Lifeline

This is what happens when you take the directions in a pattern as suggestions, not instructions. Beavering away on my Gradient Yoke Sweater, I get down near the hemline where it says to put a life line in the row to which the edge of the hem will be sewn after its turned. Pffft. As if I couldn't follow a row of purl bumps on the back side of stockinette. I tootle on down, purl a row for the bottom of the hem fold, and knit on 8 more rows, ready to hem. [Boring technique note: often a knit hem is made by running a circular needle through the appropriate row and binding it and the edge row off together. This pattern said sew, so I was going to sew.] Came time to sew the hem and--uh oh--I wasn't as good at following those purl bumps as I thought. The result was all skew-whiff and uneven and looked terrible. So terrible I didn't even take a photo of how terrible.

I could either abandon the sweater at this stage to the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble, or pull my socks up, undo what I had done, and put my life line in after the fact. Reader, I put in the life line. And it made all the difference, see?

Here's the resulting hem, inside and out, just as tidy and straight as you please:

Now it's just a question of sleeves, with yarn weighed so it can be divided half-and-half, length to be determined by how far the yarn goes. How long will they be? elbows? 3/4? All the way to the wrist? Only the scale knows.

It's Been a Long Time

I'm sorry to have deserted you faithful readers, both of you, for so long. I have been dwelling in a deep cellar of Family Obligations and am finally coming up for air.

When last we met it was--brrrrrr--February and I was getting frostbitten trying to put up yarnbombs. I did go back later and shot a couple of my tree sweaters that hardier souls had installed.

 These are the ones I got before my battery pooped out, but you get the idea.

I have been doing plenty of knitting down there in the cellar, and here are some of the Finished Objects:

 The Brocade Leaves cardigan is all done and complete with nordic clasp. It was from a Poetry in Stitches pullover kit that I converted to a cardigan.

I made a Hippie Scarf out of that crazy Himalayan Recycled Silk yarn. It's really fuzzy and fun and warm with all sorts of draping possibilities.

.....And then there are the mittens I made for a temporary winter resident of Fairbanks.  Scroll down that Fairbanks link to "climate" in order to see why a person needs a pair, nay, many pairs of double-layer mittens just to make it from the front door to the frozen car on an average January day.

Currently on the needles is Siv by Elsebeth Lavold. I'm making it in Lavold's Silky Wool, a yarn I've drooled over for a long time because of its season-spanning capabilities and its deep, deep saturated colors.

I've changed the pattern a little to make the links the same length as the knot sections, increasing the chances that I will be able to be consistent over the whole garment. Looking at some of the other Sivs on Ravelry, I know I'm not the only one to have thought of this.

Resurrection from The Heap

Rummaging in the stash closet for something else, I rediscovered a bagful from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble. It has been composting in the heap for so long, I have no idea when it was actually started, but once brought to light, it seized my fancy for some reason.

It's the Brocade Leaves Sweater by Solveig Hisdal, purchased as a kit with original yarn. The design is the cover feature of Hisdal's very popular book, Poetry in Stitches. (Yikes! I just had a look at what the book is selling for these days--$100 bucks for a knitting book!)

So why had I abandoned it to the Heap? For starters, I had converted the pullover sweater to a cardigan. No problem, really. After knitting most of the body, I discovered a big blooper: two of the yarn shades are very close, off-white and light peach. The big flower motifs were supposed to be done in light peach, and by the time I got to the sleeves I had used up a significant portion of the white in the body. The two yarns are very very close (hence my mistake), and it doesn't seem all that noticeable if the sleeve flowers are peach and the body ones are left white. You can see how close the colors are below. There's hardly any white left; the big ball is peach. So far, so acceptable.

But the boo boos keep coming. The body is 2 inches longer than it's supposed to be at the front/back divide. Now we're looking at running out of blue yarn. Gulp. No way to know for sure, but it might happen. Especially when a cropped cardigan version of the pattern shows edges finished in a light blue knitted band. (see Poetry cover) but the final thing that sent it tumbling into the Heap was the size. The pattern is provided in only one size, a rather oversized medium. At the time of abandonment, I was a very oversized XL. It wasn't going to fit, and there was no use putting a lot of time and effort in rescuing my other mistakes if the bloomin' thing wasn't going to fit anyway. Well, dear reader, I am myself now an oversized medium, and there's a very good chance that after blocking it will fit! Game on!

Farewell , Old Friend

I have a favorite sweater, one that has been with me for a long time. I love its colors, the way the simple pattern shows off those colors to best advantage, and I enjoyed knitting it long ago. Because it's such a great match of yarn and pattern, I have always gotten compliments when I wear it.

I made it, oh, probably at least 20 years ago with a Vogue Knitting pattern and Colinette yarn, back in the day when multi-colored yarn was rare, and Colinette dyed plain-textured wool in finer gauges as well as the wild stuff they're known for today. I had a rummage for the pattern and yarn, but they are lost in the mists of time or the family move from the UK to the US.

