Prime Time Knitter

Zero Visibility

For the last couple of weeks, a lot of knitting and knitting-related activities have taken place, but there’s not a lot to show for it.  And in a way, that was a good thing. I devoted nearly a week to fixing the hole on the sleeve of my purple sweater, and I ended up with this:

It is a graft of my 2x2 ribbed sleeve that required a new cuff.  And finally it is truly invisible.  The actual graft is just over the first cable on the left cuff.  It wasn’t invisible on my earlier six tries, and that doesn’t count the many practice pieces I worked on before attempting to fix the sweater itself.

If I ever feel as if I’m getting a swelled head, it is time to pull out something that needs grafting.  It has taken me years to manage stockinette grafting with any skill, and it may require a few more years to graft ribbing with any expertise. 

I started out by opening the sleeve seam and then reknitting the cuff with leftover yarn.  I also removed the old cuff (with the hole) from the sleeve.

On my first few tries at grafting, I tried to attach the sleeve just above the cuff—at about row 14.  I made a hopeless mess at first.  After a while, my graft looked like this:

Although some of the ribs seem ok, most are not.  You might be able to see that the graft was a half stitch off on the upper few ribs (at the right).  So I proceeded to try again…and again, bringing new meaning to the “if at first you don’t succeed” adage and bring new meanings to some tried-and-true expressions for frustration and disgust (not suitable for this family-friendly blog).  If I didn’t like this sweater so much, the entire thing would have ended up in the trash.

It finally occurred to me that I was trying to graft the wrong rows together.  On my practice pieces, I removed a row on the right side (going from right to left, in the knit direction) and I grafted it back again.  But when I knit the cuff, I was not so careful.  Here’s what I did (the dashed line is the grafted row):

I had a knit (right to left) row on the raw edge of the sleeve, and I ended the cuff with a wrong side (left to right, or purl) row.  This caused the grafted ribs to be a half stitch off. 

After I realized my mistake, I fixed the last row of the sleeve so it was a left to right (or purl) row.  This makes the graft the replacement for the knit row that will attach to the purl row of the sleeve.  Here's a correct sketch of the way the rows should be arranged:

But having messed up the cuff, I had to go up a bit higher on the sleeve and make the graft above the first cable:

 

But I finally did it—and I’m proud to wear the sweater again.  Well, now that we’re having 70° weather, I can only fantasize about wearing the sweater again, but I’ll be proud and ready in the fall.

Getting My Shots Up to Date

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warm Front

Sweater #2 is nearly done.  All that is left is to weave in one end under the arm that escaped me and to steam block my crocheted seams.  So what is the obstacle to the modeling shot that will show how wonderful this looks on?  The weather. 

We’re having an uncharacteristic burst of summer, just when I wanted lovely warm spring days and cool nights.  The thermostat registered 86°(F) yesterday, and it was 72° when I woke up this morning.  I am not turning on my iron, nor putting on this sweater.  I am doing what I always do in warm weather—waiting for it to be over.  Unlike the summer, however, when it seems that one hot day follows the next without a break, this blip in our weather pattern is ending on Wednesday.  And so then, and after I get my shaggy hair cut, will I model Arbor Rose. 

This mini heat wave is definitely impeding my progress toward 12 sweaters.  I frogged the basketweave sweater and redid it with fewer stitches, but my heart wasn’t in working with the heavy Morehouse Farm merino, despite my fondness for it.  I have been considering the summer sweaters to be a challenge within the challenge of 12 sweaters because I don’t really like knitting with cotton or non-wool yarns.  I thought I’d switch to lighter-weight wools for a time, some silk Cherry Tree Hill yarn that feels like cotton, and finish my Calvin Klein UFO—but those plans are pies in the sky right now.  I guess I should face the heat and start swatching for those projects.

Pooped

I’m at the point where I can taste freedom from seven-day workweeks, after what will be a marathon session over the next few days to get my last late assignment finished.  Monday is the actual due date, but if I hunker down and devote some long days to it, Tuesday afternoon is the possible end to the project conflicts.   All this work has not only made me a dull girl, but I feel totally exhausted.  I have to drag myself out of bed in the morning, and I nod off occasionally in the afternoon.  I am looking forward to taking a few days off toward the end of next week to do some of the cleaning chores that have mounted up.  At this point, mindless physical labor seems fantastically appealing.

And nearly all of my seeds are here, with the rest to arrive by the beginning of next week, so if the weather cooperates I can plant some spinach and get my indoor flats started.

