01/30/2006
inspiration
At the MOMA yesterday, overwhelmed by all the colors, I remembered reading something about finding inspiration for a fair isle design in a favorite painting. I figure, the same thing can be done with dyeing roving, right? I collected some JPGs online last night of some paintings with beautiful color palettes, and today I dyed up my first choice:
Harmony in Red, by Matisse. I isolated the colors I wanted to use on my template:
and mixed up some colors. The dark red turned out a little more brown than I wanted, and I don't think the blue will show up nearly as much as I wanted it to, but it's a start. I'm really excited about the deep red/light blue combination. I even think I did a good job of matching that almost-orangey yellow, which isn't easy, since lemonade kool-aid is decidedly not bright, and any red I have is very overpowering. I dyed 2 oz of my latest roving purchase, Targhee. What could that be?? It probably won't be so soft, but neither is the corriedale I've been using, and that's totally fine by me. I am just a beginner after all!
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01/27/2006
tigerlily
I named this yarn Tigerlily in my head while I was spinning it because of the tiger stripes the singles had when the orange met the dark blue. Now that it's done, the name doesn't feel as appropriate, but can't be changed. That'd just be too crazy. And, as I suspected, my new spindle doesn't seem suited for skeins any longer than the ones I made on my last spindle. Oh well.
55 yards of bulky 2-ply, with the last of my Corriedale. Yay!
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01/26/2006
new beginnings
I've been feeling uncomfortably anxious for the past week or so, which is something that hasn't happened in a few years. I know some of the reasons for the anxiety are absurd, and others are, I think, understandable, but I've been having trouble figuring out how to deal with all of it. Part of the strategy so far has been to bring back knitting into my life - I've been a bit consumed with spinning lately, and I just think knitting is a more relaxing hobby. So, I have a new project!
A few months ago I bought a bag of Rowanspun DK on ebay, in the color Eau de Nil.
I wanted to make a sweater kind of like the Retro Prep I made last winter, but with a better fit and a low neckline. Then, in December, I walked into Old Navy and found almost the exact sweater I was hoping to make! I have two now, in off-white and red, bought at a huge discount that only can be found at a place like Old Navy. I still figure I can knit something similar with the Rowanspun DK, so I took out my Retro Prep, the white sweater, my knitting notebook, and made some calculations.
I cast on last night and have been working slowly through a few inches of 3x1 ribbing. The cast on round was twisted, but I noticed on the second row so I think I might have possibly perhaps maybe fixed it. Which makes me feel like a knitting miracle worker. I'm feeling good about this sweater - lots and lots of knitting in the round, which I love, and since I'm putting so much effort into the design I'll feel even better about the finished project, assuming it comes out ok. Which isn't unreasonable to expect, since the design is going to be so close to the original Retro Prep pattern.
I still can't decide if I should buy some Rowan Polar to make a Lace Leaf Pullover. There's a knitalong on crafster for the pattern, which has made me excited about it, but the yarn still costs a bit more than I'd like to pay for a sweater...Then again, I'd have 4-5 balls leftover. But...what would I do with the leftovers? I guess I could always sell them (but I know I KNOW I would just keep it and love it. It's Rowan Polar, after all. That stuff is amazing!)...So we'll see. I might just randomly buy it in a few days if this anxiety/depression period keeps up!
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01/25/2006
tom and jane
This weekend I made it out to The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn. A woman there talked to me about my spindle, and showed me some possible fibers. I bought some fiber, as well as my second spindle, Jane:
It's a Schact 3" Hi-Lo Drop Spindle and way prettier than my first spindle, Tom. Here are both, side by side:
We weighed Tom in the store, since I know nothing about it, and found out it weights 1.5 oz. Jane is 2.2...That's all well and good for being able to spin bulkier yarn but since my main concern was making longer skeins. Oh well. I couldn't wait to try out the new spindle, so I dyed the rest of Corriedale with lots of blues and greens, and a little orange. The weight difference while spinning is way more noticeable than I expected - it really takes more effort to get Jane going! But when I was done spinning the first half of the roving, I still only had 56 yards.
