Prime Time Knitter

Decapitation

Knitting in public poses a dilemma for me. I feel incredibly lucky to be a member of a group of interesting and passionate knitters who meet weekly and a group of library knitters who meet once a month. I enjoy sharing advice and tips and the general conversation about all sorts of topics. But these sessions require a particular kind of project. It has to be easy enough for me to knit it while not paying complete attention, and I have to know what I want to do. Therein lies the complication. 

I designed my no-name jacket specifically as a knitting-in-public project, and it worked for a while. The stitch motif is ridiculously easy (two rows of ribbing punctuated by two rows of reverse stockinette), and I did not want to attempt to shape a sweater using yarn as heavy as this. I wanted a roomy jacket to wear over a shirt or blouse, so the body is just rectangular. But there have been instances in which I did have to pause and work things out. The pockets were one such diversion.

Before a session at the library when I was up to the sleeves, I wrote down what I thought would be the decreases for a fitted sleeve. This did not seem particularly complicated because I have another sweater with approximately the same measurements, and I could just (or so I thought) “wing it.” Somehow while winging it at the library, I lost count on Sleeve #1 (you could see that coming—right?).  But rather than work out what I had done, I just plunged ahead.  I should get someone to stitch me a sampler that says, “plunge blindly ahead now, frog later.” 

The sleeve turned out to be a bit trapezoidal, and close to raglan shaping. 

I wasn’t happy about this, but I thought, “Hey, I can ease this into the armhole, and everything will be ok.” Well, that bit of logic didn’t exactly work out either. I didn’t try to get it to fit in the armhole because another problem arose when I tried to get Sleeve #2 to match it. I knit what I thought I had written down, and Sleeve #2 didn’t match Sleeve #1. I ripped it and knit what I thought I ought to have written down. Still no good.

So true to my fashion, I ripped out everything (Sleeve #2’s cap and Sleeve #1’s cap) and started over.

While I was on my unintended blog hiatus, on one of those rare instances when my old Mac cooperated enough for me to do some web surfing, I came across this book. 

It was described in a blog post (now lost from my computer forever) showing elegant shoulder decreasing—like that on an expensive cashmere sweater. And I thought, "Ooh, I've got to learn to do that."

The book is out of print, but available from used booksellers, and I borrowed a copy as an interlibrary loan just to be sure the $30 would be worth it.  And oh is it.  This book describes mathematically every bit of flat sweater designing anyone is likely to want to do. If you are as much of designing nerd as I am, you’ll find it irresistible. It complements all my other sweater design books and is a huge star in my personal knitting library.  I’ll continue to sing the praises of this book in future posts, but for now, I just checked the fitted sleeve shaping discussion and used it to respace the decreases. 

Sleeve #2 now looks like this.

 

This is much closer to the shape I really want in a fitted sleeve. And after last night’s session at the library, Sleeve #1 now matches it. So I’m on to the fronts to complete the neck shaping.

Into the Woulds

Every year at this time, I flirt with the resolutions that afflict so many knitters: 12 sweaters, 52 pairs of socks, 13 whatevers in 2013.  But if growing old has taught me anything, it is that by this time next year I won’t have a fraction of those items.  It is tempting, as I look at my boxes of stash yarn, to think that 12 of them might be empty at this time next year.  That would certainly ease my conscience when I get to fiber festivals or yarn stores, but I know it won’t happen (not the fiber fairs—the FOs).

So rather than resolutions, I’m thinking of things I would like to knit.  In one case, the decision has been made for me.  Our knitting group had a Secret Santa, and my present, which still has me gasping with delight, was this yarn from Chameleon Colorworks:

I have yet to knit a circular shawl, and I have more than 1800 yards of this heavenly stuff. I have looked at Evenstar many times, but the yardage of my stash lace yarn is insufficient. I think that Evenstar will be this summer’s project. 

