Prime Time Knitter

Hot Under the Collar

Despite the oppressive heat this weekend, I worked with wool and finished the collar on the Devonshire jacket:

It is far too hot to try it on, even early in the morning, and so the modeling will have to wait until it is cooler.  I did try it on for a fleeting moment, and I’m pleased with the look and the softness of Zara around my neck.  It also became apparent that tucking in the ends will be an evening’s work when I’m up to that. The construction of the collar is very interesting.  I’m not sure this is “pure Chanel”, but Jean Frost has the shoulder seam dropped about 2 inches below the top of your shoulder.  The front armhole is 2 inches longer than it would be if the seam sat at the top of your shoulder.  The back shoulder seams align with the back neck edge.  When you finish the back, you leave live stitches all along the top of the back rectangle.  And then when you assemble the fronts and back, you do a three-needle bind off along one shoulder, bind off in the traditional way across the neck edge, and then do a three-needle bind off along the second shoulder:

Here is a close-up of one shoulder and the neck edge.

This makes for a very elegant look at the top edge of the jacket, and I will consider this technique again for sweaters with a similar shape.  One possible reason for this construction is that it is difficult to line up slip-stitch patterns.  I noticed this first on the Morehouse Family Sweater that I knit for my son:

On Devonshire, the “orange dots” are shifted by one stitch, and they also don’t line up perfectly.

I was tempted to fiddle with the alignment by having an uneven shoulder edge—making the stitches line up in the fabric, and having one stitch “stick out” at the shoulder.  But then I considered how little of the seam would actually show.  The seam falls at my upper back, and the collar covers most of it:

I’m actually quite pleased at this bit of finishing.  I haven’t reblocked the sleeve, but I’m doing that now.  I can work on the front edging for the next couple of nights and the pocket finishing.  I just hope that Con Ed is on the ball with its supply of power, and there are no brownouts (or worse) making it totally impossible to work on wool or anything else.  When will it be Fall?

Memories

I basted the blocked sleeve together for a fitting, and I basted the blocked collar to the fronts to see how it would look. The collar blocked to a much longer measurement than the pattern schematic, but it looks just fine and I feel confident in attaching it to the sweater body and working on the front edges.

The sleeve is leaving me indecisive. Although the length seems just about perfect, it feels a bit tight. The sleeve did not loosen up as much as the body when I blocked it, and the slip-stitch pattern has far more memory than a plain stockinette design. Before doing anything rash (reknitting it), I will block it again.

I’m also concerned about the effect of the seams on the sleeve circumference. Although Jean Frost recommends crocheted seams—my preferred method of assembly for most sweaters—I think they’re wrong for slip-stitch patterns. They will make a very bulky seam that cannot be blocked out because of the carried yarn along the edge. And so I plan to use mattress stitch.

I made one other slip-stitch sweater: the Morehouse Family Sweater. (This pattern is available from Morehouse and it is in America Knits by Melanie Falick.) This was for my son, and I liked it so much that I have stash yarn for the cardigan version for me. The yarn is wonderful and the pattern is beautiful. But in order to get a seam that looks invisible from the outside:

I had to make a bulky seam on the inside:

The seams on Devonshire won’t be as bulky because I only need to take a small amount (about one stitch in from the edge) to make the seam, but I still will lose some fabric and the inside seam won’t be completely flat. I think I had better try seaming after the sleeve reblocking and second fitting.

Fitting at this point does verify my cap height measurement, and I will go over my cap measurements again. So for now, I’ll be assembling the body, adding the brown trim along the collar, adding the trim along the front edges, and completing the pockets—that’s at least a couple of night’s work.

In a Fit: My Fitted Sleeves from Cuff to Armhole

Fixing the sleeves on the Devonshire jacket combines the changes I’ve made on Liv’s sleeves (which were too long) and the Calvin Klein cardigan sleeves (which were too wide). And I thought that with this experience under my belt, there would be few surprises. Well, surprise. There are surprises, but not that many. Fitted sleeves will always be a part of a sweater that requires attention, but I have come up with some procedures to help. In addition to really careful measurements, I will block the finished pieces before knitting the sleeves and block the partial sleeve to verify that my fabric matches the size I want.

The problems with the Devonshire sleeves for me are these: Although the schematic in the pattern looks something like the shape on the left, the actually knitting will give you a sleeve that looks like the one on the right. And, the cuff is too wide.

