Prime Time Knitter

FOrging Ahead

Here, at last, is the finished entrelac jacket, and I’m pleased with the way it turned out.  I intended it as an outdoor jacket for the fall, and it will do nicely for that purpose.

Here are the specifics:
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, color 230, 19 skeins, purchased from WEBS
Needles:  Addi size 4, circular; Inox, size 1, circular (knitted flat on circular needles)
Pattern: Sarah James, Entrelac jacket, purchased from One Fine Yarn
Started: March 2007
Finished: June 2007
Photograph by DH, taken at the Croton Point Park in NY

I’ve made major modifications to the pattern, primarily to get the size of the jacket down to the specified dimensions.  The pattern calls for needles in sizes 8, 7, and 4; I needed sizes 4 and 1 to get the required gauge.  I also left live stitches at the cuffs and bottom border for pickup. 

In addition to the earlier posts about my progress and pattern changes, I added one last bit of construction to the finishing.  I used mattress stitch to attach the shoulders so I could get a nearly invisible join.  This seam appeared to stretch, and so I reinforced the shoulder seams with a row of single crochet.

At first I wasn’t sure how to do this, and I started looking through my sewing things for twill tape, which is what you’d use to reinforce seams in a sewn garment.  I discovered that my mother had some heavy-weight polished cotton embroidery thread, and I used that instead.  By placing the single crochet below the mattress-stitch seam, I was able to get this seam to do its job without showing on the right side.

I don’t know why my mother had this thread.  In addition to sewing, she also made jewelry—so it could be related to a design she planned.  It is more likely that she intended this for some sort of trim (probably a frog on a jacket), but I don’t know how she made it.  She did not have DPNs, and so I’m assuming she used the spool with the hole in the middle, although I haven’t found that in her things.  In any case, this is an interesting technique for I-cord trimmings, and I would not have thought of it myself.  It might also make a sturdy handle for a felted handbag. 

Unless it is too hot or too cold, this jacket will be my “Rhinebeck sweater”—so I hope that those of you who go to the blogger meetup can see it first hand.

Thinking Small

I attached the nine buttons on the entrelac sweater, but I have three more buttonholes to finish.  I also thought it would be a good idea to reinforce the shoulder seams with a row of single crochet because Silk Garden is very soft and stretchy, and I think the shoulders will droop if I leave the shoulder seam as it is.  As always, I made a thread shank for the buttons:

So what does one do without much to show—flash her stash!

I want to focus most of my knitting time on DH’s sweater, but I also want to be sure I have something to knit on the nights when a problem is too demanding to solve.  So I thought I’d select a small project.

I took a brief absence from the Lace Shawl KAL after making the Seraphim shawl, and I’d like to return.  I have this very nice stash yarn (some of my Paris yarn) that would be perfect for Evelyn Clarke’s Shetland Triangle shawl from Wrap Style.  I originally intended it for a sweater with an Art Deco design, modeled after one I saw in an Italian magazine.  I even got as far as the swatch:

But I really wouldn’t wear that now, and an entire sweater on US 1 needles is not something I’m eager to knit at the moment.  So this is a definite possibility for my alternate project.  This is a little heavier than true lace-weight yarn (350 yds for 50 g), but I have nearly 600 yards, so I might even get an extra repeat from that shawl.  I'll also get to test-drive my new Addi lace needles.

But I’ve been smitten by the sock knitting bug after looking at so many blogs, particularly Tiennie’s.  I’m not a terribly skilled sock knitter.  I’ve only knitted about a half-dozen pairs, mostly for gifts. All were top down, with the same style toe and heel.  So I have a lot to learn as a sock knitter. I did make two pairs for myself out of Mountain Colors Bearfoot.

This pair is based on the plain sock in Ann Budd’s Handy Patterns book:

And this pair uses Nancy Bush’s pattern from IK, Fall 2005.  I love the instructions for the top row, and I'll adapt this with a different cable for other Mountain Colors yarn.