But less fanciful projects on the “I would like to finish them list” is the Helena baby sweater.  I’m up to the front border, and I did some diving in my button stash and found these vintage buttons. They more than likely belonged to my mother—note the 60¢ price.  The pattern calls for knitted tie closures, but in this soft yarn, I think they would pill and fray, so I’m adding buttons.  The end is near on this one, so it is close to being my first 2013 FO.

I know that knitting top-down, in the round, is the method of choice for most knitters, but after knitting sweaters in the round for most of this year, I found myself longing to do something flat that would require purling and seaming.  I also needed something to knit in my knitting group that I could not possibly screw up. (Fair Isle it turns out is far too challenging for group knitting—at least for me.) So I started my own design using Beaverslide Drygood’s McTaggart Tweed in nightshade and a motif with a 4-row repeat (and two of those rows are stockinette). 

The yarn is surprisingly soft for a tweed and very enjoyable to knit with.  The back is done, as are most of the two sleeves.  The hang-up on this one is that I wanted slanted pockets on the front.  Not only do I want them to slant, but I want the pocket inside to be plain stockinette to avoid extra bulk over my stomach (which has sufficient bulk of its own to require no added help).  So I’m knitting the rest of the sleeves in public for now, and I started wrestling with the pockets during fleeting periods of quiet at home.  I also haven’t quite decided on the collar and whether I want a zipped front or buttons.  It is possible it will have a belt.  This one is evolving as I go along—and it could be my 2013 Rhinebeck sweater.

And then there is Mara.  Mara and I have been on a trial separation for about five weeks, but I think I’m ready to reconcile. I got exasperated with her, and me, when I messed up the yarn dominance on the light blue motif. Despite meticulously writing down on the chart which hand holds which color, for a third time when knitting this motif, I didn’t read my notes.  Some rows after holding the yarn incorrectly, I found myself wondering why the colors just didn’t look right.  I have the last of four incorrect rows to tink out, and then I can resume. 

There is still a lot to do on this one—knitting sleeve #2, steeking and finishing the neck edge, and then weaving in ends and tacking down the insides of the steeks. If I keep at it, I might have it done before the weather warms up.  And I would like to knit another stranded sweater this year.

As far as more things that I would like to knit in 2013, there are more one-color sweaters, socks, a couple of scarves, and one or two hats.  But for now, I’m not looking past my current WIPs.

Happy New Year to all.

 

A Cooling-Off Period

I’ve been as slow to respond to the cooler weather as I was to adjust to the summerlike heat that descended on us in May. And I feel guilty for letting this prime knitting weather slip by. The heat derailed my progress on my stranded WIPs, and Sirdal has languished in its storage box for months.  I had also made some progress on Colour Your Own, but that sweater required some decisions about shaping.  You’d think (as I did) that I’d embrace the coolness and hunker down on knitting with heavy wool again—but it has been hard to get back into those projects.  Once I get into a rut of any sort, it is hard to climb out.

Sirdal requires some knitting back and forth (aka stranded purling) at the shoulder area.  I’ve gotten to the point where throwing when I knit doesn’t make me feel totally spastic, but when I looked at various online videos of stranded purling, my brain went into meltdown mode.  Needles flew everywhere when I tried it.  I swatched a bit by purling only in combined or Continental style, combined being my purling method of choice.  I did that by dropping one strand, purling with the other, etc.  Even though there are only a few rows that would require back-and-forth color knitting, it was truly tedious and the yarns got unbelievably tangled. I signed up for a Stitches class in knitting backward, and if it is possible to use that technique for these few rows, it would be ideal.  So I’m waiting to take that class before resuming Sirdal—heck, a few more weeks before resuming its status as a WIP hardly matters, right?