Narrowing the cuff is relatively easy, but getting the vertical distance was not a simple measurement.

In making my sleeve adjustments, I consulted some excellent sources:
• The Vogue Ultimate Knitting Book
• Deborah Newton’s Designing Knitwear
• Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English
• Jenna Wilson’s excellent Knitty articles on knitted sleeves

The things you must know in designing or adjusting sleeves are the stitch gauge and row gauge. You also need to know the measurements of your desired sleeve. This seems somewhat straightforward, but it isn’t.

The Yarn Harlot has proclaimed that gauge swatches lie, and indeed they do. So to make them more truthful, I’ve started blocking my big pieces—the sweater fronts and back—to get a more precise measurement. The sweater body pieces give me knitting to match that is just as big as the sleeve, and so it is more accurate than a 4-in x 4-in square. I’ve found that the pieces still lie, but not as much. The slip-stitch pattern for Devonshire knits up much more tightly than the blocked pieces. It is a bit subtle in the photo, but it makes a noticeable difference in the row depth. The unblocked knitting is on the left, and my blocked front is on the right.

When I measured to get the 17-inch sleeve length that I wanted, I got 34 orange “dots”. I based my math for the increases on that desired 17-inch length. After knitting for a while, I measured again. When I held the back vertically and got 33 dots, even though I measured this about 20 times before and ended up with 34 dots. I like to use pattern features and not just a tape measure for planning. It is the pattern features that you see on the garment, not a tape measure. So I may have to do some adjusting toward the top, just before the cap decreases. I may lose two stitches from my planned measurements, but that is not too significant.

From Maggie Righetti, I saw in print something I’d been doing but not read or noticed in any other source. The actual “rectangle” that you use for the sleeve to armhole should not be a rectangle. Maggie says you should stop the increases about 2 inches before your armhole bindoff. I planned my Devonshire increases so they would stop 1 inch before the bindoff, which was largely a mathematical convenience. It doesn’t really make sense to do the last increase and then bind off immediately. I generally fudge here, depending on the number of increases I need, I’ve stopped as much as 3 inches below the armhole.

So this is what I’ll be doing when I increase from the cuff to the armhole:

It is always nice when you can increase at even intervals, say, every inch. But for this sweater, that wasn’t possible. If I need to change the distance between increases, I generally place more of them closer to my wrist because this fits me better. My wrists are relatively thin, but my upper arms are large (from all that swimming).

To be sure that my knitting matches these measurements, I’ll take the piece off the needles and block it. If it is too long or short, I will adjust before attempting the cap. Ripping three-colors of slip stitch isn’t fun, and I think this interim block will save me the trouble of doing much of that.

I’ll deal with the cap adjustment when I get to that part of the sleeve. So far I’ve got 7 inches of sleeve to go before then.

Finishing Touches

At long last, Liv is done. Although I’m not completely happy with the modeling shot, I am pleased with the sweater—and the redone sleeve length.

The design is lovely, but I wasn’t prepared for the many alterations I had to make and for the idiosyncrasies of Silky Wool. The yarn is very stretchy, particularly in the vertical direction, and it was very hard to adjust the pattern. In order to get gauge, I had to change the recommended size 6 and 4 (US) needles to 4s and 2s (and size 3 on the reknit sleeves).

The pattern is in Elsebeth Lavold’s Designer’s Choice Book 1, and the yarn was cinnamon (a discontinued color).

Having finished Liv, I can now turn to the Devonshire jacket. I basted the fronts, back, and collar so I could see where the armhole falls and how it is coming along. And I worked with Liv’s sleeve measurements to modify the sleeve pattern. I now have rewritten directions that will get me the sleeve I want, and that will be this week’s knitting.

After trying on the Devonshire jacket, I decided not to line it. The slip-stitch pattern is very tight, and the jacket holds its shape very well. It has to stretch a bit over my hips, and if I line it, it might not. Perhaps if I knit another pattern from Jean Frost’s Jackets book, I’ll make it shorter and do a lining.

I wasn’t quite sure how the collar would look until I basted it in place. It is a bit lopsided (and not yet blocked), but it will be fine. I like the idea of the fittings at this point in a sweater project, particularly because you can use the “real” gauge of big pieces to adjust for sleeves.