Knitting has been slow, but modestly steady.  The front of Arbor Rose is done (but not blocked), and I planned and began Sleeve #1. 

I usually like to knit my sleeves together because I know the increases and decreases match, but this time I decided to do them one at a time.  There will be less frogging if I’m not happy with the result.  The only challenge, aside from getting the dimensions right, was to match the stretchiness of the sleeve fabric with the body fabric.  I planned for the stitch pattern to stretch only slightly as it conformed to the shape of the wearer’s body, so I had to leave an equal amount of slack in the sleeve as in the body. 

Also this week, I learned more about bird droppings than I ever wanted to know.  Addi, who will have been with us a year on April 20, began to have wet droppings, which is not a great thing for parakeets.  At first I thought it was too much lettuce, but after stopping the lettuce for a week, there was only mild improvement—sometimes the poops were fine, but sometimes they weren’t.  She looks fine, and acts fine, getting into things that she has no business investigating, and continues to boss poor Larry Bird around, but her digestive problems persisted.  I finally realized that the wet poops occur after she has been drinking water, and I took her to our local avian vet.  It is possible that she has birdie diabetes or a condition called polyurea.  The vet said that diabetes isn’t the problem in birds that it is in humans, and not to worry because she looks so healthy.  The vet visit was quite an ordeal, though.  Addi doesn’t like being in a plastic box to get weighed.  She is a whopping 42 grams, up from 38 grams in November—a good thing.  She doesn’t like having her nails clipped.  During the exam, she flew away twice and had to be captured with a towel, something I know she hates and I never do at home.  So after returning home, she just vegged out. 

Her spirits are much better today, and I have to collect her urine using this:

It is not as horrendous as it looks.  I put wax paper on the cage floor and use the device like a pipette.  Once I get enough, it will be tested for glucose.  But I can do this without a return visit with Addi, which is definitely a good thing for everyone.

Time Mismanagement

I know how I lost the hour today.  I think that Benjamin Franklin was a fine fellow, but he was completely misguided in his plan to muck around with the clock.  Although I love the extra hour in the fall, the price of paying for it in the spring is too steep.  I need every hour I can get today to finish work in time that disappeared last week.  

I don’t know how last week disappeared.  It started out inauspiciously with the most snow we’ve received all year in a single storm, causing me to postpone a doctor checkup.  It would seem that all this would do would shift an obligation to another time slot, but for some reason it disrupted my plans for the week.  In addition, work I had been expecting in December arrived on Thursday, as did the short assignment I thought would fill this coming week, once I cleared out the other surprise assignment that I didn’t expect until April.  So the next few weeks—extending into April, I think—are going to be full of work conflicts and excuses about when I’ll be done with a particular task.

Knitting didn’t seem to move along more smoothly.  I had hoped to finish the Arbor Rose pullover front, and here is a boring picture showing how much “more” I managed.  

This lack of progress leaves me having to figure out the neck, and should I get so far, the sleeves on weeknights, when I know I’m mentally challenged.  And the ETA for finishing this sweater is now the third week in March, not the second.

So what to do?  Well buying yarn is always soothing, and I succumbed to one of the many excellent sales that seem to be abounding.  Morehouse Farm had an email offering 25% off on all yarns, and I couldn’t resist.  [If you are a Morehouse yarn fan too, sign up for the newsletter to get the sale notices.]  So I bought some of the natural brown heather that came in kit form for the basketweave sweater.

It was cheaper to buy the yarn in kit form than as individual skeins, and although I don’t usually buy kits, I like this sweater a lot.  The design makes the most of the hand-spun look of the yarn and shows off its texture.  It is an old-fashioned boxy sweater, but I’d wear it instead of a jacket on cool spring and fall days, so I may follow the pattern with just a small modification to the sleeves to make them a bit more fitted.  I may not have the time to work out the design for Sweater #3 this week, and so it may become Sweater #4 with the Morehouse Basketweave as a replacement—the new Sweater #3. 

Now if Franklin could have only figured out how to get an extra week by manipulating the clock, he would have been truly a great man.

A Little Off Schedule

Before I embarked on the NaKniSweMoDo KAL, I was hard pressed to finish a sweater in less than two months.  The challenge I set for myself is to get about 8 or 9 knit-from-scratch sweaters done in 2009, and perhaps with the WIPs added in, which is permissible, I may get close to 12.  And so it may seem to the untrained eye that I am hardly bettering my record, with my first sweater truly off the needles and modeled only last week.  But although I am off schedule, it isn’t by that much.