The colors are still not as deep as they could be, but I'm still super excited to see how the two ply turns out!
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01/23/2006
purple-y
I plyed my first skein of the purple merino from Kendig Cottage.
I joined two smaller hanks of the single ply, from back when my skeins were much much more uneven and a significant amount shorter, then I plyed that with my latest attempt, which I had tried to make thinner than usual. It came out to 63 yards, in a heavier weight than I expected - worsted weight maybe?
I can't believe how soft this hank is! I'm seriously in shock over it. Merino is amazing. I'm a little nervous to get more of it - I want to stick with dyeing roving, and I've never dyed Merino, only Corriedale. Then again, I can't keep getting the same exact fibers from Kendig Cottage from now on...I did some price comparisons last night and it's definitely not the cheapest place around. I'll have to look into this more in the near future.
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01/20/2006
I choo choo choose you
After falling so hard for my first complete two-ply, I wanted to do more plying. Well, I wanted to run out and buy a new, heavier spindle, more roving for dyeing, and maybe even a spinning wheel, but for now plying more yarn had to suffice. Introducing, Valentine:
42 yards of bulky two ply, handdyed and handspun with Corriedale roving.
I also spun up my new longest skein ever, 65 yards with my purple merino. I tried to make this yarn a lighter weight, and was mostly successful. I could have spun for longer but was too excited for plying. Besides, I can ply this purple yarn with the 30 and 37 yard skeins already spun from that roving. Yay! This weekend I hope to get to the yarn tree to scope out better spindles.
21:18 Posted in finished objects , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/19/2006
tasty delight
So I spun up all of the Manhattan roving and wasn't so impressed. The colors are really washed out - I could definitely do better. The hank was still so pretty though, and so so soft. I wanted to actually try plying it. There were only about 54 yards of yarn, and ending up with 27 yards if I spun it to itself seemed depressing, so I put two white hanks I made a while ago together to make one hank that could be plied with the Manhattan one. White was too boring, so I dyed it Ice Blue, and plied my little heart out.
Yay! My first finished hank that doesn't suck. The plying isn't great, but I think the spindle is partially to blame. When I made that 54 yard hank initially, it was the most I'd ever made at once on my little crappy sprindle. Plying was kind of a nightmare - there was twice as much yarn, plus I'm just not that good at plying in the first place. It was miserable by the time I was halfway through...I'm definitely going to need a better spindle, both for plying and for making longer skeins.
Still, I'm thrilled with this finished hank. 56 yards (I don't know how that happened - maybe because the Manhattan yarn was a bit overspun and maybe curled up on itself in places?), bulky and super soft. It makes a good necklace. I don't know what I'll do with it (besides showing it off to everyone I know) - can I make a hat with that little yardage, if the yarn is so bulky? I doubt it. Oh well!
09:45 Posted in dyeing , finished objects , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/18/2006
manhattan
Last week, I turned off the lights in my room to watch the movie Manhattan with a friend. My room lets out onto a little terrace, so I have a huge double-door window. Looking out, I noticed that at night, the city isn't the colors I expect - a black, or dark blue sky, with dark brown/black buildings. The sky was a deep pinkish mauveish purpley color, and the buildings were a pretty chocolate brown. With the lights on in certain windows glowing yellow, and random white lights coming from the tops of tall buildings and buildings in the distance, I thought it made for a very beautiful palette. I worked it out on the paint program on my computer and came up with this:
Then this weekend I went home and raided Pathmark for a ton of new packages of kool-aid.
28 packets, with many duplicates of blues and grape since I could see myself using those a lot. I'm only sad I totally forgot to get some orange. And I wish they had more greens.