In the mean time, I’ve been working on Nancy Bush’s Traveler’s Socks.  The pattern description explains what a great traveling project this is, but I must confess that if I did not work on the patterned top in the quiet of my home, while seated before a table, with an Ott-type light shining on my work, this project would have been abandoned completely.  I’m at the point where the pattern ends, except for the clocks that run down the side to the toes:

 

I made every conceivable mistake in getting to this point.  My favorite is to knit two together instead of twisting, only to find on the next round that I’m short a stitch (or more, depending on how often I’ve done this).  Tinking the 78 stitches is a huge pain, and ripping and attempting to pick up an entire round is beyond my abilities—I had to restart the pattern region twice after attempting this bit of sleight of hand.  But I think I can manage to complete the rest without too many more mistakes, and it is destined to accompany me to Stitches. 

So that left Colour Your Own as the project to resume, but I'm doing it by knitting a completely different sweater in Valley Yarns (WEBS' house brand) teal Stockbridge. This is not the bout of startitis that it might appear to be. If this experimental sweater using EZ’s shaped sleeves in the round works, I’d use this sleeve construction as a way to reduce the bulk of Colour Your Own.  In WEBS’ summer sale, there was an incredible bargain on Stockbridge yarn (the yarn I used for Laela, and loved).  At $2.69 a ball, I just couldn’t pass it up.  And because I knit Laela in the same yarn, I already knew what my gauge would be, about how many stitches to cast on, and how the yarn knitted up.  So I’ve been swatching for a sweater that will be reasonably simple to knit, allowing me to focus on the shoulder shaping, but still end up as something I’d like to wear.  I decided to modify this pattern motif, taken from Nicky Epstein’s Knitting on the Edge:

I had thought about shaping the sweater, but the wool-alpaca of Stockbridge is very soft and drapy, and I don't want that much cling.  Instead, I decided to take advantage of the softness of the yarn and make the sweater a bit shorter than usual for me—sitting near the waist rather than a few inches below.  And last night, I finally cast on.  The knitting will be very easy, but the vertical stripes of the twisted stitches will give me some help extending this sweater to others constructed the same way (that might include some more traditional Fair Isle sweaters).  In sewing terms, this sweater will be like a sloper—a basic pattern that I can apply to other designs.  So this is now the current WIP, which, in fact, also might make a reasonable travel project too.

 

Sweating It Out in 2009

I have thrown all of my good sense out the window and ignored the pleas of DH and DS not to attempt it (because they know I become irrational under stress), but I have joined the 2009 KAL on Ravelry to knit a sweater a month, formally called National Knit a Sweater in a Month Dodecathon, that starts on January 1.  To tell the truth, I’ve been a bit disappointed by my FO output this year.  My favorite project this year was the Bee Fields shawl, but the others weren’t as captivating, even though I have enjoyed my foray into sock knitting. I should have finished the Devonshire jacket and the Calvin Klein cardigan by now, but I haven’t. 

The more I thought about the notion of knitting twelve sweaters, the more intrigued I got.  “Think of all the stash yarn you’d use up,” I told myself. This is more important in 2009 than ever before because I discovered that Rhinebeck and Stitches East are just a week apart, and Stitches East is only in Hartford (a not very distant drive, or an extremely easy train ride away).  How can I justify any major stash enhancements when there is so much unknit yarn?  I also found myself without many pullovers, and it seems to be a no-brainer to crank some out.  And I do think of myself as a sweater knitter more than anything else.

I reminded myself that I rarely knit a sweater in less than two months, and that is if everything moves along perfectly—which it almost never does.  It would also mean that I’d be knitting wool in the summer, and that I would not be able to do any shawls.  I could add some socks as portable projects, but I wouldn’t manage many pairs.  But good sense did not win this argument, and I’ve listed many, but not all, of the possible sweater projects (most links are to posts where I already photographed the yarn):

1. Blue Reynolds yarn for a sweater in Knitter’s Arans and Celtics.

2. Vintage Jaeger Gaelic Spun yarn for a traditional pullover in cables and lace.

3. Gray Zara for Elsebeth Lavold’s Thora, also in Knitter’s Arans and Celtics.

4. Red Silk & Wool for the sweater in Knitter’s Stash.

5. Cherry Tree Hill Rustic Silk for the Norah Gaughan jacket from VK.

6. Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair in Raspberry for a self-designed sweater like Ed’s Sweater.

