LIFO

05.12.2008

This is NOT me spinning from stash - I sat right down this weekend and spun the indigo-dyed bluefaced leicester from A Verb for Keeping Warm that I bought last weekend.

It spun beautifully and I tried to keep it very fine so I will have some yardage out of my two ounces. I love rolling out a piece of fiber and being able to see the shape of the fleece's crimp reflected in it. I'll get it plyed next weekend and see how much yardage I eked out.

I finished the body of my Gathered Pullover and started a sleeve. I am adapting this to have the sleeve knitted from the shoulder down to maximize my remaining yardage. Basically this is how I did it, with tips from Liz and from Barbara Walker's top-down knitting book.

According to Barbara Walker, the number of stitches you need around your upper arm, as per your yarn and gauge, is how many stitches you need around the armhole. When you actually execute this move, that concept makes perfect sense. I figured I wanted my sleeve a little looser than the pattern suggested (tight sleeves seem to be a trend these days, I guess real women don't have biceps...), so I measured my upper arm and gave myself some ease and calculated a number of stitches. In my case it was 75. Then I subtracted from that number the number bound off at the base of the armholes (in my case, 5 on the front and 5 on the back). That left 65 stitches. Since it was odd, I allowed one stitch to be exactly in the shoulder seam, and that left 32 stitches on each side.

Beginning at the shoulder seam, I picked up one stitch in the seam, 32 down the side, 10 across the two bound-off places, and 32 back up the other side. I placed a marker and joined. The pattern had 11 stitches bound off at the top of the sleeve cap, so I knit the center stitch, plus 5 stitches, plus one more. I turned, slipped the picked up stitch with a twist, knitted back to the marker, knit 5 down the other side, plus one more. I turned and slipped the picked up stitch, and then continued to knit back and forth across the top of the sleeve, taking one more of my picked up stitches at the end of each row. After awhile I removed the shoulder marker and held it out so I could put it at the underarm center when I joined to knit in the round.

After I got a couple of inches below the armhole I tried it on, and it fit perfectly. I have to say, this is turning out to be a remarkably pretty sweater even with all the changes I'm making. It looks funny in the photo, with the dark green mysteriously being introduced into the yarn just when it will really stand out in wider stripes above the armholes, and the neckline seeming high and pinched, but when I put it on it looks great. The important thing for me was to not start the armholes too soon - the row with the most cable twists also has decreases in it, to cinch it up a little like an empire waistline, followed by increases to put the stitches back in the following row, and it is REALLY important to have that fall below your bustline or the thing will be perpetually pulled out of shape. This pattern really is designed for very flat chested women, so if you are not flat chested you need to be certain to keep checking what you are doing as you go along.

I finished my first 'Tantalizing Sock' from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways book. In this photo I'm closing in on the toe.

I love how this sock fits, but you do have to be sure to knit a little longer in the foot than you might otherwise. The use of the reinforced heel stitch on the bottom of the heel makes the bottom of the sock a little shorter than the top, so you have to compensate for that or end up with a sock that is too tight. I don't know if I'd do a reinforced heel if I were doing it again. It makes the bottom hug your foot but it does introduce length issues.

Posted by Prudence at 08:12 AM | Comments (4)

Overload

05.05.2008

This:

and this:

and this:

are mine.

Whee! I was pretty thrilled. Bee Fields was in the shawls, scarves, and afghans from commercial yarns category, the white cormo 3-ply was in the medium plyed yarn from hand-prepared wool category, and the rainbow silk/merino was in the plyed yarn from commercial fiber category.

Emmy was delighted too and she kept making me tell people all day.

I was so befuddled by this that I neglected to take photos of some of the other lovely things in the competition exhibit - the fair isle cardigan in shades of purple that won best in show, the circular lace shawl that won best knitted item in show, or the beautiful laceweight that won a blue ribbon.

(UPDATE: Here is link to a photo of the best-in-show cardigan.)

I neglected to take photos of a lot of things. This was the first year that Emily was with me on the hoof and she was content to be there pretty much all day, so we looked at sheep dogs working and we watched sheep judging. She ate cotton candy while I looked at fleece.