So yesterday I had a free afternoon (since I'm on break from teaching and classes till 4:30 this afternoon) and decided to try to dye some roving in these colors. It was a big challenge - those colors, minus the yellow, are decidedly NOT bright, and kool-aid is decidedly...neon. I played around, trying to figure out the difference between the grape I had in the fridge since last time I dyed roving, and the mauve color I was trying to reproduce. They really looked the same in the little cups I had them in. It's also hard to tell how dark or how bright a color will come out - my grape stock looks like a bright, deep purple, and has since I first made it and it had much more grape in it, but poured on the roving it comes out a very light, gray purple. I also was too excited to wait to try Ice Blue, and made some light blue to add to the set. I'm pretty satisfied with the brown I came up with - it's a warm brown, but NOT bright. Here's what I had, dried and ready to be spun, this morning:
In hindsight, the colors could have been a lot brighter. They're looking very pastel as I'm spinning them up. I've been working on the technique of spinning that's not spinning from the fold, since it makes the different colors stand out from each other more. I don't love this technique; the other was much easier for me. I don't know if practice will solve that. Pre-drafting helps a lot, though. And is actually super fun.
I hope to finish spinning this roving in the next few days. I'm really getting to the end of my white roving supply. Perhaps an order to webs is in order? I'm trying to hold off on more purchases for now, since I might not have time for this stuff with classes and student teaching starting this week. I'm nervous about being so busy again - I've gotten quite used to going to the gym in the morning and doing absolutely nothing else all day. On Thursday I actually have to be somewhere at 7:45. 7:45! I hope that's not going to be a daily sort of thing (my schedule has yet to be worked out).
Ooh, and with my knitting. I have to put the IK Ballet Wrap Cardigan on hold. Something about working on it hurts my arms - I think it's the needles. I'm going to see about borrowing needles from someone, or maybe just buying new 10 1/2s. I don't know what needles would hurt less though...and maybe it's just that the needles are so big? If that's the case, it doesn't bode well for me working next on Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover.
09:15 Posted in dyeing , purple wrap cardigan , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/17/2006
haven!!!
Friday afternoon I finally finished the 5 ft long belt for Haven. Misery.
11 stitches, ribbing with a garter/moss stitch edge (it's hard to define when it's 1 stitch wide). The pattern called for the ribbing to be done through the back loops but after over an hour of knitting and only a few inches, I decided that to preserve my sanity, I'd be knitting plain ribbing for the rest of the way. The belt loops were much easier - thinner and of course so much shorter - although having to knit 6 of the same things was pretty lame. By Friday night, though, I was ready for washing and seaming, and by Saturday night it was completed.
Haven, from Rowan Denim People
20 balls Rowan Denim, Nashville
Started July 2004, finished January 2006(!)
The set-in sleeve worked out great - definitely my best yet. I kind of figured out how to deal with the corner of the top of the sleeve, so it becomes rounded. I'm so so happy with the final result! I still haven't sewn in the belt loops so I can use the belt, but I'm overwhelmed with all the seaming that happened this weekend so I think it can wait. Plus, it looks good without the belt for now. I'll try for some modelled shots sometime soon.
09:45 Posted in finished objects , haven | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/13/2006
odd fellow and a refinished hat
Knit as soon as I received Jess Hutch's fabulous booklet. I used leftovers in Jaeger Shetland Aran (light blue), Patons Classic Wool (brown) and an unidentifiable acrylic (tan). Next time I think I'll work on not overstuffing the arms and legs.
I also finally refinished a hat I knit for my sister for her birthday...last summer. It was a little too small so I frogged all the decreases at the top, knit an extra 2-ish inches, and redid the decreases.
It's knit with Rowan Polar, in Smirk. I've been so sad that Rowan discontinued this yarn. It's amazing to work with - really easy on my hands, the stitch definition is great, and the finished product is so soft...On the plus side, now I can get it cheap ("cheap" for Rowan, which isn't necessarily saying much) online.