7. Alice Starmore’s Elizabeth I in Jo Sharp’s Alpaca Georgette in ecru.

8. Susan Duckworth's modified Deco sweater.

9. Philosopher’s Wool Fair Isle kit.

10. Self-designed Gansey sweater from Snow Star Farm yarn.

11. Self-designed sweater from purple Blue Faced Leicester yarn.

12. Self-designed sweater from Brooks Farm Primero

 

And if I finish the two WIPs they would count also. 

I’ve not included a second batch of Primero, and one batch each of Acero and Solo Silk from Brooks Farm; another batch of Jo Sharp’s Alpaca Georgette in pearl gray; my Morehouse Family sweater; a sweater’s worth  of Heilo in brick red; or my Tess Silk & Ivory—or any of my older Rowan kits.  But this list is certainly a start.  

I know that some of these sweaters are complicated, and there is a chance I couldn’t complete them in a month, and so I’m ok with the idea of my “personal best”.  I think that left to my own devices, I’d only manage two or three sweaters, but in the KAL I could finish about seven. 

So I'll be interleaving some serious swatching with the socks and washcloths I intend to finish in December. 

The Pause That Refreshes

The knitting on Bee Fields is complete, and there is a huge void in my knitting life even though it is not “done”. To be sure, it has to be blocked, and pinning it out to dry will take a while. But that isn’t something I can do in my weeknight knitting because I like to block during daylight. I still have to weave in the ends, which I did manage to conceal successfully.

But for the rest of the week, I need something to knit.

I’m not yet ready to go back to my sweater WIPs because they require some thought. I still want to try Lucy Neatby’s buttonholes on the red Calvin Klein sweater. That will require sitting down with her DVD and following along with her as I try them out on a swatch—not something I can do on the same weekend as I’m devoting to blocking Bee Fields. The Devonshire jacket needs to have its fronts reblocked, and if Bee Fields dries in a day, as it should, I’ll do that. I still have to verify my sleeve-cap adjustment, and that may require morning time on another weekend.

So I’m turning to my planned scarves, and to a charity knitting project. Helena has talked about a mitten drive run by her Knitting Guild in Rochester, with the mittens given to inner-city children. Although I haven’t knit with acrylic a lot, and I’ve said many unkind things about acrylic, I do have some that isn’t terrible. I used Phildar yarn for my son when he was small (and I don’t think Superwash was available back then). The French imports, which I was able to buy in a small LYS in Greenwich Village, felt nice and wore well. I used this 100% acrylic

for this sweater, from a Pingouin pattern.

I also used a Phildar wool-acrylic mix for this sweater

So some stash diving is in order to see if I have any more of the heavy tan, or to find something else to add to it. This pause to knit some simple things and to finish a small project for someone besides me will be a nice break before taking on the difficult tasks of completing the WIPs—and working out some self-designed patterns that have been spinning in my brain for the three-plus months I spent on Bee Fields.

Everything Old Is New Again

One of the things you learn from getting older, especially with regard to fashion, is that if you wait long enough, the style you loved but has fallen out of favor will return. 

I flipped through the Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2008 issue that arrived yesterday thinking that I wouldn’t find much to interest me.  I don’t like knitting with “summer yarns”, and for knitting purposes I imagine that summer doesn’t exist and I’m living in a world that has perpetual fall and winter.  I almost always knit with wool or wool blends.  And in general, there are at most only one or two designs in a VK that I deem worthy of knitting.  I enjoy the articles and often will consider something—a stitch pattern, a sweater shape, a featured yarn—to use for a sweater of my own.  I find the schematics for sweater shapes very useful in planning original sweaters.  So I’ve collected all the VKs since they began to republish in the 1980s.  (I first started buying VK in the 1960s, and I was disappointed that they suspended publication in the 1970s, in reaction to what I assume was a lack of readership.)

