garter stitch

I'm back, just in time for fall. And I have a stack of knitting that I need to blog about, too.







I'll let you imagine what the top three projects are; right now all I have to talk about is the bottom project, which is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket, or BSJ.

(Please excuse my 1950s tablecloth.)

I was steaming mad about this sweater for a week, but I've managed to get over most of it now. The pattern itself is fine, although the amount of garter stitch nearly drove me insane. I found it very helpful to crochet around the neckline. The effect was very tidy, and simple enough to do. The whole thing would have taken me about two days, except for the horror that I found after I washed it.

Per the yarn store salesperson's advice, I used Lorna's Laces in "pond blue" for the BSJ. I was told that this was "the" yarn to use, and was even shown samples of BSJs knitted with it, which honestly did look really lovely. It's very soft, and also super wash, which I thought would be important for my friend - this is her first baby.

Super wash, right? So you can imagine I was pretty surprised when I pulled the sweater out of the (delicate cycle) wash, and discovered that in at least three spots the yarn had broken. As in, tufts of broken yarn were sticking out of the sweater. !!!

It was pretty scary, I'm not going to lie. I let it dry, gathered my wits, and worked on repairing the damage. It took a few hours to get it perfect, but I think it's okay, now. However, I am never buying this yarn again, especially since it set me back a fair amount of money. The BSJ may be made again, but I'll be finding a different super wash yarn.

There was another mistake, this one of my own making, that I was able to repair, too. I had made my buttonholes too big for the small ladybug buttons I bought. I found that by sewing a "U" around the buttonhole on the wrong side, tugging the ends of the "U" and then weaving in the ends, I was able to satisfactorily and quickly make the buttonholes the perfect size.

(Also, really quick nit picky complaint: I'm all for hand-dyed yarns and their variations in color, but I think the variations here look more like a mistake than a feature.)

Anyway, the sweater is done, it's still really soft, and I imagine it will come to good use. Fall is starting with a vengeance, here.

Next week - my adventures with Victorian lace, both knitted and bobbin-ed. Exciting!

two

Two leaf repeats done.

Can you see any difference at all?

I have one more repeat to do, and then I'll be at the underarms. After that I'll start the sleeves. I've decided to work circular set-in sleeves, using Elizabeth Zimmermann's directions in Knitting Workshop. I've lost the hatred for dropped sleeves that I used to have (I discovered with my previous Poetry cardigan that they can look quite normal if you don't have a lot of ease), but I really would prefer to have less seams to sew. I want to wear this sweater as soon as I can.

I realized today that my sweater is going to look very different than the picture - which sounds ridiculous, but it's one of those things that I had to see in order to really understand all the differences. Colors aside, I am really not following the directions given for this sweater. When I knitted my previous Poetry cardigan, I was able to follow all of the instructions because of my gauge. The pattern's gauge was 30 stitches/4 inches, and mine was 36 stitches/4 inches. This meant that if I followed the directions for the larger size (43 inches), my finished sweater would actually come out to 36 inches, which was just what I wanted. In this case, however, if I just followed the pattern's instructions I would end up with a sweater that was much too small.

Using my gauge, I figured out how many stitches I would need around the entire sweater for it to fit properly. My magic number ended up being 324. Looking at Chart A, which is 6 stitches, I knew that I would end up with exactly 54 repeats around my sweater - perfect. Chart B has 28 stitches, which unfortunately means that if I didn't do some fudging, I would come out with 11.5714...repeats of those peonies around myself. Since I never did like fractions, I substituted some numbers and discovered that if I wanted 11.5 repeats around (which, although a fraction, is at least a more manageable one), I would need 322 stitches. After that it was only a simple manner of decreasing 2 stitches when I was ready to start Chart B, and making sure that I centered that half of a peony at the front of the cardigan. Chart C (the leaf pattern that I'm working on now) was another easy one - it has 18 stitches, which goes in evenly to 324. I increased 2 stitches at the beginning of Chart C to get back up to my magic number, and then sailed away. It didn't hurt that I decided to make my cardigan symmetrical, either. It was a lot easier to center Chart B, and I suspect that the sleeves will be much easier to attach, too.