 I've become a smaller person in the past year, and just recently caught a glimpse of myself in this sweater. Oh dear. It is huge. And not in an oversized-cosy-sweater way. More like a knitted-tent sort of way.

I even had a brief seizure of "I'll unravel it and steam the yarn and make it up into something smaller", but reality quickly reasserted itself as I thought about how many of the items in my Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble may have landed there because it was apparent they would turn out to be a size or 3 too small.  Much wiser to invest my effort in something from the Heap, so I will wash and block my old friend, and donate it with other undergrown clothing. Maybe someone else will enjoy having a sweater that gets compliments, and they can say, "Can you believe it? Hand knitted, and I think it's wool, and it only cost me $5 at Value Village!"

Resupply

I'm kind of surprised. Today, just for fun, I went through my Viola pattern and counted up the squares not marked off as knitted, and then compared that with the sidebar count, and lo! there was a discrepancy of only 2. I think that's pretty amazing, especially given that I usually update the scorecard with bleary eyes and foggy head just before I stumble off to bed of an evening. And the 2 questionable squares in the equation, I'm pretty sure, are partial ones awaiting resupply of the Papaya Heather yarn they need.

Lo! again!--a uniformed employee of the Federal Government has just delivered said yarn ball and a few others:

It bugged me to have to get just one more lousy ball of yarn in order to complete a few little ridges of garter stitch, until I realized that Papaya Heather is approximately the color of some shades of humanity, and the surplus could be handily turned into a Breast Hat or two. Bonus!

And then you can't just order one single ball of yarn from Knit Picks, can you?  I can't. So I settled on an i-cord edge finish for Viola and ordered a couple of Garnet Heather balls for the purpose. Oh, and a couple of other little things. Shiny! Shiny! Like a magpie loves tinfoil, I have to have me some glittery Stroll Glimmer. And Chroma! I've recently discovered the inspiring hat patterns of Deborah Tomasello. How about Versailles or Mazarin with those two Chroma colorways?

No secret that after finishing the 80 booties, I am filled with lust for a new portable project. What, oh, what will it be? [meanwhile the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble smirks at me from various corners of my house.]

Finished with Some Objects

Various Finished Objects for show & and tell.  There's the graphic stripe scarf...

And a Baby Surprise jacket and booties for the new granddaughter of a colleague. The yarn is Socks That Rock medium weight in My Wild Irish Girlie, a skein from this year's Rockin Sock Club.

[Aside: I wonder how many warped people like me there are who love sock yarn but aren't keen on wearing handknitted socks.  How crazy is it to belong to a sock club and then knit anything but socks??]

The Surprise Jacket is always a minor miracle.  You knit this very strangely shaped rectanguloid object--

And then sew up two seams and it magically turns into a little jacket.  Awwww.  With little pink heart buttons.  And enough yarn and buttons left over for a darling little pair of booties:

I also managed to resurrect another item from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble, the Willow Tunic from Jamieson's Shetland Knitting Book 2.  It had been knitted and just needed sewing up and the neckband added.  Putting it together showed me why I let it slide in the first place--the neck is enormous.  Not so terrible, I guess, because, being made of Shetland yarn, it would be too scratchy to wear against the skin anyway.

Now it's onward and upward with the Christmas knitting!  And the Grandboy needs more mittens.  And his dinosaur sweater.  And a couple more intriguing projects are whispering in the wings...

Up From the Heap and Down to the Frog Pond

Ever since I got back from vacation I have been on a knitting treadmill with the Jali Cardigan [ravelry link] pattern.  I am vastly enamored of the combination of lace and cabling, the concept of a layer showing through the lace, and the silk-bamboo yarn I found to make it with.  I'm not sure whether my obsession is a good thing or a bad thing, though, because just after I took this picture:

it was time to divide for armholes and I discovered the pattern had sneaked around and was off as much as 8 stitches in some areas.  Crap!  There is just no way to fake or finagle that big a miss.  So merrily I frogged away clear down to the middle of the first repeat.  FOR THE 6TH TIME.  Mind you, I didn't get so far the first 5 times, but still...

This has certainly taught me something about my approach to lace knitting, which is that I don't do well just reading off the chart.  I need to learn the rhythm and proportion of the pattern so that I can work without the chart much of the time, knowing what to expect and where stitches are likely to get lost or created.  Apparently, at least in this case, I am a very slow learner.  Add to my trouble the fact that I'm working with black, which hides problems in all but the best light.  This will certainly be in my favor with little glitches, but I've got to do better than my previous tries.  What keeps me going is the two (plain stockinette) sleeves already made, the forgiving strength of the yarn, and the fact that despite it all, dammit, I still am fascinated with the pattern.

But I took a little break to complete an item from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble and regain a little of my self-respect and sense of accomplishment.  Aided by the discovery of the tiny ball of yarn I needed to finish sewing up my Dancing Vines sweater made, I dimly recall, out of Elann's denim yarn in a currently-not-available light blue.