In the new edition, there is a Kaffe Fassett jacket.  This immediately caught my eye because it was so beautiful. 

But then I took a double-take.  This is the exact design in the first Rowan kit I bought years ago—Moghul Gardens.

This kit is so old (circa 1985) that it doesn’t use Rowan DK.  The background yarn is Chunky Tweed, which I’m sure has been discontinued for ages.  The color yarns are the kind of Persian yarns I’ve generally seen for needlepoint.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I even considered Moghul Gardens.  The original pattern has you knit the back and front in one piece (no shoulder seam).  You start at the bottom of the back and when you reach the shoulders, you reverse the design!  There is no chart, and each row reads something like:

2J, 1A, 1D, (3A, 1D, 1A, 3J, 1A, 3J, 1A, 1D) to last 7 sts, 3A, 1D, 1A, 2J

This version has 16 colors plus the Chunky Tweed background.  Here are 13 plus the Chunky Tweed:

The new version has only 8 colors.  It has a chart.  And it is fitted, with the fronts and back knitted bottom up. 

I had put this kit on the back burner because of its difficulty, thinking I’d get to one of my easier seven Rowan kits, the Susan Duckworth Deco sweater, first—and it will probably be the first I attempt.  I had planned to become more skillful in intarsia before tackling Moghul Gardens.  But I think I’ll use some of the modifications in the new version, such as the fitted look and knitting the pieces bottom up, when I do get around to this kit.

On the actual knitting front, Liv’s sleeves are finally the right length.  I basted in one of them, and it is exactly where I want it to be.  The second sleeve is knit, but not blocked.  In a few more days, there should be a modeling shot.

Expect the Unexpected

You’d think that I have been knitting long enough to know that getting started for a new project might not go smoothly.  But it appears that I get “project amnesia” every time I start something.  Not only can I imagine how fast the knitting will go, I can see myself wearing the garment before I’ve even cast on.  Then reality has an unfortunate way of kicking in, and that agent of the devil, the gauge swatch, brings me to my senses. 

In the case of Thora, I knew I’d have to do some adjusting to get the measurements I want. 

After casting on with the recommended needles, and not getting anything close to the 23 stitches and 34 rows for the 4-inch gauge swatch, I kept trying again…and again.  I chalked this up originally to substituting Zara for Rowan DK, but after my experience with Liv, I simply realized that I’d never get gauge with the recommended needles on an Elsebeth Lavold pattern.  She and I must knit differently.

In one of her books, the Yarn Harlot says that “gauge swatches lie”.  I read her essay at around 11 PM one night, and chuckled to myself.  Now the laugh is on me, and in my case they lie sometimes and tell the truth sometimes.  After dropping down to size 2 US needles for Thora, I was congratulating myself for getting gauge.  How easy it will be, I thought, to just plug my measurements into Thora’s and knit away.  The mere formality of blocking the swatch would just confirm what I already knew about the stitches per inch I was getting.  And this is when the gauge swatch got its revenge.   The blocked swatch, which should have been 5 inches x 4 inches (I cast on 30 stitches) and was before blocking, is now 5 ½ inches across by 4 ¾ inches long. 

And what makes this worse is that I can’t simply knit to the small size and end up with a medium.  I want the chest measure to be about 40 inches around, for a relatively fitted look.  In the pattern, the small is 39 ½ inches and medium is 41 ¾.  I need to knit in a way that makes my sweater fall between the small and medium pattern sizes.

My plan for Thora is to make it part of an outfit.  I will use one of the many pieces of Liberty of London wool challis in my fabric stash for the skirt.  Here you can see about six pieces of this fabric. 