As I get older, I find that I’ve developed several bizarre foot “ailments”, besides my bunions.  One is that the seams on commercial socks often irritate my toes—and, of course, handknitted socks have no toe seams.  I also have Raynaud’s disease (cold feet and hands), and the handknitted socks do a better job of keeping my feet warm than store-bought ones.  Because of that, I had intended to knit myself a sock wardrobe, and I stocked up on yarn for the occasion.  Here is about a third of my sock-yarn stash:

For my first pair, I’ll probably use the off-white Lana Grossa Meilenweit in the front.  It is a mix of cotton and wool, and there’s a chance I can wear them sooner than socks knit from some of the all-wool yarns.  There's a nice pattern for these in IK, Spring 2005 by Erica Alexander.  In the left front, I have some STR, the center green ball is one of ten colors of Cherry Tree Hill’s supersock.  In the lower right there’s some Koigu (purple).  The upper right has more Mountain Colors.  The middle top is Sockotta, and the upper left is Heilo Tiur for Priscilla Gibson-Roberts “Dream Socks” (IK, Fall 2000).  The blue-brown mix is also Meilenweit. Also not shown are many skeins of Tongue River Farm’s Icelandic Sock Yarn, which I bought some years ago at Rhinebeck.  My intent was to practice two-color knitting using the patterns.

So the problem now is balancing work on one of these small projects and my big project: DH's sweater.

No Cigar

I think I jinx myself when I say things like “only about two more days of finishing, and I’ll be done.”  I uttered this last week, and I’m still not done.

The sleeves of the entrelac sweater will definitely be a challenge.  Although I thought I positioned them carefully, there is enough of a difference to bother me for the rest of my life if I don’t take off at least one sleeve and fix it.  The entrelac pattern is only about 4 ½ inches deep on the right sleeve (from the top of the shoulder) and 5 ½ inches deep on the left sleeve.

I did come to some useful decisions about finishing.  My crocheted seams around the armholes are working out nicely.  They give an even join on the right side, and a nicely finished edge on the wrong side:

I particularly like crocheted seams for attaching sleeves because it makes it very simple to ease them in.

Also, for the first time in knitting, I decided to bind off around the buttonholes because I was not getting a smooth opening.  I tried working the buttonhole stitch a few times, and it is impossible to get the even stitch that you do on fabric because of the bumpiness of the seed stitch.  In order to catch the yarn to form a firm buttonhole, it seems necessary to have some stitches of unequal length.  I tried putting the stitches closer to one another, but they bunched. 

Still, when you compare the finished to the unfinished buttonhole, the finished one is far better.

This may not be my last try on this buttonhole.  If the next one turns out a bit smoother, then I will rip and redo it.  But on this yarn, the buttonhole twist looks so much like the little flecks of silk that I may just leave this one.  So I’m not predicting exactly when I will be done.  All I’ll say now is that “I’m close.”

A Call to Arm(hole)s

I finished the cuffs of the entrelac sweater late on Wednesday, and I was a little worried that they didn’t match closely enough.

I selected colors that would extend those at the edges of the sleeves.  Ripping would be very difficult because I picked up my live stitches left from the provisional cast on along with an additional stitch between each of those live stitches.  There would be a pretty good chance that I’d screw up the entire sleeve by dropping one of those picked up stitches if I attempted to undo my knitting.  So I decided to sleep on it, knowing any decision I make after 11 PM is probably going to be flawed.

When I looked at the sweater again in the daylight, I was relieved.  The cuffs on each side match the seed-stitch panels going up the side, and so I’m leaving everything as it is.  In fact, the cuff colors look fine when you view the sweater as a whole.

But I did notice, when my sharp “morning brain” is functioning—in contrast to my “worn out nighttime brain”—that it is imperative that the entrelac panels on the sleeves align precisely on the fronts and back.  This will take extreme care when I finally position the sleeves and sew them in.

[That ruler, which advertises an “adult community”, is not an indication that I’m headed for any old-age-type living arrangement.  My mother viewed one of these in the 1970s and got this free ruler—don’t ask me why, but that was what they gave people who sat through their spiel about adult living.  I’ve had this ruler for 30 years.  It is just a fine yardstick.  You know, like "a cigar is just a cigar".]

I was not up to challenge of attaching the sleeves last night, and so I just finished off ends inside the sweater.  I also sat and watched TV.  My public TV station aired a three-part series on Craft in America.  Although the coverage of fiber crafts was limited (quilting, weaving—and basketry, which I suppose is “fiber craft” too), the show was fascinating.  I think if I had been a boy, I would have ended up as a woodworker instead of a knitter and sewer, since the men in my family would have taken over my practical training.   I definitely have an affinity for beautifully crafted wood and the more traditional wood furniture left me awed.  I taped this show, and watched it over two nights.  If you have a chance to see it, you’ll probably like it too.

