Prime Time Knitter

A Cooling-Off Period

I’m really tired of starting every post with excuses for why I haven’t posted, and so I won’t.  But some of the things that were higher up on my to-do list are done—at least to some extent—and at least some excuses are history.

One major task over the last few months was getting my new Mac up and running. 

Yes, yes, I know how easy it is to switch from one Mac to another, but with my Macs, as in almost every other aspect of my life, I tend to accumulate stuff that should be tossed and I tend to let disorder reign.  So when I get a new computer, I use it as an “opportunity,” not only to update my software and learn how to use it, but to delete files I no longer need, prune my photos, toss old email, and otherwise make it into a lean and mean machine.  I’m always surprised at how many little things make the conversion from one machine to another drag on and on.  There are the obvious problems, such as learning what Microsoft has in store when it has a new release of Word.  But there are the unexpected problems, such as the simultaneous demise of both my printers, necessitating researching, buying, and installing a new one. And I’m now on iCloud—after following the advice to back up all my email (another Sunday down the tubes) before making the switch. I thought it would be impossible to love a new Mac even more than my old one, but this 27-inch baby is truly wonderful. (You can see that the Luddite in me decided to stick with the wired mouse and old-fashioned, extended keyboard.)

The unusually warm March weather moved my garden up on the to-do list.  In most years, we’d just be tripping on transplants that are crowded before any window with decent light and only be begining to get them planted.  Because March was so warm, I was able to start spinach earlier than I ever did before, and we’re now harvesting it for wonderful salads.

The spinach will be followed by the Swiss chard in a week or so.

The very warm and dry March got me thinking that I’d need to have my head examined for not rushing out with tomatoes and peppers.  But April cooled off to the extent that we even had nights with some frost, and so my decision to get in all my spring vegetables turned out to be a good one.  Right now, everything I wanted to plant is planted (and weeded!).  On the right part of the photo, I have three rows of broccoli, two rows of onions, a row of chard, and rows of lettuce and greens.  On the left, there are beets, the two spinach rows, garlic, and herbs. 

The tomato, pepper, eggplant, and basil seedlings (which will replace the spinach, chard, and lettuce) have been spending evenings indoors. Ed and I spent some of today installing the soaker hoses that are shown between the rows in the photo—so I’m ready for a rainy week.

And a new task on my to-do list is to use the chive flowers, once the buds burst, to make chive vinegar.  I threw a bunch of tarragon into a jar of white vinegar last year, and it ended up being delicious.  This year, I’m going to make a more concerted effort to make herb vinegars and see how things turn out.  The chives flowers are supposed to turn the vinegar pink and give it a garlicky taste.  I’ll report back soon.

But knitting has proved the most challenging in the hot and then cool again weather.  I’m really smitten with Mara, to the extent that I want to keep knitting it until it is done—even through the summer heat.  Now that is an easy statement to make now that the weather has been cool and knitting it has been a delight. I keep recalling that in my youth I spent summers knitting heavy sweaters without a care about the temperature.  I hope I’m not turning into one of those old people who keep harking back to the good-old days, but I don’t remember being as uncomfortable knitting with heavy wool in the 60s and 70s as I have in past years.  I’m almost psyched up to keep going just to prove that I’m young at heart (if nothing else).

This has been more engrossing that anything else that is supposedly “on the needles,” and I love seeing how the colors play out.  I hope my enthusiasm doesn’t wane once I finish all the different motifs in the design, but I’m enjoying this project so much that I’m practicing project monogamy.

I’ll parade some of the neglected WIPs in future posts, but for now this one is “Mara-velous.”

Testing, Testing

Finishing Sirdal got me on a roll with my stranded knitting projects.  I wanted nothing more than to cast on for Mara, but I did have the foresight (not to mention the anxiety about starting something this complex) to swatch.  The swatch I knit to check the gauge just wasn’t enough.  All it told me was that I needed size 2.5 mm Addis (U.S. 1) to get the 8 stitches per inch.  (Before you gasp at the idea of my knitting this sweater in such small needles, consider that I’m a loose knitter.  The pattern itself calls for size 3 mm, and going down two needle sizes is not unusual for me.)