My shopping goals were very small and I met them.

I visited my LYS, which is under new ownership and this year took a focus on indie dyers for the festival. They had all the stuff you hear about all the time and don't get to see in person - Sweet Sheep, A Verb for Keeping Warm, Ceyberfiber, Neighborhood Fiber.... So I bought things from them.

On top, two ounces of indigo-dyed bluefaced leicester from A Verb for Keeping Warm. In the middle, a skein of sock yarn from The Sweet Sheep in a colorway called Surf, which made me think of the colors of snoballs. At the bottom, a skein of sock yarn from the Neighborhood Fiber Company - they name their colorways after neighborhoods in Washington DC and the one I happened to pick up was called 'Mount Pleasant' which is a neighborhood I lived in once upon a time. Cheers to Jolene and Jody for putting together an extremely appealing booth!

We were at the Ravelry meetup for 15 minutes, and met Jess and Casey coming in as we were running out to make a dash to swimming class - Emily actually pushed me to return, so we came back in the afternoon and got into the t-shirt line which was much shorter. While standing there, I saw there was no longer a line at The Fold to pay for Socks That Rock, so I made a dash to see if they had any skeins left of the colorway I had fallen in love with the first time I saw it, and they did. Rock Star:

We paid a second visit to the fleeces and this time I noticed a little bag stuck back in the corner among all the brazillion Romneys and Lincolns and Border Leicesters - the label said 'CVM X' which was enough to get me to open the bag having just recently spun 8 ounces of nice CVM.

The fleece was very interesting - a bigger crimp than I expected from CVM and not as soft, with a little luster and very white outside of the dirty tips, and a nice healthy staple of about 4 inches. Inside the bag was this:

A washed lock, a spun sample, a photo of the sheep, and more about her. Arianna is 4 years old, her mother was a CVM ewe and her father was a bluefaced leicester/coopworth cross ram. Interesting! The shepherd felt there were too many second cuts in the fleece so she had priced it down. I took it out and a volunteer rolled it out for me and looked it over and she said that it could not have been skirted better and that she didn't see many second cuts. Arianna was $35 for 5 pounds, so she came home with me. Well, actually, she only came with me as far as the Zeilinger's dropoff tent, and I will see her again sometime about July 1. The guy taking the fleeces said this was one of the more interesting things he had seen come in. I think it will have a crisp hand, sort of like a medium corriedale, and would make a good jacket, and maybe a bit of nice firm-bodied laceweight.

Bumper sticker of the day:

I would have a runner up bumper sticker of the day but I was trying to take a photo of it while following the car up the on ramp of route 70 which didn't work out so well. To the people in the little silver car with the Louet box in the back and the "Make gloves, not war" bumper sticker - sorry if I freaked you out, but I liked your bumper sticker...

There was knitting done over the past two weeks. I finished the Marilinda socks in the middle of last week.

The Classic Elite Alpaca Sox makes a very warm soft sock that will not get worn until cool weather. The pattern is lovely. I added one pattern repeat to the leg, which meant that I was off ever after on which row had the little fake cable motif, but it was easy to keep track.

I made one pair of Fetching mitts for teacher gifts and started on another.

I got up past the motif on the front of the Gathered Pullover and then divided fronts from back. I will raise the neckline a little as it is just too low for me, and also not open it so wide. I saw a photo on someone's blog of a person wearing this and I felt bad for her - it was beautifully knitted but the shoulders were just too wide and it was falling down awkwardly and looking uncomfortable. I won't take that risk.

I think I will try knitting the sleeves top-down to be sure I have enough yarn. I have never changed a set-in sleeve to be knit top down, this will be an adventure.

I also made a little hand towel out of a stray ball of Knit Picks Cotlin.

Wow, I loved this yarn. Especially after it came out of the washer and dryer. It did shrink up just a small amount, but it plumped up and got soft, instead of hard like regular cotton does. I have to make a summer sweater out of this.