On Friday night, I finished the back of the second sweater, Arbor Rose, and wet blocked it on Saturday.

The advantage to me of blocking now is that I now have a huge piece to use as a gauge swatch, and I can abandon my 4-in x 4-in square.  This will help me plan the sleeves so I can align the sleeve pattern horizontally with the body pattern.  The blocking was a bit tricky because this is really just ribbing, and it stretched all over.  After momentary panic as the soggy mess sagged in my hands, I pushed it back into its desired size, which will allow the ribs to conform to the torso when worn.  It dried into the expected shape. 

While it was drying, I swatched for Sweater #3—a lovely name to be decided at a later date.  I chose the Aurora 8 (for the purple sweater) and the Berroco Pure Merino (the maroon) for their stitch definition, and I selected a cable pattern stitch from Barbara Walker for the third sweater that needs to pop from the reverse stockinette background.  I’ve always liked this cable, and it didn’t disappoint.

The tricky part will be figuring out how to put it into a sweater.  Unlike the stitch pattern for Arbor Rose, this will require some coaxing to get body shaping.  I will have to play with the spacing of the bottom vertical cables and come up with side panels to create the waist region.  I also haven’t decided on the edging, although I have ruled out just plain ribbing.  I will try a few rows of purl to make a curled edge before I finish the swatch and block it. 

This was a rather enjoyable puzzle to work out on the first weekend in a while that I wasn’t inundated with chores and work.  I had intended to spend it buying seeds for my vegetable garden, but I mostly caught up with laundry and bill paying, read newspapers, and stared into space, when I wasn’t thinking about Sweater #3.   

It appears that nature is also a little off schedule.  This is what it looks like from my front window.  Not an inducement to think about planting.  But definitely weather to consider bundling up in a warm sweater.

From Finish to Start

One reason I like to do my own designs is that it makes me feel like Mistress of the Universe.  I get to call the shots and get total control of every design decision—there is no other area of life where I wield such absolute power.  And so instead of browsing patterns and thinking, “That looks nice.  I think I’ll knit it.”, I begin with what I want and then come up with a way to achieve that. 

Self-designs free me from complaining about the designer, studying the printed pattern to see what I think will work and what won’t, and coming up with ways to correct those shortcomings.  It does not stop the bad language that accompanies mistakes, however, or the actions of the knitting gods.

In thinking about Arbor Rose, I knew I wanted a warm pullover to wear while working.  I wanted a crew neck because I wear mock-Ts in my office, and that is enough to keep my neck warm.  I also wanted the sweater to be somewhat fitted, but not as shape-hugging as the Cable-wise Cashmere.  So I selected a ribbed pattern that would cling comfortably.  I’d manage the sweater shaping by using the cable pattern for the body and just plain 2x2 ribbing (which is stretchier) for the part of the sweater that falls below my waist.

I also decided to knit the sweater flat because I wanted to work in my combined style of knitting rather than Continental in the round.  It is the purl row that restores my stitch mount when I knit flat.  Although knitting on the Cable-wise Cashmere is good, there is a nearly imperceptible difference between the rounds with a cable cross and those that are plain knit. 

I know you have to look at this with a microscope to see the "problem", and the fuzziness of the Tess Silk & Wool hides the difference, but I know it is there.  For Arbor Rose, I selected the Aurora 8 yarn for its stitch definition, and I want it to be as perfect as possible.  I have beautiful even stitches when I knit a true purl row in combined knitting, and I chose that alternative over a seamless sweater body. 

And so before even casting on for my swatch, I thought about how I’d assemble the sweater.  To get the best of both worlds—a beautiful cable and an invisible seam—I set up the side seam with an extra stitch so that seaming wouldn’t show. 

Here is an unblocked sample of what that seam would look like.  This seam is crocheted, but it would be invisible with careful mattress stitching too.

I have more trouble weaving in ends on a tubular piece than on one that is knit flat, where the yarn ends can be worked easily and invisibly into the seams.  And for me, finishing a sweater with seams and many yarn ends, as will be the case for Arbor Rose, is less arduous than trying to weave in ends where there are no seams or graft balls of yarn when knitting.