On Edge

On Tuesday, I decided to knit the pocket braid on the Devonshire jacket because I was afraid that the live stitches at the pocket tops would stretch when I blocked the fronts, and for the first time in working this pattern I had a problem with the instructions.  They tell you to knit a row on the wrong side and then bind off.

When I tried one row of knit stitches on the pocket edges, I did not get the slip-stitch pattern to end neatly, and so it was necessary for me to knit two rows and then bind off.  But I really like how this looks.  The braid is very Chanel-like:

This use of a few rows of garter stitch followed by an ordinary cast off makes a very nice edge, and I’ll probably use it again on something else.  I've kept the diagonal basting (light orange) on the pockets to prevent the linings from moving around during blocking.

I discovered another problem as I prepared to cast on for the sleeves.  The pattern would have me cast on 55 stitches to get a sleeve that is 9 ½ inches along the wrist edge.  But each front starts with 58 stitches—not a lot of difference.

I’m using a much different yarn (Zara) from the specified yarn, my gauge is not at all like the pattern gauge, so that might be one reason for the discrepancy. But it seems very strange that the diameter of the wrist on a relatively narrow sleeve would be the same width as the bottom of one front, and so I decided to modify the sleeve pattern.  Before I can do this, I had to block the fronts to see exactly what width 58 stitches gives me.  It is 11 ½ inches, and so I need to do some major trimming to get a sleeve that is more suitable for me. Over the weekend, I’ll write down the procedure I use to modify a sleeve with a cap that needs a change in the width as I fix this sleeve.  I will also describe how you can change the length of a sleeve with a cap knitted from the bottom up as I finally get around to fixing Liv’s sleeve (and adjust the increases).  These are not complicated adjustments, and if it is something you haven’t tried and would like to, these instructions might help.

In the interests of full disclosure and to restore marital tranquility, I must point out that Ed’s green sweater will not truly qualify as an FO until tonight.  After wearing it for some months now, Ed discovered some ends in the pocket that I overlooked in the finishing and he has been insisting it is not an FO until this flaw is corrected.  I’m pleased to say that it will be when I weave in these last couple of ends later today.  And despite this egregious oversight, I am not removing the green sweater from my 2007 FO list.

 

A Taxing Week

I’ve worked as a freelancer for about 24 years, starting after my son was born.  Initially, I wanted the flexible time.  But I got used to not having a “real” job, which meant no commute, no meetings, and no travel, and I never went back to a staff job.  For virtually all this time, I’ve been able to line up reasonably good assignments and more often I’ve had too much work rather than not enough. So for most of the year, working this way really suits me.  The fly in the ointment is tax time, and it is at this time of year that I am jealous of those of you who get W-2s from your employers with all the correct tax information on them.  I must wait for the 1099s (non-employee compensation) from around a half-dozen publishers, and invariably one or two of them are completely screwed up.  This year represents a milestone in incompetence. 

My problems originated with two payments for work done in November and early December.  In one case, the publisher told me they sent the check, and it appeared I never received it.  In the second case, I sent an invoice (it had to be snail mail because it “must” have a signature) and it “never arrived”.  It turned out that the new person who was supposed to receive the invoice didn’t know she had a mailbox, and after six weeks, when I asked about the payment, I was told to send a new invoice.  About two weeks ago, her boss located the mailbox and the original invoice that had been sitting there since the week before Christmas. 

At first they told me that the check I hadn’t received wasn’t cashed, and it would be reissued.  Then I was told it was cashed, and I waited a month while the publisher got the check copy (why a month?  don’t ask. what happened to the copy?  don’t ask).  Then I was told that a new check would be cut and sent—but the following week I was told the cut check had the wrong date and had to be cut again.  And today, I was told the check was never cashed, and I was told it was “in the mail”.  Should I hold my breath?  Perhaps I should use it as a down payment for that historic bridge in Brooklyn.

And since these amounts determine how much appears on my 1099, it was incorrect before I even opened the envelope.  But not just that—things got worse after I really did open the envelope.  One payment I received in about April never showed up on the 1099, and so I spent two weeks trying to get a 1099 that was accurate.  And after receiving two 1099s with wrong amounts, I was able, with the help of an amazingly kind editorial assistant, to finally get a correct 1099.  I presented it to my accountant today.  (He did not appreciate this accomplishment with sufficient reverence.) So at the moment, I’m only out a fee that represents two weeks' work. 

What does all this have to do with knitting?  Not much.  I’ve been working away on Devonshire, and I finished the right front.