The "design" is my own - decide how wide around it should be, use my known gauge to figure out how many stitches around it should be, ribbing for an inch, knit until I think it's the right height, and try to decrease nicely (in this case it was something like *K9,K2tog* for one row, K one row, *K8,K2tog* for one row, K one row, and so on). I tend to overshoot or undershoot the height of the first part, although I think with this hat it was just a case of not having the same taste as my sister does.
09:30 Posted in finished objects | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/12/2006
more dyeing adventures
Here is the second batch of roving, before going into the oven:
The colors didn't run, which was great. Unfortunately, my color selection kind of sucked. The pinks and oranges took over in a gross way when I spun them up.
The color is kind of an orange-y peach. I'm not a big fan. This hank is my biggest yet, though - 46 yards. I don't see how I could go any bigger on this spindle, unless I made a lighter weight yarn, which I don't want to do - I had a bit more roving to spin, maybe 5-10 yards worth, but just couldn't deal with it anymore. The spindle was spinning horribly! I'm happier with my spinning, though; it just keeps getting more even.
I think I'm going to hold off on spinning/dyeing the white roving until I get a better choice of kool-aid colors. I'm left right now with reds and orange, and I don't want any more colors like this one. I also want to figure out how to make the yarn have longer spaces of one color. Right now it's looking like a candy cane. I think I can dye appropriately, but I don't want to try with these colors. I also want to work on making some thicker single plyed yarn.
09:45 Posted in dyeing , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/11/2006
Dyeing adventures!
Bored with spinning my white roving, I decided to try to dye my roving, according to the instructions found here. I used kool-aid instead of real dyes, and no vinegar or anything like that.
First, I soaked the roving and made up 4 colors of kool-aid. I only had reds, orange, and grape left, so my color palette was limited.
Next, I poured the colors randomly onto the soaked roving, and put the pan in the oven until the water was almost boiling.
I made the mistake of putting the roving PLUS water into the pan before this began, which meant all the colors ran together a bit. Here's what it looked like after the oven:
I let the roving sit in the pan for a while, then transferred it back to the sink to rinse it out.
The roving dried Very Very fast - it came out of the oven at around 11, and was mostly fine for spinning by 6 or 7. I spun it all up and am now extremely addicted to the process - this stuff was super fun to spin! Here are some shots:
I initially thought the color was like Fruit Roll-Ups, but now, in the daylight, it seems like something else. It's more of a brick, orange red. Like that lipstick you can't wear because it's so trampy. I'm still so proud of the results - it's 39 yards, 5 more than my last attempt, and I think I could have gone on longer. I'm getting way better at spinning evenly, slightly better at not making everything overspun, and much better at winding the yarn around the spindle efficiently so I'll be able to hold more on there and have longer skeins. I made a new batch this morning, not making that mistake with the water, so the colors didn't seem to run. Later I'll be able to spin it! eee!
09:35 Posted in dyeing , spinning | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/10/2006
good news and 1/2 a FO
Good news!
I finished knitting the first sleeve of Haven, ran it through the washing machine a few times, and it looks like it'll fit into the front and back of the sweater. I haven't approached seaming yet, since it's such a daunting task. I'm not a very meticulous sewer, and this sweater offers new concerns. Assuming I can set the sleeve in well (not impossible, but still something that scares me - how do people deal with the corners at the top of the sleeves? I can never make that look anything except...pointy), there's still the issue of the yarn. Should I seam with Denim, even though it might shrink? If I use this yarn to seam, I'll use the yarn from my gauge swatch, or maybe from a new swatch I knit and throw into the washing machine. But what if it still shrinks? If I use another yarn, it won't shrink, but what if the rest of the sweater does, and it puckers? This is why I put both pieces through the wash twice. Maybe I'll put everything in one more time before I start seaming. Either way, it looks like I'm going to finish the second sleeve before I start seaming. I'm about 1/4 done with it so far, so it shouldn't be long now.