This is my choice for the fabric that will match Thora:

In all, I think I have about fifteen pieces, purchased over time from my first visit to London in 1967 and on subsequent trips through the 1970s.  I really love this fabric, and it doesn’t seem available in the US any more.  It lends itself to very easy but beautiful skirts.  You can take rectangles and gather or pleat them, or you can make a circle or half circle and do a rolled hem.  The fabric flows, and the fabric design provides sufficient interest so that more complex seaming isn’t really needed.  The swatch in Zara was unexpectedly perfect.  It will knit up as a sweater that is thinner than I thought the one in the picture would be, and it will match the lightness and drape of the challis.  [I’ll post about making simple skirts like these when I get to it—and if you’re new at sewing or haven’t tried to make clothes without commercial patterns, this would be a good starting point.  Skirts like these would work for other kinds of fabric, such as thin knits.]

I’m convinced that I want to make this sweater work.  Will I have to drop down to size 1 needles?  I hope not, but I’m willing to try.  The idea of a whole sweater in moss stitch on size 1 needles is daunting.   I’m going to study the pattern to see whether I can simply remove a few stitches in the panels around the cables.   I also decided to do a second swatch of the cable that forms the buttonband.  If I’m not knitting to gauge and my row gauge is off, I want to compensate for that.

So Thora won’t be easy, but I think it will be worth it.

Ed-2

Although Ed’s green sweater is not done, it became clear to me that he will need more than one sweater.  I realized this after I had knitted the cuffs, which I did at the same time, even though I knit the rest of each sleeve separately.  I’m practically incapable of making two things the same size if they’re done with a simple stitch like stockinette, garter, or ribbing, because I lose count.  I’ll always knit cuffs, sleeves, or whatever else may need to be identical at the same time, if it is at all possible, to avoid the frustrating counting of stockinette rows or garter ridges.

Mountain Mohair relaxes when blocked, and I wanted the cuffs to hug Ed’s wrist for warmth.  On the morning after I knit the cuffs, Ed looked at them and said, “They seem small.  How will I push them up to my elbows if I’m washing dishes?”   Once again I was speechless.  First, I proved to him that they would not be too tight by showing him the way the ribbing expanded on the blocked fronts.  But then I said with obvious incredulity that he shouldn’t even think of doing messy chores in it (or, of course, push the sleeves up to his elbows).  I also told him that this sweater takes three days to dry—that is what it takes when I give my son’s Mountain Mohair sweater its annual maintenance.  (My sweaters come with a lifetime maintenance guarantee—my lifetime.  I don’t trust either Ed or my son to take proper care of my knitting.)  If Ed messes the sweater up or gets it dirty, he won’t have it for at least three days.

So we compromised.  He is going to get a Polartec sweater from Lands End to wear while doing anything likely to mess up his sweater, and I’m going to knit another so I can take one away and care for it should the need arise.

I’d been mulling what this new sweater would be like.  It will need a shawl collar and pockets—I can’t vary from those requirements.  I don’t want to knit another cable sweater because it would take too long.  So I thought of either a knit-purl combination or slip stitch.  I made my son the Family Sweater from Morehouse Farms after his first year at school in Schenectady, where the winters are very cold.  This was my first attempt at slip stitch, and I liked it a lot.  Slip stitch is no harder than knitting stripes, and the fabric is dense and warm.  (This sweater is wonderful to knit, and the Morehouse yarn is fabulous.  In fact, I have stash yarn to do the cardigan version for me.)

One thing has always bothered me about this pattern though.  It doesn’t line up at the shoulders. 

I discovered this when I was assembling the sweater, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.  Will needed the sweater for school, and I had just spent six months of marathon knitting making three heavy, complicated sweaters.  Ripping wasn’t an option.  But I’ve always wondered if this problem was inevitable because the pattern isn’t symmetrical or whether if placed differently it would have aligned. So now is my chance to find out.

