Complete Shearer!

My Shearer cardigan of the Shepherd and Shearer duo is complete!

All in all, I'm quite satisfied with it. Only a small regret that I couldn't find a darker brown zipper and had to settle for tan. Otherwise it's great! Splitting the front of the pullover pattern was easy and looks just fine. The ribs added to border the zipper make the front a little wider than the back, but I think that the difference is taken up with boobage and it's not a problem.

The fabric is wonderfully dense and warm, the remaining lanolin repels water, and the heathery brown color is great camouflage for dirt. Just the thing for working in the garden in the fall.

Three Wrongs Aren't Right, But They're Less Visible

Not for nothing am I a faithful follower of the Yarn Harlot, as faithless to a single project as she. The Shepherd isn't done yet; the Brocade Leaves isn't done yet, and here I am casting on for something else major. So sue me. (I'm sure the Shepherd and the Leaves would if they could.) But it's not very appealing to sit for hours flipping a great honkin' hump of wool in your lap, nor is one very motivated to add a thick wool sweater or two to their wardrobe in June and July.

And so another sweater is begun. It's the Shearer, the other half of the Shepherd and Shearer pair, using the Colored Flock yarn I added to my S&S purchase last year. Like my Shepherd, I am reforming the pullover into a cardigan. To me, heavyweight sweaters are too much for daylong indoor wear. Because of the rustic nature of the yarn (coarse fibers and bits of the pasture inclusions) the garment is most comfortable as an outer layer, and cardigans are a lot easier to slip into and out of than something that has to go over your head several times a day.

I cast on the back, and away I went:

And here is just about where the trouble started. Let me tell you right off the bat that this pattern is not the one you want to start with if you are new to cabling. You want to start off with simple cables, a narrow pattern that is easy to memorize and quick to display errors. You want chart symbols that are easily discerned from one another. You don't want 2/2 and 2/1 crosses that look very very much like each other. Is it starting to sound like I got about this far and had to rip back to the setup row? I did.

And still I screwed up. About halfway to the arm decreases, I stood back to admire my work and saw two big fat errors. One I could maybe live with. Two makes you start to look like this is your first cable sweater. It's not.

Take a look. See that elbow-like thing in the center?

 It shouldn't be like that. It should be a nice double twist like the one above and below it. But the next one is the big whoopsie.  The elbow thing in the center is again the wrong un'. But in fact, that's the correct part of that cable. It's the crosses above and below it that are wrong. Oy. Two out of three.

 How can someone with so much experience mess up so thoroughly?? Maybe it just takes extraordinary idiocy. Or overconfidence in one's vast experience. At any rate, this sort of thing just Will Not Do. I knit carefully onward and upward, remembering in the back of my brain somewhere that there are surgical methods for fixing cable muddles without ripping everything back to the setup row.

YouTube to the rescue. Sure enough, Lucy Neatby has a very clever and clearly done method of knitting a little contrasting holder flap that lets you (hold your breath) cut into the offending area, rip back just the naughty cable crossing, knit it back properly, and then graft it back together. Here, have a watch. Isn't it a super time (and mental health) saver?

 

So here's the result. Looks great, doesn't it?

And I saved myself some more time and hair-pulling in the 2-out-of-3 Bermuda Triangle by fixing the one correct one to fit in with the two incorrect crosses. I dare you to find it in the overall pattern. Its a case of 3 wrongs making a more invisible wrong. As some wise knitter said, " if you make the same mistake multiple times, it's a pattern".

Wishy Washy for a Seedless Shepherd

Wow.  It was a good thing I washed my Shepherd & Shearer yarn. It turned the soaking water brown. Yuck! Sheep are dirty little beasties! There was even a little silt in the bottom of the tub when the water drained out. The whole picture was too gross for prime time, so here's a corner of the bathtub where you can see the ivory tub wall, the scuzzy water, and some dark submerged yarn. Compare and contrast:

Speaking of contrast, here's the one between the washed hanks and one of each that I held back temporarily just so I could see how much difference it made. It may not show as well in the photo as in person, but the washed yarn is definitely a whiter shade of pale. The Colored Flock didn't change color, but got lighter and fluffier.

Now that we're washed and dry, it's time to wind up a ball and start swatching! I have decided to make the Shepherd cardigan, but for sure with some modifications. Purists and/or the designer herself will just have to get over themselves if they don't like it. This is going to be my sweater; it's going to take a good deal of work to make it; and I want it to be a sweater that I like and that I will like to wear.

First of all, the hood's gotta go.  It's enormous--not a fashion detail that looks good on me, and the bulk of it on the back makes it difficult to wear another layer over the sweater. I also have a major problem with the seed stitch borders. Even on the model they flare out, not a look I want. Possibly the flare could be cured by knitting the borders on smaller needles than the body of the pattern, or by using a smaller stitch count for the edge and increasing for the cabled area. However, I thought of a different way to tame the edges; see what you think.

I wound, I cast on, knit, cabled, cast off, washed, blocked, and this is what I got:

Sorry I photographed the swatch upside down. The top is a K4 P2 rib that flows right into the cabling, and it seems to work really well. The cable pattern comes out at the right width gauge, but instead of 32 rows per 4 inches of length, I get 26. It makes the thing pretty much square. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I don't think it will cause trouble, as the important stages of the shape are marked by length ("work until it measures x inches") rather than by a count of pattern repeats. Just to see what I'd get, I finished with the seed stitch and, yup, it sure looks like a ruffle. No thanks.

What about the seed stitch button and buttonhole bands? There's going to be a change there, too. The front edges will be K1 P1 rib sewn to a zipper closure. If I were keeping seed stitch bands, I might use leather toggle closures rather than buttons and holes, but in addition to its ruffling properties, seed stitch is a more open fabric that admits cold breezes, so I'm just going to go seedless with this sweater. Will it still be the Shepherd sweater with all these changes? Does it matter?

And if this is not heresy enough, look out Shearer! I've got a crazy idea about converting that pullover into a cardigan.

My Shepherd & Shearer Is Here!

Last spring I jumped onto a bandwagon launched by Juniper Moon Farm: The Shepherd and the Shearer. The idea was to front some money to the project and they would produce a special batch of yarn to make a hard-wearing sweater and also provide scholarships to women to attend sheep-shearing school. Basic premises are here and here.

Juniper Moon already had a track record as a Community Sourced Agriculture provider of fiber and yarn (you buy a share, half-share, or double share in the spring or fall and receive your fiber/yarn after the year's wool has been harvested and processed). They have some experience at what they were doing, but this was special because unlike the shares, they also commissioned superstar designers to provide patterns for your yarn allotment.

Well, the wait is over and my yarn is here! Ta daaaa.....

My postman was happy about my being so happy to get the package. The Shepherd and the Shearer yarn is there, yes, but what is that brown stuff sticking out of the basket? Well, Miss Piggy here couldn't resist the deal offered by Juniper Moon to assuage subscribers' misery at having to wait longer than promised for their yarn, so they offered a super discount on their CSA yarn to us as well. What you see there is hanks of their Colored Flock yarn from this year. It's a similar weight and sturdiness to the S&S, and feels denser. My idea was that I could knit the Shepherd pattern out of one, and the Shearer out of the other. But now having met the yarns in person, I am going to give them all a wash and have a think about what to make with what.