The next thing I considered was the schematic.  In many ways, the Cable-wise Cashmere has given me the best shape of any sweater I’ve knitted lately.  The distance from the neck to the armhole (the top of the shoulder) is narrow, which prevents the sleeve cap from sinking below my shoulder (as was the unfortunate case for Liv—requiring me to reknit the sleeve).  And so I planned for a narrow neck-to-armhole edge on Arbor Rose.  I don’t plan everything out with amazing precision.  When I reached the armhole and made the calculation, I found that I had to decrease every row to manage the correct measurements, not the typical every right-side row.  I’ve never seen this done in another pattern, but it appears to work well for Arbor Rose:

 

The next challenge is to get one of the rosettes to fall at the base of my neck, in the front.  The back will be done tonight, and I’ll wet block it to be sure the sizing is right, but for now it seems that that will work out.

At that point, it will be time to insert the sleeves on the Cable-wise Cashmere sweater, which is still, unfortunately, a WIP because work ate up all my free time this weekend.

What's in a Name?

This has been a taxing weekend (literally).  I spent all my time gathering my tax items and receipts, and organizing them, so I could happily visit my accountant on Tuesday.  And I should have made up some work hours over the weekend, so I will not breathe my usual sigh of relief that accompanies the conclusion of this annual ritual until this weekend.

It is not surprising that taxes and work have had a negative effect on my knitting.  Although the knitting on the NaKniSweMoDo KAL Sweater #1 (aka Cable-wise Cashmere) is done, I did not attach the sleeves to the armholes.  That’s all I have left, except for weaving in ends.  Everything is looking very good. 

So to avoid knitless nights, I moved ahead on Sweater #2.  

By the end of tonight’s knitting, I should be up to the armholes on the back.  This is proceeding very quickly because it is basically just ribbing, with cables positioned at wide intervals.  I hope to have Sweaters #1 and #2 done by the first week in March, getting me back on track for (almost) 12 sweaters by December 31.

I have been growing increasingly disappointed by my lack of originality in naming my projects.  Until now, I could blame this on others.  I don’t think “Cable-wise Cashmere” is a particularly good name for Sweater #1.  It is dull, and I am not using cashmere.  Cable-wise Silk & Merino is hardly any better, so I stuck with the designer’s name.  On Sweater #2, Barbara Abbey calls the stitch pattern “Fancy Cable”.  This too is dull.  I have knitted lots fancier cables, and this really is just glorified 2x2 ribbing—the main reason I’ve barreled along on it.  It if were truly a fancy cable, I’d be only a few inches over the bottom ribbing. 

Saddled with such boring chores as finding and adding up receipts and evaluating book reviews on my current work project, my mind leapt to the more prosaic task of finding a better name for Sweater #2.  I have decided to call it Arbor Rose.   Why this name I hope you will ask?  Well, it is hard to get through Valentine’s Day without seeing roses plastered everywhere, and so they no doubt invaded my psyche.  I don’t have many decorative objects in my office, but every year I do get a pretty calendar.  This year I departed from my backyard birds (I didn’t want Addi and Larry Bird to get jealous) and garden scenes for one of artistic flower photos.  This is February:

The calendar features photos of Christopher Gruver, and you can see his others here.

After staring at the stitch pattern, it did remind me of the diamond-shaped lattice you’d find in an arbor, and the cables, which are made from a 5x5 cross on stockinette, look quite like the shape of Gruver’s opening rosebud. 

 

And so I have catapulted my sweater naming from pedestrian to artistic in a single bound.

If I get requests for the pattern, as I have for Ed’s sweater, I’m prepared to write it up in different sizes and offer it on Ravelry.  Will Arbor Rose be more popular than Sweater #2?  I guess a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I think Arbor Rose will be more appealing.

Second to None

Certain words amuse me.  Because I spend much of my day trying to make academic prose understandable to beginning students, I’m attuned to jargon.  When possible, I try to use everyday words instead, and in the realm of the book I’m working on, I can make convincing arguments to replace such offensive expressions as “bottomlinewise”, “distributional effect”, and “adolescent transitional status”.  I don’t do as well in real life, although I wish I could expunge grotesque terms that creep into popular speech.   If I ever became dictator that would be my first pronouncement—anyone who used “bottomlinewise”  or any other word on the official do-not-use list would be subject to capital punishment.  Back in about 1971 when I lost my job, I began to freelance.  On a subsequent job interview, my soon-to-be colleague asked me how I got the work, and I said that I simply called everyone I knew and asked for assignments.  It was only decades later that I discovered this was “networking”—a word I never use.  I frequently did two or more things at once, and only in recent decades learned that this was “multitasking”.

