manage even 8 quality sweaters.  So on Mother’s Day, I rummaged through my stash for some candidates for summer projects. 

One batch of yarn I’ve had for a while is enough Cherry Tree Hill Rustic Silk (2100 yards) for a cardigan.  This yarn, now discontinued, is 80% silk and 20% wool, and it feels like nubby cotton—but somewhat more interesting, with a linen-like texture.  My challenge was to come up with something that would reduce pooling, and I swatched on Sunday using linen stitch:

The pinks seem a bit more vibrant in the photo than in reality, but I really like the stitch pattern for this yarn because it makes it look woven.  I’d like to make a simple Chanel-style jacket, possibly with some sort of trim (either knitted or crocheted) along the edges.  This yarn would be great to work with when it is too hot out for all wool. 

One reason I’m concerned about pooling is that I have another wonderfully sensual, variegated yarn in my stash.  It is a silk-merino from Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm, purchased many Rhinebecks ago.  I knit the front and back of a sweater in double seed stitch, alternating balls of yarn, and I still got pooling:

Also, I don’t much like the shape of this sweater, and so the whole thing will be frogged, washed, and balled up again for another design.  This yarn deserves something lovelier and more interesting. 

Here’s a closeup of the knitted yarn, where the color is more accurate:

I thought I might try my hand at making it into a modular sweater, along the lines of this one from an old VK:

The sweater itself is not for me.  Despite all my sessions at the gym, I don’t have the ripped abs that would allow me to bear my midriff in public—and I’ve been struggling mightily (and failing) at getting the 3 lbs I gained at Christmas to depart from my middle.  It is time to add an extra weight-training day to rectify this unhappy turn of events.  Eating less would also help.

I wondered, too, if the sweater neck would be floppy, and it is on some of the finished versions posted on Ravelry.  And the garter-stitch sleeves would probably pool.  So after I drag out all my books and magazines on knitting modules and do some swatches, I will create something with modules that is somewhat more modest.  I do like the way those modules zigzag at the bottom.  Could I manage it for a collar too?  It would certainly be worth a try.

There’s still more swatching to do for warm weather projects, but for now it is back to basketweaving.

Pattern Recognition

As the saying goes, you can’t be too rich, too thin, or have too many knitting patterns.  But for the moment, I’ll be working on the rich and thin part. 

In order to correct what is a dearth of twist stitch patterns (like those “cables” favored in German knitting) I added a book to my stitch dictionary library that Susan had recommended some time ago: Beautiful Knitting Patterns by Giesela Klopper.  It is a slim volume that is a translation from the German, and it is a big improvement over U.S. stitch dictionaries in that nearly every pattern is charted.  I was planning to swatch some of those cables for another self-designed sweater in lighter yarn, as a spring-summer project, when my plans changed.

I have lusted after the Japanese stitch dictionaries that I’ve seen in other blogs and looked at on line.  Last week I took the plunge:

These came from the Needle Arts Book Shop in Toronto, and they arrived last Friday.  Since then, I’ve been pouring over the unbelievable array of stitches, most of which I have never seen before, with indescribable delight. 

Although these are written in Japanese, most are not difficult to understand.  First, Martha of the Needle Arts Book Shop has compiled some hints on deciphering the patterns, and the books themselves are quite self-explanatory.  All the patterns are charted, which is not the case with most patterns in U.S. stitch dictionaries, and my treasured Mon Tricot dictionaries.  Second, there are diagrams illustrating the chart symbols.  To get an idea of what these are like, check this link.

One reason I wanted these now is that there are two classes at Stitches East on working with Japanese stitch dictionaries and patterns.  Although the most of the patterns and directions are clear from the charts, there are some nuances that would be easier to master if someone who had experience with them and can read Japanese described them.  And registration is in mid-May, so I had to make up my mind if I wanted to try to get into those classes—and I have decided that I do.  Now I hope there are openings.

Even though my main reason for buying the dictionaries was to design my own work, I came across some Japanese sweaters on Ravelry designed by Toshiyuki Shimada that were just amazing.  And so, in the same package, I bought two pattern books of variations on traditional techniques—Ganseys, Arans, and Fair Isle—with his designs. 

The sweater that captivated me the most is this Fair Isle, and this picture doesn't do justice to the subtleties of color in it:

Again, there is a link to some of the pages in the books that show these sweaters to more of an advantage.   The chart is easy to understand, but the “instructions” consist of one paragraph in Japanese that I think merely tells you something about the materials and amount of yarn you will need.  

After the NaKniSweMoDo KAL, I plan to immerse myself in color knitting, and this project is high on my list.  

So over the next few weeks, there will be a lot of swatching going on as I select stitches for my remaining mostly one-color 2009 sweaters.  I treated myself to some free hours on Mother’s Day to sift through my stash, and I’ve pulled out light yarns to use for my next few sweaters.  Prudence would dictate that I should follow tried-and-true published designs to reach 12 sweaters, but with all these stitch motifs dancing in my head, I am succumbing to self-designs and major overhauls of designs that have a few interesting characteristics but that will require modification.

For now, it is on to finishing the heavier wool sweaters before it gets so warm that I lose my enthusiasm for those projects. 

Getting My Shots Up to Date

Today was a perfect morning for my long-postponed FO shots of my Arbor Rose pullover, NaKniSweMoDo Sweater #2.  It was cool enough for DS and DH to complain, and for our boiler to go on—so I was nicely comfortable in Arbor Rose.  This sweater is warm and luxurious.  The Aurora 8 yarn is incredibly soft and squishy. It might just be a candidate for my Rhinebeck sweater, since I don’t think there will be many opportunities to wear it before the fall.  (I promise if you see me in it at Rhinebeck, I will have a more winning smile.)

I used 17 skeins of color 19, it was knit with Addi Turbos size 7 U.S. (body), size 3 U.S. (neck), and it is my own design. 

While I corralled Ed into taking the shots, I had him do a few more of the Bee Fields shawl I knit last summer, to round out my Ravelry posts.  I never did model this.

And, I must have accidently deleted the picture of Myrna Stahman’s Faroese-style lace shawl from Knitter’s Scarves and Shawls, because I can’t find it on my old or new computer.  I have never posted it to Ravelry—and now I can.

I used the recommended yarn, Haneke merino lace (wool-alpaca mix), and it was lovely to work with.  This was the first shawl I ever knit. 

And, since this is a picture-heavy post, here’s a few more.  I’ve called these Birdz n the Hood.  Ed calls them hood-lums.

Apparently Addi and Larry Bird are totally fascinated by gray sweatshirts.  Navy doesn’t cut it.  So long as they stay away from my yarn, and do not chew on circular-needle cables, they will remain cute and lovable.