But the real push to knit this sweater came when I got a sale email from WEBS.  WEBS is featuring this yarn, which has many of the same qualities as the Morehouse Yarn.  Because it is relatively inexpensive, I bought a lot of it so I could try different three-color slip-stitch patterns.  My color choices for Ed are limited because of his absurdly conservative taste in clothes, and so I’m sticking to the chocolate, camel, and natural.  (The balsam green Mountain Mohair was a very hard sell, and a major departure from the browns, grays, and blacks of his “wardrobe”.)

It was hard to justify a yarn purchase before leaving for Stitches East, but this seemed perfect for what I had in mind.  So when “Ed-1” (the green sweater) is done, I’ll be coming up with my own design for “Ed-2”.  And this will be another Manly Gift Along project.

Less Than One Percent Inspiration

When I make something from scratch, I rarely think it is innovative or original.  It often develops from a garment I’ve seen elsewhere and my sometimes misguided confidence that “I can do that too.”  But if I’m painstaking enough, I get good results and something I’m really happy to wear, or to give to others to wear.  This post may seem like those interminable “thank yous” at the Oscars.  It describes the sources for my design of Ed’s sweater, and I’m giving credit where it is due.  And if you have not knitted without the safety-net of a pattern, perhaps my process will get you started on a sweater of your own.

I imagine the cable sweaters of such talented designers as Norah Gaughan, Kathy Zimmermann, and, of course, Alice Starmore as emerging fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.  My sweater for Ed has been just the opposite.  There’s been lots of trial and error, and many adjustments along the way.  There are still adjustments to come—otherwise I’d have nothing to blog about.

My idea for the sweater evolved from this one:

It is a sweater I knit for my son from this old issue of VK (Holiday 1988). 

The pattern is by Norah Gaughan.  I made many adjustments to it to get the cables in the ribs to line up with those in the body. The neck instructions seem to have an error in the number of stitches you are to pick up.  But it was one of the nicest things I knit, and my first project with Green Mountain Spinnery’s Mountain Mohair (color: Maritime), a yarn I enjoy for heavy sweaters like this one.  And I do love that big cable.  Sometimes it is important for me to try out a yarn before planning my own design to see how it knits up, but I usually work on something small like a scarf for this purpose.

That issue, by the way, is terrific.  There is another men’s sweater, #4, in it and a Currier and Ives afghan by Nicky Epstein, which I hope to knit before I die.

This winter, I decided to make a sweater for Ed, who does not like pullovers.  He requested a cardigan with a shawl collar, and with pockets.  The pockets are a deal-breaker—no pockets, no sweater.  I thought a cardigan would give me a bit of a challenge as I modified an old pattern.  But neither of us liked the way that pattern swatched, and so I decided to make up my own pattern.  Now my small challenge became a big one.

The main cable for my design, the Celtic Braid, came from Knitting on the Edge.  It is the cover cable—and if you ever want to use it, be sure to download the correction from the VK website.  I originally planned to flank it with a plaited cable, and that turned out to be too wide.  So I figured out about how many stitches I’d need to get the sweater width I wanted.  A 3x3 cable would be perfect.  There was a sweater in VK’s special men’s issue that had the right shape, and after measuring Ed, I decided that I could work with the schematic for “large” and get a sweater that will fit him.  I still plan to check the sleeve length, though, and not take the measurement in the schematic blindly.  [If you want to design a sweater yourself and you can’t find a shape in a magazine or book pattern, then measure a store-bought sweater that has a shape and fit that you like and use its measurements.]

At the time I was working all this out, Wendy posted her work on Alice Starmore’s Cromarty sweater, and if Alice could position three large cable panels between smaller cables, so could I.

I also bought Knit Visualizer to help me with the charts, and I’m glad I did.  The cables would have been a huge pain to chart by hand.