I did not want to attempt casting on until I tried a swatch of corrugated ribbing—something I’d never done before. 

The pattern tells you to knit the buttonband flat, and I’ve seen recommendations for knitting the body ribbing flat and joining into rounds on the first knitted row.  So I began to knit flat, only to realize that with all the color changes, there were strands of yarn hanging off each end.  My mental image of a nice smooth edge to the ribbing was replaced by the reality of as many ends to weave in as there would be if I steeked.  And if I steeked, there would be some extra stitches to overcast neatly, leaving a much better edge at the cardigan front.  So after knitting about an inch of the ribbing flat, I switched to knitting it in the “round.”  By that I mean that I knit only on the right side and cut the yarn when I finished the row, starting again on the right side for the next round. 

The second thing I learned was that going down a size (to 0s) for the ribbing was a mistake.  The ribbing would be too tight.  I get the ribbing gauge, strange as it seems, with the same size needles as the body—2.5 mm.  The reason is that the purls do pull in.  I’m doing my combined knitting purls, by scooping the purl, rather than a Continental purl.  For me this makes a nicer column, but the purl is tighter.

Once I got the ribbing down pat, I proceeded to knit a bit of the first red-natural-salmon motif.  It did not look like the picture on the cover of the hardcover edition.  The red zigzags (bottom of swatch) were too heavy. 

So at this point, I went back to my sources describing yarn dominance, and I really wasn’t sure what hand should hold the various colors.  There was only one way to check—by swatching every motif.  There are only three, so this isn’t as complicated as it might seem.

Once I did this, I could see at once that I needed to hold the red yarn in my right hand, and the salmon/natural in my left.  That is how I held the yarn for the top motif of the two red ones in the swatch, and it looks much better.

The smaller green-blue-purple motif is a bit more subtle, and difficult to see on the swatch photo.  I split the motif in half, and knit the bottom with the light blues in my left hand and the dark blue, green, and purple in my right.  This makes the background a bit brighter, and it makes the motif look a bit sharper.

The top motif looked surprisingly different as I tested its color dominance.  The bottom looks washed out, but the top, knit with the background blues in my right hand and the plum, dark green and deep aqua in my left.

So now that I’ve duly written all these down in my project notebook, and I have the washed and blocked swatch to look at, Mara is officially on the needles.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

I suppose it is a bit ironic that I finished Sirdal on the last day of winter, but we have had weather cold enough for heavy sweaters in past years.  Not long ago, there was an ice storm on April 1.  There doesn’t seem much chance of that this year, especially since it is supposed to hit 80° later this week.  DH thinks the unusually warm weather is a result of keeping our snow shovels next to the front door since the freak October snowstorm, but I know that the real reason for our ridiculously mild weather is the completion of Sirdal (a WIP for more than two years).

This weekend, Sirdal was finally ready for its blocking, and it gave me a chance to use the wooly board that I had requested as a present some years ago.  I never thought Sirdal would be in process for so long, and I was sure that I’d have several stranded sweaters done by now.  Well, some things can’t be rushed. In uncharacteristic fashion, I did not think through how to mount the sweater on my wooly board (it is not intuitive, in case you’re wondering).  And I managed the adjustments while holding the soggy mass of the soaked sweater, after a frenzied search for the various pieces and a web search for the assembly instructions.  But eventually, I figured it all out:

Last night, I sewed on the four cuff buttons, and I had intended to drive off to some scenic place for pictures.  But the light this morning was perfect for capturing the sweater, and Ed obligingly took the photos.

Despite the many obstacles and starts and stops, this was one of the most engrossing and interesting projects I’ve ever knitted, and I’m in love with stranded knitting.  I’ve detailed the many modifications in past posts: the readjustment of the motifs, the changes in the body size, and my sleeve and cuff woes.  I’m really pleased with the way it turned out and its fit.  Although I generally like a sweater that is more fitted around the shoulder area, I decided to knit this as a traditional sweater with drop shoulders.  I think for this sweater that decision was a good one.  The sweater is warm and comfortable.

My main regret is that all the wonderful finishing is hidden from view.  So to record it for posterity, here is what the sweater looks like on the inside.