I also finished 1/2 of a pair of socks:
It's kind of great, the way I've started and not finished so many projects. Finishing them has been so easy and quick and fun! This sock is my first knit from a skein of Trekking XXL I bought a few months ago. Plain stockinette, using bits and pieces of different patterns I found online. It's not perfect - I've only ever finished one pair of socks, in Koigu KPPPM, although I've started and stopped others. I'm not sure if sock knitting is for me. Maybe with a pattern? But then there's swatching involved, and my hatred for swatching in the round...For now I'll put this sock aside and consider knitting it's partner.
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01/09/2006
good times
My package came from Kendig Cottage! Eee!
8 oz of merino, 8 oz of corriedale. I was anxious about the color I chose for the merino, worried that I couldn't trust the pictures online, but the color is exactly what I expected:
I couldn't hold back - I went straight for the merino. I don't think I like how it spun up - I've been trying not to let the singles get too thin. I just don't like laceweight yarn, and what I'd really like to make eventually is fun thick-thin stuff, like at pluckyfluff. I'm not sure how I feel about the purple stuff when it's almost a worsted weight:
So I switched to the corriedale for the rest of the skein. I don't know why, but the spindle was spinning out of control way faster than I expected, so I had to end the skein kind of quickly...At least the little hank is endearing. It's kind of like my first self-striping yarn!
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01/06/2006
dyeing felted tweed
A while back, I wanted to knit Salina from Rowan's Vintage Style. As usual, I was getting a bit ahead of myself, not really thinking about patterns and yarn and what I would really stick with and what I would really want to wear. Still, I bought enough Rowan Felted Tweed for the project, way on sale of course, in Corn.
Corn. Corn! What was I thinking here? I don't understand. Was I thinking Corn meant "pretty green" or "soft blue"? Rowan has some interesting ideas about naming colors, but Corn is pretty straightforward. Yellow. Murky yellow. The color isn't so awful, really, and the yarn is so pretty with flecks of blue, black, and white. But I would look awful in this color, and I can't think of anyone who could get away with it. I thought about making something striped, or something with an intarsia something in the middle, like a Weasley sweater. But what color would go with Corn? Maroon? Green? Blue? I can't imagine not hating the Corn no matter what other colors surround it.
So when I wanted to test my skills in Kool-Aid dyeing, I had a perfect candidate. Initially, of course, I looked all over my neighborhood and couldn't find the little sugar-free packets of Kool-Aid I'd heard about. So I dove in and bought a small jar of sweetened Grape Kool-Aid. How could sugar hurt? I dyed some pink yarn I had, some pink wristwarmers, and some white Lamb's Pride. The pink yarn barely changed, since I didn't add enough Kool-Aid. The wristwarmers because a deep maroon-purple color, and the Lamb's Pride because a deep purple-ish rose color. (I used it for a sort-of fair isle project I hope to document soon.) The problem with the sweetened Kool-Aid, I found out, is that there isn't a sticky gooey mess, as much as all the yarn becomes...stiffer. It was a bit sad with the Lamb's Pride, made very little difference in the pink yarn, but I no longer have any interest in the wristwarmers. (This may be a blessing in disguise - I really should stop wearing fingerless glove guys when the weather is cold and snowy.)
I decided to try a bigger supermarket when I went home for break recently, and was well rewarded. Pathmark had a huuuge selection of unsweetened packets. I took a few in each color, more in the blues and greens I was most excited about using for the Felted Tweed.
(This represents only some of the colors I used, since some packets were thrown out.)
I made some long hanks of Felted Tweed to look for a good color to dye the rest of it. I ended up making four samples that way before deciding that I just would not be able to decide on a color, dye the rest of the yarn that color, and find one project to use it on. There just wasn't enough yarn, and I didn't have the faith in the dyeing coming out the same.
