Some Finishes to Start With

Happy New Year, one and all! As part of tidying up the old year before bringing in the new, behold some Finished Objects:

The Baby Surprise Jacket with the booties that inspired it, and a little hat to finish it all off (both the outfit and the yarn). And sure enough, though there wasn't a baby in mind when I started this; if  you knit it they will come--a colleague was blessed on December 26 with a new granddaughter. Welcome to the world, Lani Pearl!

And finally, at last, eventually, the Sixareen Cape is finished, blocked, and launched! As I had hoped, just the thing to keep the shoulders warm on long chilly winter nights, yet stay out of the way of the reading and knitting. And, hey, you could have knocked me over with a ball of quiviut, but that seed stitch bottom border came out pretty flat in the blocking.

It fits differently from my original intention because I am a smaller size than when the keel was laid, so thank goodness it's a style that can be a bit loose. If it bugs me enough, I may rig some kind of seam inside to make the shoulders fit better.

I'm sure you realize that the photos have suffered from the seasonal lack of light at this latitude. Normally knitting and reading is not an outdoor activity, but that's where you have to go (at mid-day) to have even half a chance of success. And it's still a flash photo. The main color of the sixareen is closer to the reading picture. The Baby Surprise was either a choice of washout pale or overdone enhancement. Sigh. Photos can only improve now that we're past the solstice and the light gets longer and stronger every day.

Body Block

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..

Round and Round and Back and Forth

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.

Careening the Sixareen

My poor Sixareen Cape. She suffered from multiple errors in the pattern that turned her into an upside down knit funnel for a pinhead. Witness:

Kate Davies admitted Mistakes Were Made, and I recently received my copy of the corrected pattern, and a copy of Snawheid by way of apology. So now it's time to frog the top section down to the start of the decreases and do it all over again, this time with better instructions. So frog I did, 3 skeins' worth, ending with a very kinky pile of yarn.

Not to worry. A soak in tepid water, a squeeze, air dry,  rewind, and we're ready to go again. It makes a relaxing alterknit to the Shepherd. so light, such straightforward stockinette stitch, I can do it while watching subtitled movies. Onward and upward with all the kinks out.

But the experience of this and the Shepherd have tempered my rabid fandom for Ms Davies. I still love her vision, I share a love of Real Wool, of Scotland, the Shetland Isles, and traditional designs and techniques. But she seriously needs a technical editor, a good one, so that her acolytes don't need to knit themselves wigs after tearing their hair out trying to make her designs.

P.S. What's a Sixareen? Look it up. What's careening? Look it up.

Dry Dock

My Sixareen Cape is in dry dock for the time being. I have overcome a bunch of obvious errors in the pattern, but this last one is a deal-breaker. The pattern says to decrease the top until you have 82 stitches. Seriously? Can a normal human being get their head through such a tiny hole? Adding insult to injury, the pattern illustration shows a loose, flow-y top more like a cowl than a constipated turtleneck. Something is very wrong here. Is it the decreasing? My gauge is OK. WTF???  Sadly, the discussion on the Ravelry group hasn't been much help. Most of it is about misunderestimation of yarn quantities--been there--and there is an entry from Kate saying that a corrected pattern is available for those who downloaded it on Ravelry, not much help to those of us who purchased a hard copy through MagCloud. I have emailed Kate requesting a way to get corrections, but she is in the midst of her house/business move and will not be available for a response for some time. Hence the dry dock. I'm sure a solution is forthcoming, just not for a while. And I think some frogging is in my future.

But does the knitting stop just because one project is on the rocks? Certainly not.

There's the dark Kaffe Fassett stripe sweater, for one thing. And I found some cheesy acrylic yarn with sequins (sequins!) that makes really darling "dress-up" baby booties. And is that more Sour Cherries sock yarn I spy? Mm hmm. Because you don't have to have an actual baby in the pipeline to knit a cute baby sweater. If you build it, they will come. I think I know the right baby for it, but it's pretty hard to tell the exact size until a Baby Surprise sweater is nearly done.

Plain Sailing

Just plain stockinette on the Sixareen Cape from here on out. All the fair isle is done, and it looks pretty good even in its unblocked state. The moss stitch border looks a bit frilly and flip-uppy, but I'll have to wait for the blocking magic to see if it's really going to be a problem.

And I think I promised you a look at the dark Fassett stripe sweater.

This was the best approximation of the color that I could get with the light available. The pattern is this one, in the prescribed yarns, but with less contrast than you see in the woman's model. I used Regia Hand Dye Effect Night Tones and Random Stripe 2903. The yarns look very much alike at first, but they have slightly different textures and one has long gradual color changes, while the other has shorter color shifts. It makes for fascinating if subtle color play that you really have to appreciate up close and in person. Maybe before I'm done I'll find the right light and setting. And no, that's not the shape. It's not blocked, so the sides are curled up. In places you can see the light through it, so you see what a light layer it will be, and a good friend of many of my turtlenecks this winter.

And just for fun, here's what's happening all over the Alaska woods right now--mushrooms!

There are many others, but the most numerous and photogenic are the amanita/fly agaric/fairy toadstools/call-them-what-you-will cartoon 'shrooms. They're the most colorful, bright red when they're young, and covered in mad white dots. They're also poisonous, so nothing eats them. Once in a while a bird or a squirrel will take one up in a tree and then leave it there when it figures out it's no good.