The back proceeded nicely, but I had to adjust the front for the button opening because I could not use a centered Celtic Braid with a buttonband.  I started with the S-cable in Stitchionary, vol 2, pattern 180.  It is an S-cable with seed stitch.  But I didn’t want to introduce another pattern, and so I kept the reverse stockinette and didn’t use the seed stitch.  I had to tinker with the length and width of this cable, and after a couple of trials, I had an S-cable that mirrored the Celtic Braid.

I also took what Ed thought was an interminable detour from this sweater to other projects.  I finished an old Rowan sweater to give me practice in shawl collars and I knitted the entrelac sweater because it used a short-row collar.  I want to use short rows on Ed’s sweater also, and I hadn’t done this on collars before.  Taking bits and pieces from other designs is one of my most successful ways of creating my own.  As an old boss used to state ad nauseam, “why reinvent the wheel”.

The collar on Ed’s sweater will be based loosely on the instructions in Katharine Buss’s book. 

The problem I have with this set of instructions is that it is not explicit enough for me, something that is true of many knitting how-to books.  But it did give me the idea to use a selvage stitch along the buttonbands.  I’m currently wrestling with its inscrutable directions for shaping the shawl collar—something that did not proceed very smoothly last night.

A knitter friend suggested knitting the buttonbands with the sweater fronts, something that was really appealing because I did not like attaching the buttonbands on my Rowan sweater. 

I did not reach the standard of perfection that I hoped in aligning the bands on the front—they are not off enough to make a huge difference (and to warrant ripping), but they definitely could be better.  But after reading an old VK magazine article that suggested using short rows to make the buttonband smaller than the sweater body, I contemplated doing something like this.  Techknitter came to the rescue in suggesting that I knit the bands with a smaller needle, and that was the reason I used the Brittany DPNs.  I’m also going to use Techknitter’s fake tubular bindoff for the pocket tops.

So, there you have it.  I’ve basically just assembled a lot of different ideas and techniques to come up with the plan for this sweater.  And it has been a lot more than 99% perspiration, to paraphrase Thomas Edison’s quote about genius, with more sweating to come.  (Is that why it is called a "sweater"?)

Crossing the Border

More precisely, I’m crossing the sweater with the intarsia border off my UFO list!

I really don’t know why it took me so long to finish this one, but if I encounter any sort of problem that requires some serious thinking, a project is in trouble.  I guess I was a little wary of closing the back of the neck and attaching the button bands carefully.  It did take a lot longer than the three days I imagined to finish this—about 10 days.  I completed it on Sunday, once I felt better after the dental work.  The gum work went well, and thanks for all your kind wishes.  I’m still a little sore and slightly puffy—as you can see—but I’m recovering quickly.

This sweater was knit from Rowan Lambswool Tweed (the dark gray, and some of the border colors), Rowan DK, and one skein of Fine Cotton Chenille (one of the orange stripes).  All were used in double strands and knit on US 9 and 10.5 needles.  All of these yarns are discontinued, but a sweater with a border like this would make a fine first intarsia project, and there are many other yarn suppliers that would provide a suitable color range to use.  The diagonal pattern is particularly easy.

There are several reasons I took a detour from the work at hand (DH’s green sweater and my entrelac jacket).  This sweater gave me some good practice in working with a shawl collar, which I hadn’t done for a long time.  I need that for DH’s sweater. It also gives me dimensions to use in working with the entrelac sweater.  The intarsia sweater is 46 inches around the chest, and that is the absolute maximum I’d want in any jacket style sweater.  I’d really like the entrelac to be smaller (I’m shooting for 44 inches) because it is thinner yarn.  I also have difficulty when measuring sleeves for dropped shoulders.  I feel like a contortionist as I try to measure myself with a tape measure in front of the bathroom mirror.  The intarsia sweater sleeves are a good length, and I can use them in checking the entrelac sleeves.

So this week it is on to the fronts of the green sweater and the entrelac.