These are the first four samples, from left to right: Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, Arctic Green Apple, Grape (the unsweetened kind), and Slammin' Strawberry Kiwi. Something interesting and great happened, that you can sort of see in that picture. Apparently, the flecks of color in the Felted Tweed are not wool, so when I dyed the yarn, those flecks remained. I can't change their colors, but I like that they're there. I especially love the color of the Grape one, it's way nicer than when I used sweetened Grape. I also liked that dyeing the yellow yarn blue turned it into a nice greenish turquoise color, all the way on the left.
My next attempt was to make yarn two colors - half of each of the two on the left. I burned this yarn on the side of the pot - I think maybe because I didn't remember to soak the yarn before dyeing it. I had more success trying a self-striping technique with some more white Lamb's Pride Bulky I had lying around (to be safe I rigged up a system involving wooden spoons and a teapot to keep the yarn away from the sides of the pot). The colors came out too bright, though, so some overdyeing is in order.
I'm not sure what else to do with this dyeing stuff. I don't really want to buy new yarn to try more self-striping stuff, and I don't know what I want to do with the rest of the Felted Tweed. For now I have the rest of the Kool-Aid selection stored away, and maybe soon I'll try other colors and make something stripey.
10:25 Posted in dyeing | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/05/2006
first handspun project!
I've finished my first project using handspun yarn. It's extremely exciting!!
I got my spindle, and a spinning lesson, from Mind's Eye Yarns two summers ago. The spindle is a little wooden top-whorl guy ("little" because it's cute, not because it's actually small. I couldn't imagine if it's bigger or smaller than most spindles, or what it weighs.) that seems to work well enough. I also got 3 or 4 oz of undyed Corriedale roving (batting? I don't know what the difference is between the names of fibers. It was in a long snakelike piece.) to work with. I was frustrated working with it that summer, mostly because of the heat/wool combination, but also because I was so awful at it. I tried again every several months, to no avail.
Finally, a few weeks ago, I took out the spindle and went online to read more directions. There had to be something I was missing! I would spin the spindle, pull at the roving exactly as I was taught, but I just couldn't do it fast enough. I finally found the key to my newfound success - "parking" the spindle. Instead of spinning the spindle and letting it drop, while frantically trying to keep up with it as I pulled the roving, I would pull the spindle, hold it between my knees, and take my leisurely time pulling the roving and letting the spin enter the triangle-thing. Drafting triangle? I don't know about these spinning vocabulary words. Anyway! This process made spinning Way easier, and now I was able to spin the rest of the roving in the next day or two.
By the end I was making reasonably not awful singles, maybe DK or worsted weight. I soaked them to set the spin, and then plyed them - which may or may not be a major spinning faux pas. The plying was miserable. I couldn't imagine plying white on white, so I found some thin orange mohair yarn in my stash to ply with. It showed up well but...I still sucked. I was getting better by the end - my biggest issue was that the white was wrapping around the orange, and I really wanted the orange to wrap around the white. Big chunky white handspun yarn looks a bit silly wrapped around lacey orange mohair. Eventually I got better at letting more orange than white spin into the yarn, and it all turned out ok.
I soaked my yarn to set the spin, which is a silly thing to say because I think I mostly failed at setting anything, and my yarn looked so sad in hanks so I knit it up right away. 8 stitches of garter stitch across, size 15 needles. The scarf is about 5 feet long when I hold it up, but of course it's garter stitch so when I wear it it shrinks back a lot. I haven't tucked in the ends yet because I'm not sure if the yarn will stay like this but for now, I'm very happy with the results. Very soft, very squishy. I ordered a pound of roving from Kendig Cottage - half a pound of undyed carded Corriedale, since it worked so well the first time, and half a pound of multi-colored Merino top, because I wanted to try something prettier. I can't wait for it to arrive!
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01/04/2006
purple wrap cardigan
In March of 2004, I decided to make my first sweater. I went out and bought six skeins of Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair, in Lupine. (This review of the yarn in Knitter's Review describes the color as blue, but it always looks more purple to me) My original intention was to make a sweater from the first Stitch 'n Bitch book, the one that talks about kool-aid dyeing yarn (a step I skipped).