At the end of the weekend, after all was said and done, we had this:

"Teach me to knit." Maybe soon we will have the other sweetest four words in the world: "Ssssh Mom I'm counting!"

Posted by Prudence at 12:09 PM | Comments (13)

Last distraction

04.21.2008

As if I didn't learn my lesson by piddling away a week knitting teeny socks, I did the same thing this week with more Cat Bordhi. I ran across her first Treasury of Magical Knitting at the library and decided I wanted to see how she makes a moebius.

The technique was really interesting and I'm glad I learned how to do it. I think the drawback of it is, you have no idea what you've made till you bind off. The stitches are coiled up around the circular cable, so you don't know how long the darn thing is going to be. Now, I know, you are supposed to know exactly your gauge and exactly how many stitches you cast on, so you should know how long it's going to be. Ha ha. Very funny. Nothing I knew in advance about worsted weight yarn and size 7 needles and me would have led me to expect this thing would be 48 inches around.

Also, I have not one, not two, but three twists in this thing. I suppose it would have been possible to detect this after I did my cast-on.

The cast-on itself is clever and fun, it's a little like Judy's magic cast-on. The resulting item is an ugly mess and I think I will just throw it away.

I did finish one Marilinda sock.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I added one extra pattern repeat on the leg to get a little extra length.

I love how the pattern comes down the heel flap.

I didn't have too much time to spin this weekend but I'm working on another skein from my cormo fleece from last year. After struggling with flicked locks for awhile and not being happy with the resulting yarn, I decided to try combing. One pass through the two-row combs is just enough to organize this and clean out the neps.

I can't get over the feeling that I'm generating waste where there should be none, but I have a ton of fleece, and this combed top makes a much nicer yarn. Don't you just want to take a nap in that??

Lily and Toby say: "Nap? sounds great!"

Posted by Prudence at 07:43 AM | Comments (3)

Distractions

04.14.2008

I should have made more progress on my projects this week, but I got distracted.

These are three little learning socks from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways For Sock Knitters. I have to admit I hae been avoiding this book since it first came out. I mean, I have more sock patterns now than I could ever knit - who needs half a dozen NEW WAYS to knit them? But I poked my nose into it at my LYS last month and decided I really ought to give it a shot.

Once I opened it up and started to play, I didn't want to stop.

The learning socks are:

Learning Riverbed

Learning Coriolis

Learning Sky

I wanted to make more baby socks in unusual ways but I decided enough was enough and I had to get back to my regularly scheduled knitting. But my next pair of socks will be something from that book. I wish I was someone who can make up her own stuff because the possibilities of some of the shapes are really inspiring. I like the Sky architecture with the increases opening from the ankle down the instep in an expanding wedge, and I like Riverbed with all the increases on the sole so that your instep pattern can be uninterrupted all down the foot. I like the one whose name I can't remember, with the increases in two wedges on the sides of the instep, which to me seems best suited to an actual foot. Neat stuff.

Once I laid that book aside I made a lot of progress on Cookie A's new Marilinda pattern.

It's hard to see the pattern in this photo but when the leg is stretched while worn, it pops right out. The yarn is Classic Elite Alpaca Sox and so far I think I like it although I can't tell how it will wear. I'm knitting it at a tighter gauge than most people who have used this yarn on Ravelry - I can't imagine knitting this looser than size 1 needles to get any wear out of it at all. We shall see.

I also finally got off the ground with my variation on the Gathered Pullover. It's slow going, though, because I'm so enraptured with socks.

I think this yarn shows nicely in both the garter and stockinette sections. We'll see how it likes the cabling at the neckline.

Posted by Prudence at 08:32 AM | Comments (2)

Four heels...

04.07.2008

That's how many heels I knitted for these Evening Stockings.

It's a good thing they were a pleasant fairly quick knit!

Last time we spoke (before the gorgeous cat and the lovely spinning were posted), there was one Evening Stocking.

However, I had realized that I had enough yarn to knit to the full pattern length, so last week there was a second sock, longer, with a heel, plus a first sock that no longer had a foot.

