Prime Time Knitter

Dependent Variables

In January, when I began my year-long foray into the realm of two-color knitting, I thought I’d have an opinion about stranding vs. weaving in, favoring one over the other.  All I can say now if someone were to ask me which I prefer is, “it depends”.  As far as I can determine, the yarn, the project, and the look of the finished sweater ought to dictate the choice.  And so starting a new two-color project will always require a decision and, possibly, swatches knitted both ways.

After my decision to frog and reknit Sirdal, I thought I could correct the unpleasant showing through of the contrast yarn by using modestly long floats rather than weaving those floats.  And at that point, I thought I was firmly in the stranding camp.  The part of Sirdal that I’ve reknit looks much better stranded.

The sweater I intended to knit after Sirdal was Colour Your Own, a Philosopher’s Wool kit.  Not surprisingly, there’s a Philosopher’s Wool group on Ravelry.  I discovered last month that it was starting a KAL beginning in April, and I thought I’d enjoy the camaraderie and support of other knitters. I also thought that a good objective for the next few months (until about June) would be to finish two stranded projects.  Just thinking about having warm sweaters on my lap during my nightly sessions in July and August is making me sweat.  So for the summer, I expect to switch temporarily to shawls and, possibly, continue with my other 2010 goal of knitting sweaters with all the neck shapings in EZ’s Knitting Workshop.  I’m hoping that we have a cool September so I can embark my project of the year:  Alice Starmore’s Oregon Cardigan.  And after finishing some two-color stranded sweaters (Laela and Sirdal) and one woven-in sweater (Philosopher’s Wool’s Colour Your Own), I should know what I’m doing (mostly).

I spent the last couple of weeks in March balling up the Philosopher’s Wool yarn (which is beautiful) in preparation for the KAL start date of April 1.  That sweater is now officially “on the needles,” as I cast on last night for the sleeve.  The pattern recommends starting with the sleeves as a way to check your gauge and to be sure you have the same colors in the same order on both—sound advice, and I decided to follow it. 

But before casting on, I took the time to make some large swatches.  And this exercise resulted in some surprising results:

 

I really like how the weaving in looks in this yarn far better than the stranding.  The stranded swatch is on top, and it produces a smooth fabric.  But the colors seem to blend in and they don’t look nearly as good to my eye as the woven-in sample underneath.  The woven-in swatch gives the knitting some texture that adds to the rustic feel of this minimally processed yarn.  The colors pop, no matter which hand I hold them in. And so for this sweater I will be weaving-in as I change colors. 

The difference between the two methods is clearer from a look at the wrong side of each swatch:

The woven-in swatch gives a slightly denser, squooshier fabric—and it will be a very warm sweater.  I’ll probably wear it as a substitute for a light jacket—ideally as my Rhinebeck sweater.

Color Saturation

The failure of my plan to knit twelve sweaters in 2009 has not daunted me from making similarly grandiose plans for 2010.  I do intend to finish Thora (the fourth of my 2009 sweaters) and to reevaluate my WIPs, but I’d decided to depart from my usual style of one-color, cable or lace sweaters, knit in pieces to tackle new things.  In fact, 2010 will be “the year of the new” (although if the summer is miserably hot, it may be time for a lace shawl again).   

This will be my foray into stranded sweater knitting.  One thing that’s prompting this huge change in my one-color, knitted-flat-with-seams sweaters is the prospect of knitting an Alice Starmore sweater.  DH and DS got it for me for mother’s day (yes, mother’s day in 2009), and I knew it would never be one of twelve knit this year.  I have been staring at the yarn longingly since it arrived because the colors are so beautiful. 

This is the Oregon Cardigan (in Autumn), which was also featured in VK, Holiday 2007 and is available from Virtual Yarns.

I’m not that much of a knitting fool to think I can manage this as my first stranded project, and so I have decided to gradually ease up to the challenge.  I’ve had 20 balls of brick red Heilo in my stash for at least 10 years, which was intended for a project that I abandoned after swatching.  My swatch for this sweater, that looks so lovely in the picture, lacks the stitch definition shown in the picture (in fact, it looks like crap).

I bought the Heilo when Patternworks was still in Poughkeepsie and had the most fantastic after-Christmas sales—40% off on almost everything, as I recall.  So the yarn was very inexpensive for me.  (I still dream about those sales and walking through the warehouse of metal racks filled with yarn.)

So the 20 balls languished until I discovered Sirdal one late night while ogling the color sweaters on Ravelry.  

Sometime in late spring, I bought the Dale of Norway book that has the instructions and saw that all I needed was the contrast yarn.   So in preparation for starting it, I bought the necessary skeins of Heilo in natural. 

I also decided to work very traditionally on my first color sweater (no modifications except needed gauge changes), and when I discovered there were pewter Sirdal buttons, I added them to my order from Woolybaabaa (excellent service, and a great selection of Scandinavian yarns and projects).

I also don’t think that my experience with Sirdal will be enough to give me confidence for the Alice Starmore project, and so I’m going to tackle another stranded kit in my stash before that.  This will give me practice using more colors and reinforce what I’ve learned working with Sirdal.  The second stranded sweater is from a Philosopher's Wool kit (the Design Your Own Sweater), which I will try to adapt a bit so it isn’t quite so billowy. 

 

I’ll be knitting Sirdal as part of a Ravelry KAL, Knit a Norwegian, and I have until January 1 to get started.  So I’ll be swatching to decide what needles to use, studying the pattern, and doing background reading on stranded knitting.  The first step is to figure out how to get the dominant color.