I had only been knitting for a few months and because I was self-taught, and stubborn, I was still knitting waaay incorrectly. I don't even know how I did it, but whatever I was doing, purling HURT. Soon into the project, when I was a few inches in and probably way off in gauge, I decided to try something different. I tried Glampyre's free pattern for a raglan from the bottom-up, since it only required me to knit. I measured my gauge (using my flat swatch, I'm sure. I have never done a gauge swatch for knitting in the round, and don't ever intend to. I scoff at gauge swatches knit in the round.), did some calculations, and started knitting. I even made the sleeves flare a bit, like in the original Stitch 'n Bitch pattern.
Of course, this sweater turned out too big. I'd like to show you pictures, but they were lost in my computer's nervous breakdown a few weeks ago. Imagine a purple sweater, knit reasonably well, but too big for me. I never actually wore it. So I frogged the whole thing that summer and started working on a top-down raglan. It was kind of cute, you'll also have to do your best to imagine it, it had a square-ish neck with about an inch of ribbing, it never had sleeves, the body didn't really have shaping because I wanted it to be kind of big-ish but with many inches of ribbing along the bottom. Are you picturing it yet? I don't remember why that one got frogged. I think I couldn't figure out the sleeves. I tried to make them shaped like a shoulder, which was completely unnecessary, using my limited knowledge of short rows, and once they were a proper failure, the project disappeared again.
Next, I wanted to knit Freida. The yarn was way too expensive - Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk sells for maybe around $7 online, and for 15 balls...eek! I only spend that kind of money on...Haven. But those were in my early, crazy days. By now, it's the winter of 04/05 and I'm way smarter than that. So I decide to make up the pattern for Freida using my Mountain Mohair. It is to be my first time with set-in sleeves, and I don't understand them at all, and am working off no pattern whatsoever, and tend to give up when things don't work the first time. This is not exactly a recipe for success.
I used a horse-shoe cable, one I kind of like more than the braided one in the original sweater, and carefully measured my gauge and finished the front and back. Bored of cabling, I made the sleeves plain. In a miraculous turn of events, my sleeves fit in well enough on my first try. Of course, they looked awful. Saddle shoulders might be the word. Perhaps appropriate for another sweater, but not at all what I was going for. The sweater was too short, the fit was all wrong, and the sleeves were too wide at the top. I don't even know how this happened - I know exactly how wide I like my sleeves, so what was I doing making them a few inches wider?
A few weeks ago I decided to resurrect this purple yarn, which has now been made into 2 completed sweaters and 2 incomplete sweaters, with some parts of the yarn having been frogged a total of 4 times. It's scruffy and much softer than it used to be, and I knew I had to find a use for it. When I bought the latest IK last week, I found what I hope to be a final, perfect project for this yarn:
The cover sweater, the Ballet Wrap Cardigan. It's knit at 3 1/2 sts and 5 rows per inch, which is exactly the gauge I get with this yarn, after reknitting it so many times. It's a bit scruffy and cozy looking, which is all this yarn can hope to become at this point. I don't really know if I'll have enough of it for making both fronts, since so much yarn has been lost in the cutting of ends and seaming and all of that, but I figure I'll work the fronts last, and if I run out, I can just make it a pullover by making just one front the proper size, instead of 2 smaller ones. I'm kind of thinking I'll just do that anyway, actually...can I really manage those ties? I can knit them, sure, but they might be kind of annoying to use. We'll see. Here's what I have so far.
One sleeve, 1/2 done or so, and a close-up of those stitches. This yarn is so beautiful - purple-y blue with flecks of white, red, and blue. It makes for a nice change from working with Rowan Denim. The yarn isn't so stiff, I can knit it without looking, and it doesn't turn my hands blue. I've been working on it when I can't stand Haven anymore, and I think it will make good travel knitting. I don't know if/when I'll finish it, but it's a nice change from all my other unfinished objects.