I decided to start Sweater #2 before finishing Sweater #1.  This is not startitis, but prudent use of my time (and definitely not multitasking).  And I am not succumbing to second-sleeve syndrome (say that fast a few times).  The Tess Silk & Wool takes about two days to dry, and even though I have a way to go to finish Sleeve #2 

I will be left with knitless nights if I don’t have something to work on while it is blocking.  So I started my original sweater design in the Aurora 8 yarn that I recently acquired.   

It doesn’t look like much yet, but I thought it was impressive that I got this far on the bottom ribbing one night’s knitting, in addition to planning out the body with the help of my very large swatch.  Well, things will require some effort after I reach the armholes, but I know what it will look like until I get there.

I am using the measurements and shape from Sweater #1 as a guide, but I’m letting the pattern stitch do the shaping for me.  The plain ribbing will extend about 5 inches below the waist, and then I’ll start the knot cables.  This pattern pulls in a lot, and it will give me a fitted bodice without any fuss. 

There was another important second in our household this weekend.  My son has decided to play competitive Scrabble, and he went to his first contest—coming in second!  Not bad for his first try.  I always thought I was a pretty good wordsmith, and I taught him all I knew when he was just a teen. Now I’m downgraded to a “living room player”, which is how the competitive players view those of us who simply play a good, modestly friendly game.   Much to Will’s dismay, I stubbornly stick to playing words I know and can use in a sentence, and not those arcane words in the Scrabble Dictionary.  He should know better than to think otherwise.

Picture This

Sometimes I think that my obsession with knitting fulfills my pack-rat-like tendencies more than my desire to work with beautiful fibers and create wearable clothes.  If I were honest, I’d include all the clippings of sweaters or sweater parts, decades of magazine back issues, and patterns I’ve bought but not knit (yet), and color cards of yarns that were discontinued years ago as part of my stash.  But since my stash fills more plastic boxes than I care to count, I cheerfully overlook the ancillaries—but sweater images are stored in the recesses of my memory, to be dragged out when appropriate.

When I thought about designing some of my own sweaters, I dug out two clippings of two men’s sweaters:

The one on the left is a recent acquisition from a catalog or magazine ad for Nautica; the one on the right is from an ancient L.L. Bean catalog.  I tried the Aurora 8 in a stitch pattern like the L.L. Bean sweater, and it didn’t appeal to me.  There is a cable like the one in the Nautica ad in the cables volume of Stitchionary, and I plan to swatch it for the burgundy Berroco Pure Merino (Sweater #3).  Since it is such a big cable, and the placement of the repeats will be important for the design, I’ll use the body of the Aurora 8 sweater (NaKniSweMoDo Sweater #2) as a guide.  Sweaters #2 and #3 will have a similar shape, but what shape should that be? 

I recalled a Kathy Zimmerman sweater from IK (spring 2008).  I like Kathy Zimmerman’s designs—although not usually cutting edge, they are more to my liking than most because they’re practical and wearable.  I wanted to figure out if my sweater should have waist shaping.  This sweater (on the right) showed me how nicely shaping would look on a cabled sweater, and the pattern gave me an excellent schematic to work from. 

But my swatch, which is really just fancy ribbing, opened up when I blocked it, and it seems as if it will be formfitting in its own right, with only modest shaping, like the sweater on the left.  That sweater is from a new book of Classic Elite sweaters, the sweaters that have graced the back covers of magazines like VK forever. Those sweaters also are attractive and wearable. 

I borrowed Classic Elite: 100 Gorgeous Designs for Every Occasion from the library, as I try to do before buying any new knitting books.  I’ve shied away from buying books of just sweater patterns because I have so many back issues of magazines with designs I like and patterns I've purchased that I haven’t yet knitted.  I also thought that this book would have old sweater patterns, since the book is a culmination of past designs.  Now that I’ve spent some time with it, it is on my wish list for book purchases.  Some of the designs are indeed boxy, but most are not, including this one that has always been a favorite (although I would want more practical cuffs).

The book has a good selection of very wearable patterns for men and children as well as for women.  The details on many of the sweaters are the real value to me now.  I’d like Sweater #2 to have a mock-T with the ribbing and cable aligning with the neck edge, as this one does:

 

And having compared the green sweater Classic Elite with Kathy Zimmerman’s design, I’ve decided to compromise on the shaping of Sweater #2 and make it less than on the purple sweater but more than on the green—so the ribbing does highlight my contours. 

Work on Sweater #1 is moving along well.  The body (front and back) should be done in a day or two, and I’ll probably get one sleeve done this week.  I won't be too far from my 12-sweater goal.