So this weekend, I’ll work on the armholes and DH’s sweater.  I’ll save the easy stuff—finishing the rest of the ends, sewing the buttons, and actually knitting DH’s sweater front—for next week.  So one more FO is on its way.

Uncuffed

Sleeve two is now done, and all that is left to knit are the two cuffs. 

I positioned the two thicker seams (in the center of the photo) so that they’ll be at the sweater back.  I was also able to get the colors so they’re roughly symmetrical—and I’m pleased about that also.  At 11 PM, the two seams seemed fine but it looks as if the one on the left could do with some straightening.  I’ll do that when I block the seam around the armhole.

When I was done with the sleeves, I basted one into the armhole.  Then I tried it on to see how long the sleeve was.  I can never measure dropped sleeves accurately, and I have to do a fitting to be sure the length is good—and it is.  I’ll need only about 4 to 5 rounds of seed stitch at each cuff, and I’ll be ready to attach the sleeves, which I hope to do tonight.  I will first try a crocheted seam, because it is easier to ease a sleeve into an armhole that way, but I suspect this will leave ridge.  If so, it is back to mattress stitch. 

I find it easier to work with mattress stitch on pieces like these, in which you could catch a part of the sweater that should not be in the seam, if I place a piece of cardboard under the two sections I’m attaching.  It forms a flat surface, and it prevents me from putting the needle where it has no business being.

There are a lot of ends to weave in and nine buttons, so I think the remaining steps will take two evenings.

Then it is back to DH’s sweater, which I’m determined to complete as quickly as possible.  One reason for the departure from this WIP (not a UFO, as DH has begun to insist) is that I wanted to work with short rows on a collar, and the entrelac does that.  I now understand that this shaping will give me the rolled look that I want.  I need another cable on the fronts, around the buttonbands, and I’ve started a swatch for this cable:

I think this will be ok, but I want to see how it meshes with the Celtic braid and 3x3 cable on the front.  This S-cable will frame the button band.  In essence, the two S-cables and the buttonband will equal the space of the middle Celtic braid on the back.

Then I have to decide where the pockets will go, how deep to make the shawl collar, and plan the collar.  So there is a lot still to do before casting on for the fronts. 

It's Always Something

I’m moving along on the entrelac sleeves.  Sleeve one is done:

But when I started sleeve two, I was shocked.  You may feel that I shock easily from this revelation.  The sleeves are not symmetrical!   Notice that the top seam is picked up along the edge of the entrelac panel.  The bottom seam is finished using something like a three-needle bindoff.  You have live stitches on the seed-stitch section, and you bind off by picking up a stitch on the entrelac edge and knitting the two together.

I had considered other ways of making a more narrow seam, but this appeared to be ok because it can be blocked flat (something I haven’t done yet).

But the instructions tell you to make another sleeve that is identical, and that would place one flat seam in the front for one sleeve, and one slightly thicker seam on the front of the other sleeve. Because I worry about such things, I am reversing the shaping.  I plan to have both flat seams in the front, and both thicker seams at the back.

It is not a huge leap of creativity to make this switch.  So why doesn’t the pattern do it?  Does it assume the knitter is too inept to do this?  Surely after knitting away at entrelac, it is child’s play to reverse the shaping on the sleeve.  It is not a lack of space--there is half an empty page at the end of this pattern.  If I want sloppy finishing, I can buy a sweater in the store.  This is just one more annoyance for me with regard to this pattern.  But it will soon be over, and I’ll return to a pattern of my own invention (DH’s sweater).  So then I’ll have no one to criticize but myself.

After sleeve two, the cuffs remain.  Then it is time to assemble the pieces, weave in the ends, and sew on the buttons.  So the end is near.  There is a chance the sleeves will be too short, although I’m thinking they’ll be fine if I just add a few rows to the cuffs.  If so, I’ll add some seed stitch at the tops of the sleeves.  I’m not happy about this either because I used the exact measurements for the panel that were in the pattern.  I’ll baste the sleeves into place for a fitting first.

In coming up with this blog title, it occurred to me that some of you may not have been born when the Roseanne Roseannadanna character was a staple on Saturday Night Live.   Some years ago, I mentioned Father Guido Sarducci to my son, a character on the show at about the same time, and he stared at me blankly.  Should you want to learn more about these characters, follow the links.