This was intended to be a stash-busting project, and it partially achieved that goal.  I had the red Heilo in my stash, purchased in the 1990s for a one-color sweater, and I supplemented it with natural Heilo from Woolybaabaa.  But I have enough left over for at least a hat or two, and some mittens.  But for now it is on to Fair Isle.

 

Funny Business

Over the years, I’ve edited books written by professors in a lot of different academic disciplines, and although I try to eschew stereotypes, in my experience the physicists and economists tend to have the best senses of humor, and the chemists and accountants do not.  There are some notable exceptions to my view.  Among accountants, Bob Newhart is a standout for his dry wit, and I did work with an accounting duo who persisted in replacing the “Ms.” in my mailing address with “the lovely and talented.”  (Not quite hilarious, but considering the other accountants I worked with, it had a bit of charm.) Nonetheless, I recall only one accounting joke and it came to mind as I began to swatch for Mara.

This is the cardigan that graced the cover of Alice Starmore’s hard cover Book of Fair Isle Knitting, but, to my disappointment, was not included as a pattern in it.  I hunted down the pattern for vest version in an old Workbasket magazine, which provided me with the chart and the names of the yarns used.  When I heard that some of the yarns were being discontinued, I collected all of them, plus a lot of extras.  Here’s the color card I made up:

And as Sirdal was drying on my wooly board, I started to swatch and recalled the joke.  Now, although I think I have a good sense of humor, I lack the timing to tell a really good joke.  So bear with me a bit.  The joke starts when a business owner is interviewing accountants and poses the question: How much is 2 + 2?  The first candidate says 4 and is rejected.  I’ll cut to the chase and get to the punchline.  The successful candidate answers the question by saying: It is anything you want it to be.   This is exactly how I view my first attempt at swatching for Mara:

The stitches per inch range from 6 to the desired 8. So I know exactly zip about how many stitches to cast on for the actual sweater.  The gauge is supposed to be 8 stitches and 8 rows to an inch, and if I hold the yarn tightly, that is what I get. (I actually get 7.69 stitches per inch.) You can see that when I started the gauge was much looser, and I was able to tighten up significantly.  Can I manage to do this for an entire sweater?  The answer better be yes, or I’ll end up with something gigantic.

The swatch points out another problem that is keeping my itchy fingers from casting on: Yarn dominance. Although the bottom red motif looks good, the red is overwhelming the lighter colors in the top version (with the correct gauge).  In knitting the top panel, I followed Ann Feitelson’s advice from The Art of Fair Isle Knitting, and I put the background (lighter) yarn in my left hand and the red in my right.  So, if I consider the lighter yarn to be the background, this plan isn’t working for me.

So what’s a new Fair Isle knitter to do?  The only answer I can come up with is swatch again.  I also am new to corrugated ribbing, so next up for me is yet another swatch with the ribbing and another try at the three motifs. Perhaps then I’ll figure out why something funny is going on.

Bandying About

I never thought I’d be able to say this: The knitting on Sirdal is done. That doesn’t mean the project is finished. I have several nights ahead of me in which I have to sew down the facings and attach the buttons. Then it will be on to the final blocking.

But this week I made major progress in marking the button placement, finishing the front buttonbands, and attaching the neckband. 

The k1p1 buttonbands have a facing, which is constructed by carefully picking up the stitches at the base of the buttonband (on the inside) and knitting three rows of stockinette plus a bindoff row.

This band covers the cut steek on the inside, and makes a very elegant finish.

Also, my obsession about the buttonholes paid off.  I’m really pleased with their appearance along the sweater front.  They are neat and nearly invisible.  The method is from Katharina Buss’s Big Book of Knitting, where it is described and photographed clearly. Instead of binding off the bottom row as on most one-row buttonholes, you merely pull one stitch over the other (ending with a purl is handy), leaving the last stitch on the left needle.  Then you return to the right needle, cast on one more stitch than you bound off, and knit (actually purl--and the reason it is handy is that the yarn is positioned in the front) the last caston stitch with the stitch on the left needle.