Also visible in the picture is the poisonous jolly fairy ring of fly agaric mushrooms that have sprung up around one of our birch trees, just one of the features of the mushroom farm our yard has become as a result of the rainy rainy summer.  I guess the rain is a good reason excuse to stay inside and try (again) to knit the Jali cardigan.

Smaller Heap, Bigger Wardrobe

More Finished Objects from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble! Both lovely comfy sweaters, abandoned (I dimly recall) just because I was seduced by a new project. If this doesn't confirm me as the ultimate process knitter, I'll happily take the silver if you show me who's got the gold.

First up, Guernsey from an old Classic Elite leaflet. It's a sort-of gansey style; the original yarn was CE's Mistral, a Pima cotton/alpaca blend. I used Knit Picks' City Tweed in Porpoise, a merino/alpaca blend that's soft enough to wear next to the skin and knits to the same gauge as the original. I changed the pattern a little because the sleeves were too plain and boring. I ran a cable up the center and then continued it across the shoulder and into the neck.

Photos taken by draping sweater on a pile of snow on a cloudy day--the ultimate blank white background! Good for contrast, but a little lumpy-looking.

Next, a Rowan pattern actually made from Rowan yarn! Sorry, but time has erased the origin of the pattern from my mind, but the yarn is Cashsoft DK, a merino/microfiber blend with 10% cashmere that is as soft as itty bitty kittycats. Curiously, only the fuchsia color sheds little white hairs that look somewhat like itty bitty kittycat hairs. The yarn was made in Romania, so who knows--maybe they're shearing cats there and calling it cashmere. Whatever....cats or goats, it's still very soft.

I need to take some more photos and then I'll have more FOs to show you, plus I've cut my first steek and started the first Winter Sunset sleeve!

A Rummage in the Rubble

My first FO from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble! It is the Rainbow Yoke Sweater from Knitscene Spring 2009 using Noro Silk Garden instead of Kureyon for the yoke (same effect, fewer itchies), and an old old Adrienne Vittadini yarn, Maria, (and by old I mean purchased at the Knitting Frenzy going-out-of-business sale years ago!) for the main body. I love the Maria even more than I thought I would. It's 48% merino, 48% acrylic, and the portion that makes it truly amazing is the 4% Lycra. It's made by winding the wool and acrylic threads loosely around a Lycra strand giving an extremely stretchy yarn with a rough boucle sort of look. I had been afraid that the stretch would make for an unflattering second skin fit, but knit in the right gauge it just gives ease and comfort.

Now why would I abandon such a beauty with all done but the stitching up? Here's why:
I got all clever and changed the neck from a plain stocking stitch foldover to K2P2 ribs with a stst rollover top. Consumed with my cleverness, I didn't realize until I was done that the place where the purl stitches take off from the Silk Garden looks absolutely awful. And that's where I lost interest and got seduced by another project, chucking this on the Heap.

The resurrection entailed ripping out all the brown neckband and knitting the first row of the neck (or last row of the yoke) in a final stst row before starting the ribs. Hey presto no more ugly pink bumps showing through!

Ain't she a beauty now?
So now I have a great new sweater with a fancy yoke that was done with a single yarn--no bohus, no fair isle! And what, you ask, has become of the Winter Sunset Cardigan? Why, I'm up to the top of the body, ready to 3-needle bind off the shoulders, sew & cut me some steeks, and start some sleeves!

My Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble

I am a process knitter. I love assembling the project--falling in love with the pattern, finding the right yarn, figuring out how the pattern and its techniques work, adapting the pattern to my needs/wants/desires/whims/fantasies, knitting merrily away on long winter evenings while my Netflix play on tv or computer. This means that when all the knitting is done I lose interest (or am seduced by the next project) before a product is produced. My dirty secret is that I have a huge pile of completed knitting that is not yet a product. That is to say, it has not been sewn up or finished into an actual garment. The collection I have amassed of this stuff I call my Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble. The phrase is one I cribbed from elsewhere. It's from the title of a book published by these guys. Go ahead and read some of the sample articles on their site. I promise they will make you laugh.

Back to my Heap. Here it is:


Now, aren't you feeling better about the two nearly-finished sweaters and the single mitten languishing in the middle of your stash? I thought so. Glad to be of service. The even greater embarrassment is that this isn't even all of the Heap, but when I started hauling stuff out of the stash closet a shelf collapsed, dumping books, sewing and knitting stuff all over, and I was frightened out of further excavation. What if it's only knitting that's holding up the rest of the shelves?

Back to the Heap again. You see how easily distracted I can be? I have recently realized that one of the uses of this blog could be to embarrass myself into diminishing this thing. Say, at the rate of one a month. If the result is a sweater or whatever that's wearable--swell. I have an addition to my wardrobe. If it doesn't fit, then I donate it or give it to someone and somebody has a new garment. Sound like a good idea? I thought so.

We'll see. Good intentions are all very well, but the road to hell is paved with couches.