Prime Time Knitter

Photo Finish

I finished knitting Thora in December, just as the weather turned cold and I no longer felt like standing outdoors for photos.  As the weather began to warm up, I shook off my photographic lethargy and asked Ed to take the FO modeling shots.  I procrastinated because I wanted to “dress up” for the shot—that is, put on a pair of gabardine slacks and take off the baggy jeans I wear at work (one of my “perks” as a freelancer).  It turns out that taking the pictures over the weekend was a very prudent decision.  We’re headed for 80-degree weather this afternoon, and it is now time for shorts.  Thora will look very silly over shorts.

In addition to seeing Thora, have a look at my Christmas present: a wooly board.  I’m going to need this for my stranded sweaters.

This picture of the front shows the most accurate color, as well as the beautiful lines of Elsebeth Lavold’s pattern.

Here’s the back view.

 

And here I am wearing it.

Please avert your eyes from the dorky expression on my face and look at the beautiful flowing cable instead.

 

The pattern is in Knitter’s Arans and Celtics, as well as in Knitter’s Magazine Fall 1999.  I used Filatura di Crosa Zara in dark gray (#1732)—15 skeins knitted on size 1 (2.5 mm) Knit Picks Harmony needles. 

I have not worn tunic-style sweaters before, but I like how this looks and feels.  But for now, it is stored with some moth repellent, and it will be part of my fall wardrobe.

Diversions

The seaming of Thora has gone well, but some trial and error was necessary to decide which edge stitch to pick up in order to have an invisible join on the outside.  And, sorry to say, crocheting, which I find so much more convenient than mattress stitch, only worked to attach the neck edge. To get invisible seams on the sides and sleeves, I had to use mattress stitch.

The underarm seam looks very good:

 

The side seams need one more try so that they more closely mirror the decorative columns that go up the fronts and back and truly are inconspicuous.

 

But even I could not help but notice that Christmas is nearly upon us, and the few gifts I had intended to knit required some immediate attention.  There are several reasons I like knitting presents.  The most notable is that it keeps me out of malls.  I suppose that age has at least a little do with this (the old “been there, done that” mentality kicks in), because when I was younger I looked eagerly upon the thrill of finding the right present at the right price.  I did most of this shopping in Fifth Avenue department stores in the days when the merchandise at one store wasn’t a clone of the merchandise at another.  I think the homogenization of retail, and the ability to shop online, have diluted my enthusiasm for physical shopping.  I also find I can live quite happily without being jostled by other shoppers and without cajoling sales clerks to take my money.

But another reason is that I can use up bits of stash yarn that I’ve bought to try out or are leftover from other projects and only good for small items.  I had some Knit Picks Elegance (alpaca and silk) that I bought to try out—and it is quite a nice yarn for the price.  The pair of mittens I made for a prior present left me with nearly two skeins left.  And so after trolling Ravelry, I decided to knit my first cowl: Gundrun Johnston’s Crofter’s Cowl.

Although the pattern calls for worsted, this works perfectly in dk, knit on size 6 US (4 mm) needles.  I added one pattern repeat, but the blocked length seems perfect.  The cowl is knit in two parts and grafted at the center, and I’ve finished one of the halves—modeled inelegantly on some tissue paper.

 

I also have some KnitPicks Andean Silk that will end up as a similar present, and I’ll use my trial skein of City Tweed (heavy weight) for either a hat or another cowl. 

I’m headed off to New York City this weekend for the Nikon School, which I hope gives me some help in improving my photographs.  Surely I can manage another present in the four hours I’ll be on the train (and possibly more, if we really do get the snow that is predicted).

Making Co-Neck-Tions

Thora’s neck edge is so fascinating that I thought it was worth a blog post of its own.  Also, the instructions are not particularly intuitive, and I hope anyone knitting Thora, who finds this part of the pattern unclear, can benefit from these photos.  I have looked for similar pictures on other projects I’ve knitted, and I’ve found bloggers who posted close-ups like these.  I’m thankful for their help, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to do the same thing.