What does this have to do with blogging about knitting?  Plenty.  I’ve spent the last two weekends organizing my regular folders of receipts (about par for the course at tax time), but I’ve spent many mornings dealing with these annoyances, and that is when I usually post.  All this has sucked up any extra time I might have been naïve enough to think I had.

Tonight I will put the edging on the pockets of Devonshire and start the sleeve.  The slip-stitch pattern really pulls in, and it opens up a lot when blocked.  The back is blocked, and the fronts aren’t.  Once I have the fronts blocked and one sleeve blocked, I’ll order the lining.  So there’s still lots to do before this is close to an FO.

Glacial Progress

Although the Cold War years might now be viewed as a period of hysteria and mass paranoia, they were a boon for me.  The main reason is that after the Russians launched Sputnik, the US government spent huge amounts on science education.  And I was plucked from an ordinary, dull grade school class and admitted to a program with an intensive curriculum in general science and geology.  I had a really great teacher in that program in seventh and eighth grades who turned me from an indifferent and lazy student into someone who would work if sufficiently motivated.  The year of geology in ninth grade was also wonderful.   The only exception was our class trip to observe the roche moutonnées, a type of rock formation (which translates as “sheep rock”) with glacial striations, in Central Park on a day that felt as if it were below zero. Girls could not wear pants to school back then, making the weather not conducive at all to a “walk in the park”. I have on infrequent occasions edited introductory geology books, but for the most part the content of the course only served to add to my personal store of inconsequential knowledge.  The word “arête” shows up often in crossword puzzle clues, and I ace any geology questions on Jeopardy.  In that class, I learned about the idea of “geological time”—tiny events that occur over such long periods that they end up having substantial consequences.  (The parallels with knitting now seem obvious, so you can see where I'm headed with this story.)  These changes were often tied to the progress of glaciers altering landscapes and dumping debris so they formed islands, lakes, and the like.

And it is the idea of glacial progress that came to mind as I finally got through the left front of the Devonshire jacket.  This is all to set you up for another photo of what looks like the same bit of knitting as in past entries, but is an achievement for me because it represents the end of one stage of this project:

It was engrossing to count the orange rows to come up with the places to decrease for the armholes and neck edge.  And I dutifully wrote these down so that I could make the right front match, as I begin it this week.  (I had better not lose my notes, or there might be some explosive volcanic action in my household.)

But then it occurred to me that with global warming, “glacial” might not mean the same thing as it once did.  After all, glaciers are now retreating at an alarmingly fast pace, and so can I also call my sock progress glacial too?

There's a chance I'll finish the 6.5 inch cuff while waiting for the ear doctor to check my blocked eustachian tube this morning, and I'll devote an evening to turning the heel, which will restore this to an automatic pilot project, until the toe.

The Awkward Stage

Having just completed my first year of blogging, I’ve come to realize that there are stages of a project, particularly a big one, that are just not exciting to describe and photograph.  And I’m at that point now with the Devonshire jacket.  I’ve been knitting away, but all I have to say about it is that I’ve knitted a few inches more than I did when I last posted.  The knitting is very satisfying and this project, now that it is in the autopilot mode, is a great evening knit.  It has allowed me to listen attentively to the audiobook of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which I decided to “read” to complement the PBS airing of the dramatization. 

On Tuesday, it was time to knit the top pocket linings, because I’d need one eventually to finish the left front.  Knitting the pockets is not even as engrossing as knitting a gauge swatch because it lacks the element of surprise.  With a gauge swatch, I’m always focused on how many stitches per inch I’m getting, which needles I should use, and all the other unknowns that inevitably arise.  After every couple of rows on a gauge swatch, I whip out my tape measure to see if I’m even coming close (despite knowing that this effort will tell me next to nothing about the gauge until I can take the swatch off the needle, block it, and then figure out the exact gauge).   I know how many stitches to the inch I’m getting on the pocket, and it just requires some slogging through the obligatory stitches and rows.  After the pockets I proceeded with the front, which is now a couple of inches under the armhole.

I expect to finish the left front this week and it will be on to the right, at which point I will merely be able to show the two halves together.  So I wish I could be less tedious, but that is what this project will be like.

I ought to organize my WIPs, figure out the dimensions of the other pair of Norwegian mittens, and start a project that is somewhat portable.  But the tranquility of knitting this easy slip-stitch pattern is making it hard to set myself up for bigger challenges.  This sense of security will disappear when it is time to line Devonshire, so be patient—there will be some interesting details eventually.