10:35 Posted in purple wrap cardigan | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/03/2006
haven
In the summer of 2004, I started my most expensive and courageous project to date, Haven, from Rowan's Denim People book, knit with 20(!!!) balls of Rowan denim, as usual purchased from Jannette.
That summer, I was teaching test prep and working at my test prep center 40 hours a week, and spent the rest of my time knitting and watching baseball (2004 turned out to be a good time to watch that many Red Sox games!). The back of Haven took me a month to finish, with 240 rows and 3 cables throughout. Working cables with denim yarn can be Painful, especially when you've really never done cables before. And that denim yarn has no stretch! With the back completed, I moved on to one of the fronts, which moved a bit more quickly with only one cable and much less width, but when school started up again I just didn't have the time and put Haven aside.
Somehow, by this past spring, I finished the two fronts. One of the front's cables is Not Centered, but I noticed too late into it and there was no way I was going to reknit any of those cables, so it stayed. I could have moved on to the sleeves from there, but wanted to finish the collar first so I could throw all those pieces into the wash, watch them shrink, and be inspired to finish those sleeves. I worked on that collar a little over the summer, and finished it...last week! Yay! I threw all the pieces into the dryer and was left with these:
The finished pile of fronts, back, and collar; a close-up of the collar; a close-up of some cables on the back.
I am almost done with the first sleeve, and will wash it and try to set it in before starting the second one. Something felt strange about the sleeve cap and the armhole shaping for the fronts and back. On the front and back, there's at least 8 inches above where I first had to bind off for the armhole, but I don't see how the sleevecap will be more than 5. I have looked at other patterns and seen that the one number being higher than the second is fine, and I've set in sleeves before so it kiiiind of makes sense, but this discrepancy seems like too much. I don't know what I'll do if that sleeve doesn't fit - reworking sleeve shaping is scary enough without having to take into account the denim shrinking! At least I'll know what's going on within the next day or two.
17:25 Posted in haven | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
01/02/2006
Finally!
After finishing my summer classes in July, I had all of August off and a new project all picked out. The knitting was finished by the end of the month but it's taken me till now to buy the one button I needed to call it a finished object. I think my loss of focus so late in the game, after being able to work solely on this project for a month straight without starting anything else and without losing interest, was because the sweater fit exactly as I expected. That is, it looked good when it looked good on the model in IK (unbuttoned and/or from the back and/or while hunched over) and bad when it looked bad on the model in IK (from the front, buttoned). I have the same problems with how it looks on me as I had when I look at the pictures in IK. The armholes are so low, and it hangs funny when buttoned. But. It's fine! I'm done, and ready to show it off:
One-Button Cardigan, from Interweave Knits, Summer 2005
Knit with 6 or 7 balls of Jaeger Shetland Aran, acquired from Jannette, size 7 needles
I loved the Shetland Aran. It was soft enough to work with, and my stitches looked so nice before and after blocking. (In fact, I liked it so much that my next major yarn purchase was more Shetland Aran in green to make Freida from Debbie Bliss's Alpaca Silk book! But more on that some other time.)
The pattern was extremely fun as well. The two sides of the front were funny shapes to keep me interested, the sleeves went fast because they're just not that long (since the collar takes up part of the shoulder, and the cuff isn't knit until the rest of the sleeve is complete). The sleeve cuff/border pattern was fun, some lacey rib stitch, and even though it seemed to take forever it was addictive. The top part of the collar, around the neck, is worked with short rows, which gave me a good excuse to keep knitting on and on, since stopping would mean putting my work down in the middle of a row. I also loved the crochet loop bind off. All in all, this project was very different from any other I've worked on, and I'm super proud of it!
Here are some action shots, taken in my bathroom mirror in such a way that nothing I dislike about the fit is noticeable.
22:57 Posted in finished objects | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this