When you knit the fronts, the pattern asks you to put 5 stitches at the neck edge on a holder.  When you knit the sleeves, it asks you to put 4 stitches at the top of the saddle on another holder.  To start the neck edge, you pick up the 5 neck edge stitches

and then knit them (p1, k4—or k4, p1—depending on which side you’re on) until you reach the second group of picked up stitches.  It is neater to start knitting the stitches from the attachment side of the border so you can hide the tail when tidying the ends.

 

Once you've knit enough to fit across the saddle, you pick up the second group of stitches knit across all 9 stitches in the pattern for the back neck edge.  These are knit until the strip reaches the center back.  Here it is on the right front:

I’ve finished both sides of the neck edge, and tonight I’ll be grafting them together and (probably) crocheting them to the neck edge.  I’m favoring the row of single crochet, if it looks good, because it will provide a less stretchy, firmer edge. 

I’m departing a little from the pattern instructions, which ask you to bind off each side and have a seam at the center back.  This pattern is so elegant in its styling that this instruction seems surprising.  Why have a seam when an invisible graft will do?

The rest of the finishing is more of the garden variety—side seams and buttons.  But being so close to the finish line, I don’t think I’ll falter here.  So I know what I’ll be doing as I wait for Thanksgiving dinner to cook. 

Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Back in the Saddle Again*

Thora’s wet-blocked sleeves were ready on Saturday, and I began to attach the pieces.  Things are working out so well, that I think I’ve shaken off my lethargy about blogging and my mind is racing to consider my next projects.  In fact, on Friday night, I started swatching for my new stranded sweater, Sirdal, and stayed up until midnight watching videos on how to catch long floats.

Here’s where I am now on Thora.  The saddle sleeves are attached at both shoulders, and one sleeve is attached to the body.

The pattern didn’t disappoint at all.  All the pieces match up perfectly, and the only challenges are to be sure that the rows of vertical stockinette are aligned and that I insert my wool needle in the same row on each side in my mattress stitches.  

This is when being severely nearsighted is a good thing—in fact, this is the only time that I like being a “high myope”.

I had originally thought I’d crochet my seams together, but crocheted seams don’t always look great at shoulder seams.  When I learned to use the three-needle bindoff, I got much better shoulder seams than on earlier sweaters when I used crocheting.  Crocheting seems to leave a deep ridge.  Since I can’t use a three-needle bindoff on Thora, I tried mattress stitch, and it forms a very neat join.

I have always enjoyed the final assembly of knitted pieces, and Thora is particularly satisfying.  Once the second sleeve is attached, I’ll begin work on the neck edge and gently steam the seams in place.  Then all that will be left are the two long seams from wrist to the bottom edge, sewing on the buttons, tidying the ends, and finding a suitable location for a modeling shot.

 

*Apologies to Gene Autry, America's Singing Cowboy, who inspired this blog title.  If you would like to hear his signature song, which I awaited eagerly as a small child when watching Saturday morning (black and white) TV in the 1950s, go to this link.  In fact, I had watched so many Westerns by time I reached age 10 that I had my fill for a lifetime, and rarely watch any now.

Nearly Thrilled to Pieces

I have not succumbed to second-sleeve syndrome, but barreled ahead on Thora’s sleeves, and they are nearly done.

To the untrained eye, these may look as if I have only a few rows to go on Sleeve 2 to proudly proclaim that all the pieces are knit, but a closer inspection tells otherwise.

One reason I fell in love with this design at first sight was its beautiful construction.  The pieces are set up so that the columns formed by k2, p2, k2 align at the sides and underarms.  But they also line up across the saddle.  To create the finish, I must pick up the stitches left at the neck edge to get a single column (p2, k2).  Then I join it at the back of the neck to get the double-column edge as a finish along the back.  I am really looking forward to this because it seems so interesting. 

But before I get that far, I have to match the tops of the saddles.  The finished saddle was supposed to be the left sleeve, and it has turned out (inexplicably) to be the right sleeve.  The sleeve I’m working on now needs to have one row frogged because I did something weird on the decrease row, and I have to match the other side.  Here, my copious notes failed me.  I have nothing written down for the next few rows that become the neck edge.  I suspect this tiny bit of knitting left to go will take me around an hour to figure out.

But then it is on to blocking, seaming, and sewing on the buttons.  And, oh yeah, trying it on!