Nearly Collared

I moved on to the collar after completing the buttonbands.  Aside from the entrelac knitting, which was new for me before I worked on this sweater, I was intrigued by the use of short rows in the collar and on the undersides of the sleeves.  When I started the collar and got to the row before the short-row shaping, the instruction that a 4 1/2 inch collar finally sunk in.  When I'm not tremendously confident in a pattern, I begin to question everything--4 1/2 inches seemed huge.  And since the gauge measure was so far off for me, and there were no hints about knitting the bottom so it wouldn't pull along the pickup edge, I thought this would be wrong too.  But, in this case the pattern was right and I was wrong.  A 4 1/2-inch collar will work well because the short-row shaping gives it a nice roll.

I'm not tremendously skilled in short-row shaping.  I have used it only for shoulders until now, but it is something I plan to practice.  The method of construction for this collar is quite like that in the IK Winter 2005 article by Veronik Avery, and looking at that description gave me confidence to keep knitting.

This collar is also the second try because there was a color change at the point where I wrapped and turned for the first time, and it made the collar look asymmetrical.  So I opted again for some of the more subtle hues in the yarn.  There are red patches coming though.

This photo (which finally shows the green as it actually looks) also shows the buttons I bought at Tender Buttons on Tuesday.  The buttons are a reddish brown and they complement the yarn nicely.  And they're similar to other buttons I've bought and liked for knitted sweaters--English horn, with a matte finish.  I just wish they were cheaper!

Tuesday was a completely wonderful day.  After my button buying, I headed to the Metropolitan Museum to meet my friend Mary Anne.  We saw the new Greek and Roman galleries, the exhibit of the Poiret clothes, and the showing of Venice and the Islamic world.  I splurged and bought the poster.  I hope to frame and hang that in my sewing/knitting room that is undergoing renovation now.

All the exhibits were excellent, but if you like 1920s fashions and are close enough to see this exhibit, I'd recommend it.  One particularly fascinating display was a hologram-type graphic that illustrated how Poiret would drape an evening dress.  I can only imagine clothes as flat patterns, and draping seems like magic to me.  It still seems like magic, but the computer generated illustration of the garment's construction made it less so.

And, back when I finished my shawl, I said a modeling picture would be forthcoming.  Mary Anne had the good sense to wear a black sweater that shows it off well.  Here is a shot taken at the Met's Temple of Dendur:

It ended up being larger than I thought, but I do like the way it turned out.

Strike Up the Band--Part 2

Once my electricity was restored, I could go back to nightly knitting, and I finished the front buttonbands:

This took two tries.  Although I altered the gauge for the entrelac, I decided to select needles that would give me the seed-stitch gauge in the pattern.  Here I had to use US 3 and US 1 instead of 8 and 5!  I really would like to see someone get 5 stitches per inch on US 5s using this yarn. 

On the first try, I used some of the yellow and bright red for the band, and to get the same number of stitches in the pattern I had to knit 8 stitches into the bottom band.  The buttonband looked so striking with those bright colors that it detracted from the entrelac fabric.  Also the 8 stitches at the bottom caused it to flare out a little.

I then tried the second band (with the buttonholes) using the brighter red as the dominant color and reducing the number of stitches picked up along the front.  The pattern also calls for binding off 3 stitches for the buttonhole.  This didn’t work out either.  The band was too small, pulling the front.  The buttonholes were too big. They’d require 1-inch buttons, and those would extend beyond the band.  They were also spaced too far apart to really keep the sweater closed without gapping. 

So I made these changes.  I selected some of the more subtle hues in the yarn (the dull red, dark green, and brown) for both bands.  I picked up the same number of stitches, but I distributed them more evenly so the bands wouldn’t buckle.  And I made 9 buttonholes that have only 2 bound-off stitches. 

I am really pleased with this result because there is enough uniformity in the front buttonbands so that both sides look similar, they do not pull, and the colors don’t cause your eye to go from the entrelac to the front closure.

I’m still not completely happy with the buttonholes, though.  I might try to do a buttonhole stitch around them to make them secure and stable.  I signed up for a class at Stitches East that is about buttonholes, and I may postpone this bit of finishing until I have learned all there is to know about button closures.  I think it is going to be too warm to wear this sweater for a while (we’re flirting with 80° weather this week, and I think it will start to stay), so it seems ok to do that.