The neckband wasn’t quite as cooperative.  In order to position the top buttonhole so it aligned with those along the buttonband, I had to place it two stitches in from the edge.  When I did this, the buttonband pulled in, and made an ugly crescent shape over the body buttonbands.  So I filled in the curve with a couple of rows of single crochet.  The neckband will be folded over, and the two buttonholes shown will be positioned one behind the other.  I have to sew them together, which I’ll probably do with just a neat overcast using one ply of the yarn.  After that, I’ll sew down the edge, and it should be the same width as the body buttonband.  If not, I’ll block it until it is (knitting gods: that is a threat).

The one bit of the sweater that has lacked the elegant finishing of the rest of the garment is the sleeve cuff.  There is a wobbly edge there, and I think that a row or two of single crochet will give it the firmness it needs.  It will always be buttoned, and so it is less of a problem than the neck buttonhole, which might be worn open.

So now it is on to sewing and clipping ends, as I ponder whether I can wear Sirdal any time soon.  We hit 70 degrees yesterday, and I planted two rows of spinach (the earliest planting I ever made).  If this is what “spring” is like, then Sirdal may spend the next eight months in a plastic box, and the only spring it will see is the bar of Irish Spring soap I use to repel any hapless moth that might try to invade my stash.

Picking Up Where I Left Off

Since Sirdal was knitted in the round, I had the hunch that it would be quick to finish.  After all, all those knitters out there who eschew seaming are continually promoting seamless knitting as a way to have your garment done the minute you cast off.  But finishing a stranded sweater, I’ve discovered, is every bit as challenging as seaming something you knitted flat.  I’m thoroughly enjoying the challenge (and it is making me long for something to knit in pieces just so I can seam it up), but the fact is Sirdal is still a WIP and likely to remain so for at least another week.  By that time, I should be so proud of it that I may want to wear it inside out to display the finishing to one and all.

I started the finishing by attaching the shoulder seams.  According to the Dale of Norway instructions, you have to overcast on the outside.  To have a nice edge, the shoulders end with a row of purls, leaving a ridge on the outside.  This is how I sewed them together.

This is how the finished seam looks.

 

Next up was attaching the sleeves to the body.  I departed a bit from the instructions, and I grafted the sleeve to the body.

 

A noticeable difference between Norwegian sweaters and every other sweater I’ve ever knit is the use of facings.  These cleverly cover the raw edges of the steek.  The sleeves end with six rows of stockinette intended to cover the raw edges where you attach the sleeve to the shoulder, and once the facing is attached, it provides a nice finish.

 

I took a bit of a hiatus before working on the buttonbands.  First, I had a long overdue visit to NYC to see a good friend who is sensitive to wool.  And so I knit her a scarf from Soy Silk. 

The pattern is “A Little Bit Bohemian” found on Ravelry, and it knit up quickly and easily.  I made some modest changes to the pattern, elongating it because my yarn was slightly thinner than the yarn specified. It is a great pattern for yarn with a drape.

The second reason for not leaping into the buttonbands was my indecision about the buttonholes.  I flirted with Lucy Neatby’s Magic Buttonholes and I knit a successful swatch, but I decided to save them for another day.  These are done on a double-stockinette band, and the pattern called for a ribbed edge. The traditional way to finish the fronts is to knit a band and cover the steek with a facing, and tradition won out.  So the buttonholes I decided to use are from Katarina Buss’s Big Book of Knitting, and they look pretty good in a ribbed band, although I have only the evidence from yet another buttonband swatch to confirm this. (The Big Book of Knitting also has excellent pictures and instructions for grafting sleeves to sweater bodies.)

For now I’m at work on the left (easy) side.  I’ve picked up stitches just under the steek edge and am working on the ribbed band now. 

There’s still more finishing to do: knit the buttonbands and facings, attach the neck ribbing, sew down the facings, finish the buttonholes, and sew on the buttons.  But the end really is in sight--and I'm well ahead of schedule for a Rhinebeck sweater.

Unreal

One of the big knitting events for me over the past year was finding like-minded knitters in real life.  I’ve certainly enjoyed meeting knitters electronically, through this blog and through Ravelry, but there is something about the group experience that adds to the pleasure of the craft.  I’ve also been terribly jealous when I read blog accounts of knitters who have a regular group to go to.  So now I’ve happily joined your ranks.