Measure for Measure

I've been on more of a roll with my nightly knitting since Stitches, and I've barreled through the right front. Both fronts are now on my foam pads and old towels, ready for blocking:

Here's a close up of the buttons that I had purchased when I was still knitting with the original dye lot.

They are brown-gray, and they looked better with the lighter shade of Zara.  But for now, I will use these  unless I find something when I finish the sweater that better complements the darker gray.  I like how the neck edge turned out.

Now it is time to think.  [Hum some scary music here.]  This is my first saddle sleeve, and I'm relying on the pattern instructions more than I usually do.  I recite the mantra "trust no one" when I look at pattern instructions, and I remained suspicious of the sleeve measurements.  How could every single size have an 18-inch sleeve?

I tested the measurement by putting the blocked back on my purple sweater, which has sleeves that fit perfectly, and projecting where Thora's sleeves would end:

To my astonishment, the length is perfect.  [Hum some even scarier music here.  This seems too good to be true.]

When I have knit a big piece, usually the back, I find it more accurate to work with it than the gauge swatch.  And so I used the blocked back to figure out how many cable repeats I'd need for the 18-inch sleeve.  And again, this appears to work out perfectly--15 repeats should do it.  I hope this isn't an amusing Halloween trick that the knitting gods are playing on me.  

My vertical gauge is not at all like the pattern (I get fewer rows), and I need to work out just where the instructions ask you to increase and then where I should increase to get something comparable.  So there's a bit of math in my future.  Perhaps this is where everything that seems so perfect will turn out to be less so.  But I'll sketch my version and the original version on graph paper, measure and review my calculations at least three or four times (when I get two that are the same, I'll stop), and then cast on for the left sleeve.  I'd like to hum something like "Happy Days Are Here Again" when I've figured all this out, but let's not push it.

Holed Up

Why have I had so much trouble getting around to putting up blog posts?  This is a question I’ve been asking myself for a couple of weeks now, and it seemed as if there was no good answer.  But this week I figured out why—interruptions.  Here’s one example.  On Monday, I promised myself that I’d get to work at 7 AM, print out the chapters I’d need to read, and then post about my knitting progress.  But my printer had other ideas.

When things on the side panel flash, the printer is not happy.  And so I unearthed the manual and discovered I needed a new drum.  Ok, so I checked to see if Amazon had it.  And indeed it did—but for nearly $80.  The printer only cost me around $100, so this seemed as though it was a typo.  When I checked around, I found that this was really quite a good price. About an hour had elapsed by this time—so much for starting work at 7 AM.  After spending more time on the web, I discovered that the replacement printer for this model was on sale at Staples and Best Buy for only $60.  How can that be?  I can get an entirely new printer, with a toner cartridge and drum, for less than the drum for my existing, perfectly fine printer.  I wrote an irate email to Brother Printer’s customer services, and have gotten no reply.  So a day later I started composing an irate letter to the president of the Brother Printer Company criticizing their “green” policy, only to discover its head offices are in Japan.  (I will eventually write to someone, even if it is just a rant to Consumer Reports.)  And so after this, and a trip to Staples yesterday, I lost hours of work time.  I felt guilty taking time for a blog post.

But despite needing the time today to install this

and getting a truly late start on my work, I am posting anyway.  (Thank goodness I have a Mac and not a PC, or the entire day would be ruined trying to hook up a new peripheral.) Besides, we’re in the midst of a nor’easter, making it very unlikely that I will go to Rhinebeck this weekend, and I can make up the work time as I’m holed up watching the wind, heavy rain, and even, perhaps, some snow. 

Knitting has taken place despite the dearth of blog posts.  I am up to the buttonholes on Thora.  The instructions for the buttonholes leave something to be desired.  They merely say to bind off three stitches on a front row and cast on three stitches on the next purl row.  There is no indication of what row to do this on.  It is clear from the picture that the buttonholes have to go in the middle of the front cable:

Here is the chart for the cable, and the only rows that I can imagine binding off three and casting on three are rows 13 and 14, which fall in the cable repeat. 

This makes for a somewhat lopsided buttonhole, and not the centered buttonhole I thought I’d be getting.  