I’ll be leaving for my day in NYC shortly, and I will go to Tender Buttons.  I want very subtle buttons that blend in with the bands.  Tune in tomorrow for my choice.

[A note about the colors.  In the photo, the reds appear true, but the bright green is far too vibrant.  I've photographed this varying the light and settings, and I can never get the green to look true.  I'd welcome any hints from more experienced digital photographers.]

Strike Up the Band--Part 1

Over the last couple of evenings, I used mattress stitch to assemble the two side panels of the entrelac sweater.  Then I picked up the live stitches I left for the bottom band, and I knit the entire bottom in one piece.  I think this turned out well.

Here's the outside of one side panel and part of the bottom band:

and here's the inside:

I steamed the side panel, but I'm waiting to steam in the bottom band until the button bands are attached.

In order to construct the bottom band I used the live stitches left from a provisional cast on.  It looked like this edge, which is a photo of the sleeve panel:

I also picked up one edge stitch between each live stitch so that the border didn't pull in.  This procedure is much different from the pattern instructions, which ask you to start with an unspecified cast on (which I interepret to mean something like a long-tail cast on) and then pick up stitches along that cast-on edge.  I thought this would pull.  My border doesn't.

I'm now on to the button bands, but they will require some tinkering too.  Because I reduced the number of entrelac repeats, I only have eight, and the pattern has ten.  So I have fewer picked up stitches than the pattern expects.  I got to this point at about 10 last night, and my brain wasn't up to the higher math needed to space the buttonholes.  I should get one button band done tonight.

But this sweater is far from over.  Once I finish the button bands, the collar remains.  And the sleeves will require a lot of work.  The sleeve shaping is done with short rows on an inserted panel.  Also, my sleeve rectangle is 16 1/2 inches long, which matches the pattern exactly. And it seems too short.  So when the sleeves are done, I'll baste them on to the body, and if they're not long enough, I'll add some seed stitch around the top to get them to the length I want.  There is also some seed stitch around the cuff, but that won't take long.

I don't have buttons yet.  I wanted to see how the colors played out along the button band before buying them.  I thought initially of brown bone buttons, but now I'm not so sure.  I'll be in NYC next week to see the Paul Poiret exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, so a side trip to Tender Buttons might be in order.  (You just can't keep me away from 1920's clothes!)

Things Are Not What They Seam

Sometimes the harsh light of the day is unkind to my nightly knitting. When I took a good look at the photos of my shoulder seams on the entrelac sweater in my last post, I was not happy with the ridge that said to the world “hey, there’s a seam here!”.  So I tried again, this time taking the stitch below the edge stitch, and I’ve gotten a nearly invisible join.  I’m extremely pleased about this:

The collar will cover some of the seam at the neck edge, and I was most concerned about the seam near the shoulder.

I think my fascination with the idea that seams could be beautiful (on the inside as well as the outside) began when I learned to make French seams on sewn clothes.  In a machine-stitched seam, the outside generally looks fine, but the inside does not unless you do something special.  This is the first blouse I made with French seams, and I think that was a turning point in my quest to have seams that are as inconspicuous as possible but that still perform their job as joins and scaffolding for the garment:

On knitted garments, I find it more of a challenge to get the outside seams inconspicuous.  Although I was pleased with the brown sweater I finished earlier in the year, I was not completely happy with the seams.  When you look at the sweater, you can see where the seam is, despite the care I took in assembling the pieces:

In this case, I followed the pattern without thinking about it.  In deciding on the pattern for DH’s sweater (which still is in progress), I did plan for an inconspicuous seam:

I'll take one-half stitch from each side to make the seam between the fronts and back.  I expect those loose stitches to block out.

I finished the seed-stitch side panels on the entrelac, and now it is time to sew them together as invisibly as possible—my task for tonight.

I'm going to make some changes in the order of the finishing described in the pattern so that the sides of the entrelac look seamless.  Instead of putting a seed-stitch band on each front and on the back, I'm going to assemble the side seams and then pick up stitches all around the bottom.  This will make the colors spread out, and it will eliminate the color changes that will invariable appear at the joins.  So when I examine this on the morning after I'm done with it, I expect good results.