Raveler Jeanette discovered me on Ravelry and invited me to Handmade on Hudson, and since the spring of last year, I’ve headed there nearly every Sunday I could.  The group has a heavy emphasis on charity knitting, and because we knit in a church that gives us a well-lit classroom that is cool in summer and warm in winter, we knit baptismal blankets for them in return.  Each child born in Croton, who attends that church, gets a hand-knit or hand-crocheted blanket.

Unfortunately, however, these blankets have to be acrylic—and I have a deep-seated hatred for knitting with plastic.  My view was shaped by the horrid offerings that were among the only yarns available to knitters in the 1960s and 1970s, and I’ve considered myself blessed by the knitting gods that so much beautiful real wool is available now. I really thought that I’d never be knitting with acrylic again. But because it is necessary for the blankets to be machine-washable (and superwash doesn’t seem to satisfy), I headed off to Michael’s and A.C. Moore to get acrylic in bright white.  Blinding white is also a requirement.  I was astounded to find that this stuff actually comes in 1-lb skeins—and I’m now the proud owner of two of these.  And I knitted my first blanket.

I was not happy when the blanket came off the needles.  It looked lumpy in a way that wool would not. 

The only thing I knew about blocking acrylic was not to put your iron directly onto the knitting because it would melt on your iron.  I did not learn this from knitting with acrylic—back in about 1968, I bought Ban-Lon fabric for a dress.  When I pressed the seams, they stuck to the iron, nearly ruining it, and the dress with the melted bits ended up in the trash. I scoured Ravelry and the net to learn more about acrylic, and I found you could “kill” it.  That was enormously appealing—but it really means that you change the texture of the fiber through high heat. So I employed a trick from sewing on delicate fabric and used a pressing cloth and heavy steam.  I don’t buy expensive pressing cloths.  I simply take a large piece of unbleached muslin, wash it in a washer, and then use it as a barrier between my iron and the thing I’m ironing. I pinned the blanket to the ironing board, and covered it with the muslin pressing cloth:

I did not place the iron on the pressing cloth, but held it about a half-inch away.  

When I killed my blanket (how I love saying that), it morphed from a thick, gloppy piece of knitting to a blanket that was smooth as (almost) silk:

I never tried blocking acrylic knitting yarn in the old days, and I must say that acrylic has improved, but not enough for me to knit with it willingly.  Here is Linda at HOH holding my blanket for a final shot before I handed it in.

Here  are several of the regulars, with Jeanette (an amazing quilter too) showing us one of her quilts.

This afternoon, I’m headed for more knitting in the real world.

 

Making the Cut

I began this weekend with the goal of steeking Sirdal—to my mind, the knitting equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest.  I knew others have tried and succeeded, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d prevail.  After all, I could follow in the footsteps of Sir Edmund Hillary and still fall thousands of feet and crash to the ground.  What was the first knitter who attempted thinking? “I just spent months knitting this really complicated tube—so now let’s cut it up and see if I can do that without destroying it.” 

I prepared myself for the occasion by reading the Dale of Norway instructions I found on the web.  I also watched a bunch of videos. I'm not sure I could have managed to steek in the pre-electronic era.

Norwegian sweaters differ from Fair Isle sweaters in that you leave fewer stitches in the front where you cut for the button bands.  And there are no extra steeking stitches left at the armhole.  It seems that it is actually easier to cut into a Fair Isle sweater, but it was a bit late in the game for me to figure that out. I had a body tube and sleeves for Sirdal, and the die was cast.

I had a fairly large swatch, and I used it to practice on. 

Things went quite well.  I’d considered that the floats might catch on the machine feed dogs, but no such problems arose.  I fiddled with the tension and stitch size, and I was able to get stitches that grabbed the knitting securely.

The Dale instructions tell you to use zigzag machine stitch, but when I sewed the first row of zigzag stitches, I really wasn’t happy with their appearance. 

I went back to the many web videos showing steeking, and none of the knitters who used a machine did anything but straight stitch.  So back to my swatch I went, and I practiced straight stitches—they looked much better.