Still, I think I will always wear this sweater buttoned because it would lose some of its gracefulness if the fronts flapped open.  And if you look closely at the magazine picture, you can see that the button is positioned near the top of the cable, not in the center.

The hard part of Thora’s front (the Viking cable) is done, and now it is very easy to finish the right front.  I’m eager to get to the saddle sleeves because I don’t recall ever knitting a sweater with them. I'll need to block first to be sure of my row gauge, and I'll do that rain or shine.

The More the Merrier

One of the things I like about Elsebeth Lavold’s designs is their graceful lines.  I think it was Thora’s shape that attracted me initially to the project, and it is a shape used in several other of her patterns.  Here is another, from her website, that uses the flared bottom in a pullover.  And, of course, there are also the interesting cables and nice details. 

So when I finally reached the point where I had to shape Thora’s neck, I expected to have to pay attention to achieve the look in the picture:

I did not expect to have to count over and over to be sure I was doing the right thing.  Although I’ve griped about the instructions on Liv (no schematic, less than crystal clear explanations), Thora is a bit different because it was published in Knitter’s Magazine.  It does have a schematic, and it seems that the instructions are more explicit because they match the magazine’s style.  Until the neck edge, I had no problems at all.

One detail on Thora is a row of 2 stockinette columns separated by 2 reverse stockinette stitches, and the picture makes it look as if that motif will go along the neck edge and across the back neck.  But when I got to the point where the cable would disappear, I had 3 reverse stockinette stitches separating the two columns of stockinette.

The cable row uses 12 stitches.  You lose 4 of them when you end the cable and so you need to decrease by 6 more to get the 2 left for the neck edge.  Here is the instruction from Knitter’s Fall 1999, which I’ve been using instead of Knitter’s Arans and Celtics (where the pattern was reprinted), because it lays flat:

When knitting this bit, I read only the top line (which goes into the binding in the magazine), and decreased 5 times, and I did the math over and over but could not get the right amount.  I decided it was an “error” and I decreased 6 times just so things would work out.  But I had the sneaking sense that I was doing something wrong. 

The next morning, I looked in Arans and Celtics, where the instruction has different line breaks, and I could see that I had to decrease a total of 6 times.  And I felt like a total fool for not reading the entire sentence in the magazine version, although it would have helped to have a stitch count at this point so the knitter would know she was on track.

In any case, my front edge now looks like this, I'm "more" satisfied, and I’m about 20 rows away from a finished front. 

 

My challenge now is to place the decreases.  Because my row gauge differs from the row gauge in the pattern, I can’t do this evenly every 4th row as specified.  I have fewer rows, and so I’ve decided to decrease every 4th row for a bit and then every 2nd row after that.  So there is still some uncertainty ahead, but I expect a finished front tonight.

Back Again

I’ve dropped the ball with my personal juggling act, and blogging has been the greatest casualty.  When I started my blog, I hoped to post around three times a week, and I’ve fallen woefully short of that goal, even before Ed’s surgery and recovery (not yet 100% but getting there).  But although blogging has been on the back burner, knitting hasn’t.  Regularly scheduled blogging will resume. 

The replacement back on Thora is now done:

The old looks better than the new because it is blocked.  I was dodging raindrops to get these photos, and so I won’t be blocking the back #2 today. 

And I’m on to the front. 

Should I manage to knit on without screw ups  (and that is very iffy indeed), I will be back where I expected to be in July by later this week.

My hope now is to wear this at Stitches, but I’m not going to rush.  Whenever I have had what I thought was a productive evening of knitting, I saw by the dawn’s harsh light that I had made some bush-league mistake.  By now you’d think I’d know that I change from knit to purl on the double seed stitch only on the front.  But I apparently have not.  For some reason, I can see my errors only the morning after, in  daylight.  I also knitted away on the front cable, only to discover that I split the yarn in a most obvious location and one that required frogging because it was in the absolutely wrong place.  The cable crosses were above it, and when I tried to drop down to the stitch, I ended up with a horrendous mess that took an evening to fix. 

I sure hope the third time isn’t the charm on this one, because knitting this twice will be quite enough.  Once I get past the part of the front I knitted originally, I will have to think.  My vertical gauge differs from the pattern specs, and that will affect the start of the V and the button placement. 