When I went to pick up the stitches for the gussets and resume knitting around, I realized I had knitted the heel flap one stitch off center. So the heel flap got ripped out and redone. When the sock was finally finished, I then finished the leg of the other sock and knitted the heel and foot of that one again. So I knit the heel flap and heel turn four times altogether for this pair of socks.

I still like them, though, they are awesome socks. Elastic and tall and very very bright in Lisa's hardtwist petite in Blueflame. She told me that the colorway was inspired by a piece of Murano glass.

So, phew. Now that that is over I started a new pair of socks - Cookie A's new Marilinda pattern, using some Classic Elite Alpaca Sox because the skein was in such pretty easter-egg shades of pink and blue. So far I do like the yarn, it's a little hairy as alpaca often is, but it's making a nice soft fabric.

(Can I just say, I can't keep up with that Cookie. Since I went over and bought Marilinda, there are 2 or 3 new patterns I want. Sigh.)

The Brushed Lace cardigan was finally ready for showing last week.

The yarn (Valley Yarns Florence) knitted up very nicely (no splitting or snagging), survived blocking nicely, and is very soft to the touch. I got some pretty 3/4 inch shell buttons to put on it, they are as light as the knitted fabric so they pair well.

I can see in the photo that I either messed up the buttonband or the blocking - it looks like the top button should not exist. But I did put that buttonhole right next to the first decrease for the neckline, or at least I thought I did, so perhaps when I blocked it I didn't notice that top buttonhole and pull the V together properly...

It was a quick knit on size 8 needles - I started on February 24th and finished on March 24th so 4 weeks, and I used almost 8 balls of Florence. It looks a little frumpy in the photos, but it looks better in person (although not as nice as it does on that skinny model in the magazine...). Florence happens to be on sale during the WEBS anniversary sale if you are looking for a less expensive substitute for a worsted weight brushed alpaca.

So after finishing this, I wanted to start another sweater. (I am approaching a cedar-chest crisis, but I think that can be put off a few more months...) I had been contemplating how nicely this batch of handspun would work up as the Cabaret Raglan by Norah Gaughan that was in the Summer 2004 issue of Interweave Knits, so first I swatched for that. It quickly became clear that there was no way this yarn could be worked at that loose a gauge - and even if I went up a couple of sizes, it just seemed too far off to attempt. Wanting something else fairly simple to let the yarn show itself off, I swatched for the Gathered Pullover and decided that if I knit one size larger I could make it work. So I happily knit along for about 6 inches, enjoying the yarn a great deal (I still can't believe I made it). Then I decided that the bottom edge was going to roll so much that it would end up under my arms - it seemed to have unlimited capacity to roll on the needles, the 6 inches of fabric pretty much was like a large circular cannoli. You can see here how much difficulty I had even photographing it.

So I frogged all that and set out again, to make a 1 inch garter stitch bottom edge to keep the fabric down where it belonged. I knit a lovely 1 inch garter border before I realized it was a moebius. Sigh. So I frogged that, and I will try again today.

This rolling business is just another thing about that pattern that I find weird. Not only does she knit sport weight yarn at an aran gauge (which to me means the sweater will sag, pill, and lose its shape in no time), but she doesn't knit a bottom border - a little rolled edge can be attractive but this light yarn will go up like a window shade. They must have starched the sweater in the magazine photos to make it stay down. It's odd to have a pattern in a magazine like IK be so counterintuitive in every way and still be so pretty on top of it. I noticed on Ravelry that everyone was knitting it in worsted weight yarn, so I'm not the only one who didn't buy into the whole sport weight thing. If I can ever get off the ground with this, I think it will look lovely in this yarn. I wonder if I can raise the neckline without spoiling the effect of the cable.

Cat math: With Melanie's new family member last week, plus the second one she's going back to get when he gets over his cold, that makes 10 cats in the KnitMe family. I don't know if Jan has any cats, but Sam has 4, I have 4, and there are these two new guys. Cats rule!

Posted by Prudence at 07:58 AM | Comments (8)