I considered picking out the zigzags, but, like all Norwegian stranded sweaters, Sirdal will have facings to cover the cut edges, and there seemed no need to mess around with the stitches I had sewn.  The zigzag was sturdy, and it was the innermost row of stitching.  So on the second row of stitching, I used straight stitch, and my steek seems none the worse for it.

The sleeves are a bit trickier.  The instructions tell you to measure the top of the sleeve to decide how long the slit on the body that accommodates them ought to be.  My sleeve tops measured about 10 inches (the pattern specified 9-7/8 inches for my size, which I thought was a bit silly for something as bulky as stranded sleeves).  I had already marked the side “seams” when I knit the tube, so finding them wasn't a problem. To mark the cut line, I ran a row of running stitches from the top of the tube to a point a bit less than 10 inches down.  Although the sleeve is 10 inches, the cut part should be less because there will be around ¼ inch used up for the rows of machine stitching.  At this point, I sewed my two rows of straight stitch around the running stitch, and the results looked just like the picture in the Dale instructions (except that these aren’t zigzags). 

By time I had to cut, I was no longer fretting about the steeking process.  From my experience with sewing, I’m in the habit of pressing after stitching.  Even though steeking instructions don’t tell you to do that, it flattens the sewn rows and makes them easier to cut. 

So here is where I am now:

The steeks are done and cut, and it is now time to proceed with the assembly.  There are a lot of steps left to be done, but this is just the sort of sweater construction challenge that fascinates me.  As I sat there smiling at my work, I thought of all the things that could go wrong.  I came up with just two:

• I could swap the left and right sleeves, so that the cuffs wouldn’t close properly. 
• I could put the buttonholes on the wrong side. 

But they are small potatoes compared to the disaster that would have resulted from careless cutting.  So for now I’m basking in the glow of steeking correctly, and I’ll save sewing the shoulders together, inserting the sleeves, knitting the button and neck bands, and attaching the facing for this week’s nightly knitting.

 

Making the Cut

I began this weekend with the goal of cutting into Sirdal—to my mind, the knitting equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest.  I knew others have tried and succeeded, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d prevail.  After all, I could follow in the footsteps of Sir Edmund Hillary and still fall thousands of feet and crash to the ground.  What was the first knitter who attempted thinking? “I just spent months knitting this really complicated tube—so now let’s cut it up and see if I can do that without destroying it.” 

I prepared myself for the occasion by reading the Dale of Norway instructions I found on the web.  (Clicking the link to this site doesn’t work, but you can find them by pasting this into your browser: http://www.allegroyarns.com/dale/cutting_instructions.pdf.)  I also watched a bunch of videos. I'm not sure I could have managed to steek in the pre-electronic era.

Norwegian sweaters differ from Fair Isle sweaters in that you leave fewer stitches in the front where you cut for the button bands.  And there are no extra steeking stitches left at the armhole.  It seems that it is actually easier to cut into a Fair Isle sweater, but it was a bit late in the game for me to figure that out. I had a body tube and sleeves for Sirdal, and the die was cast.

I had a fairly large swatch, and I used it to practice on. 

Thing went quite well.  I’d considered that the floats might catch on the machine feed dogs, but no such problems arose.  I fiddled with the tension and stitch size, and I was able to get stitches that grabbed the knitting securely.

The Dale instructions tell you to use zigzag machine stitch, but when I sewed the first row of zigzag stitches, I really wasn’t happy with their appearance. 

I went back to the many web videos showing steeking, and none of the knitters who used a machine did anything but straight stitch.  So back to my swatch I went, and I practiced straight stitches—they looked much better.

I considered picking out the zigzags, but, like all Norwegian stranded sweaters, Sirdal will have facings to cover the cut edges, and there seemed no need to mess around with the stitches I had sewn.  The zigzag was sturdy, and it was the innermost row of stitching.  So on the second row of stitching, I used straight stitch, and my steek seems none the worse for it.

