Y'know what looks kind of ugly on a nice sweater? The back of the zipper.
As Kate Davies demonstrated, the openings on cardigans are much better when ribbon or tape are added to reinforce edges and/or cover them. I've been meaning to take care of this on my Shepherd and Shearer sweaters.
Alas, I don't have access to the fantastic haberdashers of the UK, so I had to beetle on down to the local Joann's to see what I could find. Not a plethora of possibilities, but not bad.
For the Shearer, a leopard grosgrain
And for the Shepherd a really cool white ribbon with a subtle glint of gold, as understated and elegant as the leopard is crazy.
(The gold doesn't show up in the photo; you'll just have to trust me.)
Each of the ribbons suits its sweater and makes it an even better garment and me a prouder knitter.
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".
The Shepherd sweater grinds on, but I'm afraid I've been afflicted with Second Sleeve Syndrome even before I'm quite down to the cuff of the first one. My excuse is that it's no longer mindless banging along, easily done while watching movies or tv. It's pay-attention knitting: pay attention to the cabling pattern and how it works into the decreases; pay attention to the stitch count and the decreases; pay attention to making the decreasing and cabling come to an end at just the right place to end the sleeve at the right length and have a couple of inches of k4 p2 rib to finish. Sheesh! I guess these are the dues for going my own way with the basic design. Some days I'm incredibly pleased with myself for cooking up an adaptation that works so well for me and eager for the finished product; other days I just want to catch up on Downton Abbey and zone out a bit.
So let's see what's happened lately in the zone-out zone:
Not two hats, but one reversible hat, as modeled by my favorite Library Head, Willa Cather. It's the Esprit Reversible Cap (free, by the way) made with Cascade Fixation Solid and Spray Dyed. I love the way the hat feels on the head. The yarn is cotton and elastic, so it's very huggy and likely to stay put. I needed a hat to go with my red coat and this fits the bill (and the noggin) nicely.
What to do with the leftover yarn? Booties, of course!
The Fixation booties are a big 6-12 month-old size. And the dark ones are from the remainder of the dark Fassett stripe sweater. (Yes, I'm still working on sewing it up. It's got an awful lot of long seams that really have to be worked on in daylight.)
And in celebration of booties, I bring you this song about the other kind of boo-tay. A ditty I was first introduced to as the sound track of a YouTube paean to the rear view of Mr Benedict Cumberbatch:
The main part of my Shepherd sweater is off the needles and on the blocking board! The cables had it scrooched up pretty tight, and I was worried about it being too small until I got it wet and spread it out:
The water relaxed it into just the right dimensions, and everything is fine. I intentionally made it about an inch shorter than the pattern said, which I think will be a more flattering length for me. My non-seed K1P1 front edges were still a little wavy from cable scrooching, so I used blocking wires to straighten them, and they look great. The next steps, collar and sleeves, may have to wait until a small amount of Christmas Knitting is complete.
And what of the voyage of the Sixareen Cape? Alas, we are stranded high
and dry (for the last time!) awaiting the last dose of Shetland Heritage
yarn, but the neck is looking much more reasonable, and will
be fine when I have the materials to finish. I'll block it first, but
I'm pretty sure I'll have to do something with the flippy, frilly seed
stitch lower edge. The Cape may have to lie in dry dock for a wee while
also, while the Christmas Knitting gets knitted.
If I am desperate to make progress, I think I found a few tails to weave in..
Not a lot of excitement around here. Just gradual progress on the Sixareen Cape (nearly ready to start the decreases):
And building the Seedless Shepherd (still working toward the front/back divide):
...But look! This thing is so dense and heavy with the cable structure and all, it can almost stand up by itself!
I bought a new circ needle for the Shepherd, Carbonz 40 ". Franklin Habit calls them "stealth needles." I needed the 40" length because the 32" was giving me finger cramps, and my liking for carbon fiber needles aside, I thought that this special project deserved special needles, especially if these same ones get the right gauge for a Shearer made with my other yarn. These are the first cf's I've used with the metal, rather than cf tips, and I find that the join between fiber and metal is no problem at all.
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.
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.