For now I can ponder just what I’d like to mix with the old Zara dye lot, since I do plan to rip it, wash it, and use it for something else.  I think the many vendors at Rhinebeck and Stitches will be able to help me out with that problem.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Projects

One reason I like knitting is that I have complete control over it.  Sure, things don’t always work out, but ripping and redoing will always solve any problem—until last week.  My logic completely broke down and chaos has reigned.

My first attempt to get enough Zara to finish Thora failed miserably.  WEBS responded to my order saying that they didn’t have 5 skeins of a single dye lot, but could order them.  That would mean a 2- or 3-week delay, and I was itching to knit on.  So I emailed a few other Zara vendors, and found none with the matching dye lot (no surprise there).  Several, however, had the yarn in stock, and I ordered from one. The 5 skeins arrived Monday—and they don’t match at all.  They are a beautiful rich charcoal, much nicer in fact than the yarn I had used, but far too dark to match.  So I thought, "Hey, I love this sweater.  I love the yarn. Let’s just get 17 balls (no chance of running out then!) and knit it over." But that vendor doesn’t have 17 and needs to special order.  Vendor #3 is the charm, and so I am waiting for new yarn from Village Yarns, the source of my Zara for the Devonshire Jacket.

I will use the gray Zara I have for another of the Jean Frost jackets that require 2 or 3 colors, after I wash it and store it for a while in my moth proofing stuff.  Here are two I have always liked:

After hearing from WEBS, I had a knitless night.  I could have ripped back the Jean Frost Devonshire jacket to a point below the moth hole, but I just didn’t have it in me.  I wanted to knit Thora.  So as I sat mindlessly watching TV, I thought “Socks”.  Why not start a pair that I could knit for a few weeks and finish later in August when Ed is having surgery to repair an abdominal aneurysm? 

Although the Nancy Bush Conwy socks are beautiful, after completing much of the leg, I realized they would not hug my ankles.  A Wall Street Journal article confirmed with numbers what I knew all along.  I have skinny ankles.  The article talked about people seeking to trim their ankles through exercise (is that even possible?) so they could wear gladiator sandals, a fashion trend I expect to last for about 45 minutes, and it reported that the average ankle size was 11 inches.  Mine are 8.  And so in the genetic body part roulette, I apparently have won for ankles, but lost for eyeballs, high cheekbones, and a trim waist.  I was not very thrilled to learn just how svelte my ankles apparently are.  There is no chance I’d wear gladiator sandals unless I had some strapping minions available to carry me around in a sedan chair.  And the narrowness of my ankles makes fitting handknit socks a challenge.  

I spent a few nights charting a motif that would look good if I could manage 8 stitches per inch with a 60-stitch sock.  To test this theory, I tried Wanida, one of the lovely patterns in Cookie A’s Sock Innovation.  Because I’m a loose knitter, I dropped down to 1.5 mm  (2 mm = U.S. 0) needles.  I almost got gauge, but the lacy motif would not hug my ankles.  These are designed to be 8 inches at the ankles, and that means no negative ease there for me.  Cookie A’s book has a great section on designing socks and adapting her motifs for other sizes.  I don’t have time to study it right now, but I think it will help me get a pattern that is tight enough at the ankles to avoid bagging.  Until I can figure out exactly what to do, it will be cabled socks for a while, using stash yarn:

The solids are discontinued Cherry Tree Hill Supersock colors, and the pink/mauve is Shibui, originally intended for Conwy.

It looks as if all is lost in my hope for even 8 sweaters in 2009, with this setback, and socks are definitely looking attractive as a way to diffuse some of my frustration.  In my original Zara order, I had included two new additions to my sock yarn stash:

I now know what the rest of you do about Malabrigo sock yarn (color cordovan).  It feels fabulous.  The Madeline Tosh (color ink) is lovely too.

Because of Ed’s surgery, I need to get some assignments done early so I can take any needed time off.  This limited my time for moth proofing over the weekend because it is harvest time in the garden.  Aside from weeding and planting fall carrots, I have been doing a lot of picking and eating.  My beans have started, which means filet beans almost every night until October.

 And my chard is ready too.

 

I think I’ve calmed down a little over the Thora disaster, and regularly scheduled knitting will resume this evening.