The sleeves are a bit trickier.  The instructions tell you to measure the top of the sleeve to decide how long the slit on the body that accommodates them ought to be.  My sleeve tops measured about 10 inches (the pattern specified 9-7/8 inches for my size, which I thought was a bit silly for something as bulky as stranded sleeves).  I had already marked the side “seams” when I knit the tube, so finding them wasn't a problem. To mark the cut line, I ran a row of running stitches from the top of the tube to a point a bit less than 10 inches down.  Although the sleeve is 10 inches, the cut part should be less because there will be around ¼ inch used up for the rows of machine stitching.  At this point, I sewed my two rows of straight stitch around the running stitch, and the results looked just like the picture in the Dale instructions (except that these aren’t zigzags). 

By time I had to cut, I was no longer fretting about the steeking process.  From my experience with sewing, I’m in the habit of pressing after stitching.  Even though steeking instructions don’t tell you to do that, it flattens the sewn rows and makes them easier to cut. 

So here is where I am now:

The steeks are done and cut, and it is now time to proceed with the assembly.  There are a lot of steps left to be done, but this is just the sort of sweater construction challenge that fascinates me.  As I sat there smiling at my work, I thought of all the things that could go wrong.  I came up with just two:

• I could swap the left and right sleeves, so that the cuffs wouldn’t close properly. 
• I could put the buttonholes on the wrong side. 

But they are small potatoes compared to the disaster that would have resulted from careless cutting.  So for now I’m basking in the glow of steeking correctly, and I’ll save sewing the shoulders together, inserting the sleeves, knitting the button and neck bands, and attaching the facing for this week’s nightly knitting.

 

Getting Even

Too many years have elapsed since I first learned to knit and purl, and so I don’t remember if there was an aha moment when my awkwardness morphed into the smooth rhythm that produces even stitches.  But going by my more recent experiences in learning new techniques, I assume there must have been.  I also assume that, back when I was 13 and knit my first simple practice squares of stockinette under the guiding eye of my grandmother, I must have caught on to things a lot more quickly than I do now or I might not have become a knitter in the first place.

It seems to have taken me forever to manage grafting, and the pain of learning how to do it still gives me a moment of pause as I thread the yarn needle to close a sock toe or some other opening that needs to be invisible.  When I started to knit socks on dpns, there was a noticeable loose stitch at the point where I changed needles.  This persisted for some time until one day it simply disappeared and the stitches in the circular tube were as even as those I could manage on straight needles.

I didn’t think that it took me too long to manage stranded knitting, with one color in each hand, but the stitches produced from the yarn I held in my right hand, knitting in unfamiliar English style, did seem bigger than the stitches knit from the yarn in my left hand, knit Continental style.  I thought this was “normal” because, according to the rules of yarn dominance, those right-hand stitches should pop from the fabric.  It was only when I began to work Sirdal’s second sleeve that I saw that my two-color fabric on the body and first sleeve was lumpy.  And something in my hand-brain coordination must have finally clicked because Sirdal’s second sleeve looked wonderfully even—as even as my knitting in one color, in my preferred combined style.  You can see the difference here: the sleeve on the left has nice, even stitches; the sleeve on the right doesn’t.

Unfortunately, this epiphany took place after I had finished the first sleeve.  I have one beautiful sleeve, and one that isn’t.  And to make matters worse, the first sleeve I knit is looser than the second, making it somewhat larger and longer.

The instructions I’m following for knitting Norwegian sweaters recommend blocking the sleeves before cutting the slit in the body that will accommodate them, and blocking did improve things—but not completely.  There is about a quarter inch difference between the sleeves, and the second sleeve is still tighter than the first.  Having ripped and reknit parts of this sweater more times than I like to think about, and because Sirdal is now a bit more than two years in the making, I’m going to assemble the sweater pieces as they are.  This was my “practice” stranded sweater—a preparation for my future knitting on my Philosopher’s Wool and Alice Starmore sweaters.  And as a practice sweater, it has worked out just fine.

I’m now ready for the supreme challenge of steeking—scheduled for Saturday morning (if I’m not shoveling snow).  And maybe if I can accomplish that, I can go on to finish Sirdal and actually wear it before spring, perhaps standing at an angle so that the differences in the sleeves aren’t as obvious to an observer as they are to me.