Now, though, I have more peonies around the border, and I'm going to have quite a few more leaf repeats, too. The picture from the book only shows 1.5 repeats of leaves on the body - I'm already past that, and I'm not even done. I'm hoping that it won't make the sweater look too busy. I'm already a little astonished at how pink it's going to be.

goals #1 and 4

Is this my blue period?

Patterned mittens are the Selbu Mittens from Folk Mittens by Marcia Lewandowski. I cast on fewer stitches so that it would work with my gauge, and subsequently took out the two vertical patterns that were meant to run up the sides of the mittens. I also forgot to put a thumb on the first one (sigh), so I ended up doing a little snipping and picking up of stitches.

The turquoise mitten is a Mystery Sidways Mitten from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Around. I had absolutely no idea what was going on until the very end, when I folded my hunk of garter stitch in half and suddenly had a mitten. I think I'm actually going to make a pair for myself after I finish this pair. The shape is so comfortable, and the garter stitch makes the wool feel very lofty.

And that hunk of yarn underneath the mittens is the Hourglass Sweater, now with one full sleeve attached. It only took me a day to make the sleeve, so now I guess I really have no excuse to make the second. Now all I have left from my goals is to re-work the two black sweaters.

a month's progress

The cold weather has filled me with knitterly excitement. Or at least, that's how I'm explaining the fact that I have three sweaters on the needles right now. I haven't had much time for knitting recently because I've been busy, but as a freelance musician I'd much rather have little free time than sitting at home and wondering when the next job will come. It is disappointing to see my knitting progress slow, though.

The first sweater I'm making (and hopefully finishing first, too) is another men's sweater out of Debbie Bliss' Cathay in black. The first one I made was a hit, so I'm back to fields of stockinette again. I think I'll try a saddle shoulder instead of a set-in one this time, just to break up the monotony a little bit. I've managed to finish the body up to the armholes, and I'm about halfway through one sleeve. I don't know why I wrote in my notes that I used 10 skeins (1100 yards) for my first sweater, since I think I'm going to be at least two skeins short.

The next sweater I'm making is for myself. Hege I traded knitting books, and I ended up with Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. I love all of the patterns, and I started on the Hourglass Sweater almost right away. I was able to use some yarn out of my stash. This is the first yarn I ever bought, and after an unsuccessful lace sweater it's been frogged and waiting for more years than I'd care to admit. I remembered it as being 100% alpaca, but it seems to maybe have some cotton in it, too. It's a solid blue - any variation you see in the picture is the result of lumpy knitting making shadows. Thankfully it will be blocked. The fiber is a tiny bit scratchy, but apparently my Dutch genes have made me invincible to wool's scratchiness, so no problem there. My gauge was one row too short and I couldn't fix it, so I'm reworking some of the shaping in the pattern. Right now I'm 16 rows short of the armholes. I'm pretty impressed that I knew enough way back then to buy enough yarn to make a sweater. At the time I purchased this, I had never heard of Barbara Walker, fair isle, or double pointed needles - when sock patterns mentioned a set of 4 needles, I thought there was some magical way that you worked with the straights, all needles moving at the same time.

The Crichton remains are still waiting until I decide if I want to make something useful out of the body, or unravel it and use the yarn for socks. However, I did buy some beautiful wool from Morehouse Farm and started a much-altered version of Snow Sky, also from Sweaters From Camp. I've downsized the pattern a lot so it will fit better, and have also turned it into a cardigan. I don't really like the way the shoulders are worked in the original pattern, so I'm trying to come to an alternate solution. So far I think set-in sleeves would look nice. I'm going to have to do some charting to see if I prefer trying to match the pattern across the sleeves and body, or if I should let the sleeves have their own design. I've finished one pattern repeat, which is about 6.5".