Almost cool enough to make you believe in gnomes, isn't it?

Rowing Along in My Sixareen*

The Alaska summer has turned a corner, folks. the sunshine and relative heat are no more. Birch leaves are starting to turn yellow and the intermittent rain is greening up the forest moss. Time to realize that the cold is coming and that there will be a time when I will want the warmth of my Sixareen Cape. I've now got two of the three fair isle pattern repeats done, which feels like a big accomplishment when there are 414 stitches in each round.

The dark Fassett stripe sweater is coming along, too--the back is almost done--but not very photo-worthy yet. Good thing I also have a new pair of booties on the go:

A really sweet colorway of a cotton/wool/elastic sock yarn called Cherry Sours. It's even more charming in Spanish: Caramelos Cereza Agria. Isn't it funny how they can take two colors I'm not all that crazy about, pink (I really get tired of all the pinky stuff they make nowdays. It's like pink is the flag of the double X chromosome.) and green (because green is so, well, green.) And put together with a strange pinky muddy light brown in little baby footies I can't help sighing awwwwwww every time I look at them. I even find myself thinking this yarn would make a really darling baby surprise jacket, and I don't even know anybody offhand who is expecting a person who could wear it.

You may also have noticed a particular vegetable theme in the photos. That's because I'm capital-T-Thrilled that I am going to have tomatoes this year! For the past 2 summers it has not been warm enough for my tomato plants to set fruit. Two years! Big plants, lots of blossoms, but it has to be at least 70 degrees or so for the flowers to set fruit, and even up next to the south-facing house wall, they weren't able to manage more than a couple of wee green marbles. I'm counting on the fruit being all the sweeter for the long wait.

*A Sixareen is a Shetland boat. Look it up here. And video of an authentic re-creation is here.

The Knit Goes On

My hat-a-thon for the Mountain Huts hat sale is over, and it's on to bigger things. You still can go to the silent auction if you're reading this on or before May 10, 2013. Loussac Library in Anchorage, 6-7 pm is the hat auction before the big meeting and slide show.

But planning and making the hats was so much fun, I'm already plotting what I could do for next year. A fish hat? A mountain hat? Breast hat? Another, even crazier mohawk? The possibilities are very exciting!

Meanwhile, the knit goes on. Sixareen Cape is slowly growing. It's fair isle; it's fine gauge; it's going to take a while.

So I started another project, a Kaffe Fassett-designed striped sweater. Plain stockinette no-brainer stitching, portable with only 2 balls to carry around at a time, peasy, right?

I loved the colors the minute that photo slammed into my eyes. And of course it would--Mr. F has a unique way with color, though usually his designs are crazy complicated with a zillion intarsia bobbins. But this is just stripes of alternating varigated yarns (color varigations also designed by Fassett, too, naturally). The whole thing was sold as a kit, which made it a much better deal than buying pattern and yarn separately. What's not to like?

The pattern is what not to like. I had already decided on a different neck than the cowl from the get-go. It looks fetching on the model, but she's probably 6'3", and I'll bet she's a lot neater than most people when she eats soup.  Fortunately,  I have been tricked by patterns before and learned from the experience(s). So I read the whole thing through, contemplating each instruction carefully. Good thing. Right off the bat there was the overall stripe prescription. The picture is a 4x4 stripe, that is, 4 red, 4 dark. The pattern says 4 red, 2 dark. Whaat?? I scrutinized the picture with a magnifying glass. Definitely 4x4. Scrutinized the bag of kit yarn. Exactly half and half. So if I unquestioningly followed the pattern, I would have a serious yarn deficit about halfway through.

At this point, the pattern is a mere suggestion. I've already got what I wanted from the kit--beautiful stripe effect in a stunning color combination. So--4" bottom ribbed welt? Too wide. 2 1/2" is much better. Using both yarns together to knit the selvedge stitch? A recipe for a fat column of stitches that won't make a good seam--forget it. 29" total length? I don't think so. (See 6'3" model remark above). And I've got plenty of time to contemplate the actual neckline. For sure it won't be a cowl!

A Fix For the Fickle Finger

When we last met, I was telling you about my poor blistered finger, an overuse injury from a weekend's worth of knitting. And how I found knitted help for it on Ravelry, the Finger Protector. Well, here it is:

Made not in cashmere, as I initially planned, but in a tiny remainder of a sock club yarn. Merino, I believe. As you can see, you don't exacerbate your injury much in making this solution, and it really works!

And so, with my digit safely girded, it's onward to the next project--the Sixareen Cape for which the Kep was but a swatch:

414 stitches around this rascal. Three vertical repeats of the fair isle pattern. This is not going to be a fast knit. But I've got a long time to work on it, as I intend it to be a keeping-warm-around-the-house-in-winter type of thing. Warm shoulders while knitting or reading in bed is my motivation. And big piles of snow outside the windows to the contrary (this is late April, right?),  it will be a few months before I seriously need it.

Meanwhile, a photography footnote. This is the first picture I took:

See how messed up the colors are, especially the brown edging? I took the picture close to the window in the best daylight I had on this cloudy day, but the camera refused to meter anywhere but the light center of the circle, making the brown look blue or maybe navy. So a brown background made brown yarn look better. Not my first intuition. And a real life example of how colors on your screen may not represent the actual colors.