The winners of my blogiversary contest are blogless Linda M and Barbara M, Jenny, and Caroline.  The yarns are on their way.

Pockets of Pleasure

Often it is the small things on a project that give me the most satisfaction.  I’ve always liked the classic look of Chanel jackets, and when Jean Frost’s book first came out I bought it sight unseen.  I don’t typically do that any more.  In the past, I’d buy a book that seemed promising, only to find one or two designs or bits of new information, and the book would remain on my shelf as a reminder of the folly of an impulse purchase.  So now I request a new book from my library and spend a few weeks scrutinizing it before deciding whether I should buy it.  But the jacket book was too appealing to ignore, and I found many designs that are worthy of knitting up.

I’ve always liked the way Chanel jackets have braid at the edges, and Jean Frost has captured this in many of her designs.  On Devonshire, you get the “braid” by casting on with a long-tail cast on, knitting a row, and then proceeding with the slip-stitch design.  Simple as this is, it works.  And the “braid” will grace the edges of the jacket and tops of the pockets.

It hardly seems as if I made much progress this weekend, but I did insert the hip pocket:

I didn’t really think ahead about the pocket insertion, but luckily Jean did.  As for all pockets, you knit to the point where the pocket will be placed.  I usually break the yarn at this point, put the stitches on a holder, and then reattach the yarn at the other end.  I now realize that this leaves you with an extra end to weave in.  Jean has you knit across the stitches for the pocket, then put them on a holder, and continue knitting across.  And, when you attach the pocket on the wrong side, she has you begin the slip-stitch pattern again.  Left to my own devices, I might not have done this.  I probably would have just purled across the back.  Her way is much more polished, even though a row of “braid” will finish the pocket eventually and cover the pocket attachment row.

Zara is very soft and I was afraid that it would stretch as I continued to knit the left front.  For this reason, I didn’t use a plastic stitch holder for the pocket, but ran a strand of waste yarn through the live stitches.  I also adapted a sewing technique to secure temporarily the pocket to the front—diagonal basting.  My sewing teacher loved to make garments cut on the bias because they drape so beautifully.  After we cut a bias piece, we would run rows of diagonal basting throughout the piece to be sure it didn’t stretch as we worked with it.  You can find instructions for diagonal basting here, although it doesn’t describe the reason I have used it to keep a single fabric layer from stretching.

It is a simple enough technique, and it will keep my pocket from moving around as I proceed.  It is easier to see this on the wrong side:

So even though there’s not a lot to show, I’m still pleased with this project.

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Knitting

Having finished the mittens, I spent the last few nights getting back to Jean Frost’s Devonshire jacket.  This was probably not the most prudent move in my knitting progress because the gift mittens are not even cast on.  Since I need to use those I completed to determine the size of a woman’s pair, I decided to save this task for a weekend morning, when my mind is better able to tackle the complexities of the necessary math than it is after a day’s work.

The slip-stitch pattern for the Devonshire jacket is very easy.  All the stitches are knits or slipped knits, making it about as difficult as garter stitch, with the sole complication of remembering which stitches to slip.  When I put this project on hold, I had started to knit the pocket linings.  They’re supposed to be 4 inches deep, and I’ve knit only 2 ½ inches. The pockets are attached after knitting 5 inches on the fronts, and so there is just a bit more to knit before I insert one of them.  The front is only 3 inches long at this point.

It’s likely that I can finish the pockets, knit the additional 2 inches on the front, and attach one pocket tonight.  There is some excellent knitting TV on this evening (a rerun of Grey’s Anatomy).  I also thought I’d listen to Persuasion before our PBS station begins to air the dramatization on Sunday, which I will watch and not knit to.  Will culture prevail?  It will depend on how much I think I need to concentrate.   The only tricky bit will be to reestablish the slip-stitch pattern after knitting in the pocket, but it might be necessary to have the goings-on at Seattle Grace in the background at this point.

The Devonshire jacket is a thoroughly enjoyable project, and aside from some gauge issues that I attribute to substituting yarn, the pattern in Jean Frost's book is clear and accurate.  I love knitting with Zara.  The back blocked out to the precisely perfect size.  And when I get around to lining it, I’ll satisfy my craving for some hand sewing and do something I’ve never done before—line a knitted garment.