Halfway through a lace pattern I learned I do yarn overs backwards.
Whatever. It looks awesome.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
New Techniques: Spit Splice
Just did my first ever spit splice and it worked beautifully and I feel like some kind of yarn magician.
Friday, March 14, 2014
FO: Sweaters that Fit
Remember how yesterday I said I’d never made myself a sweater that fits? That’s all over with now.
No, I didn’t finish the Rios sweater. I’ve been told I’m a pretty fast knitter, but I’m not superhuman. What I did do, was finish my second attempt at a pattern I found on Ravelry called the $5 in Paris sweater.
(Welcome to my office. My selfie-taking device today was the webcam on my computer. I’m pretty sure I freaked out dude in the cube behind me a lot. Also…sorry about the photo quality. I just didn’t have time to use a real camera this morning)
The thing about this sweater (or things, rather) is that it was basically destined to be made by me. Yet somehow I still needed two tries to get it right. The pattern is designed for worsted weight acrylic yarn (which I think you‘ve learned by now basically describes my yarn stash), it’s intended to be knit with multiple colours, so it’s a good way to use up yarn that might not exist in full skeins (or sometimes you have to make this brown vest for someone like 4 times and the original pattern wanted the yarn held doubled (who doubles worsted weight yarn for a vest, IDK) so you have way more yarn than you needed, but not enough to actually make another sweater because it turns out it was a good thing you bought twice as much yarn because the vest was phenomenally longer than you thought it would be), it’s knit in the round (which, like, I don’t care. I’ll purl and seam all day long if I have to), so I basically just had to sit there and mindlessly knit and it’s REALLY fast, and best of all, it’s a raglan that’s knit top down, which means I can try it on as I knit. This last fact makes it even more comical that I managed to make it too big the first time I knit it. I don’t know what to tell you other than sometimes things get weird once I get my hands on them.
This is the first top down sweater I’ve ever made. It’s the first raglan sweater I’ve ever made. It’s the first sweater in the round I’ve ever made. But! I’m glad I learned all the skills because the sweater I’m now making with the Rios is a raglan sleeved cardigan that’s knit top down. So by some good knitting fortune I managed to do things in the correct order. Honestly, I was going to start the Rios project a few weeks ago, but one of the Ravellenic Games challenges during the Olympics this year was to reclaim some yarn, and I knew that if I was going to reclaim yarn from one of the many to-be-reknit project, this was going to be the fastest and the one that made me the least angry, so I frogged it. Then I had all this yarn sitting on my couch, and I thought I should knit it. It has the added benefit of being a good spring/fall sweater (I made it in ¾ sleeve, even though it’s supposed to be short sleeved. LBR about the weather where I live, okay. If it’s cold enough to wear an entirely acrylic sweater, it’s cold enough that you want sleeves.) So I worked it up (it’s fast) making a smaller size and making a point to do all the ribbing on smaller needles so it wasn’t so ginormously boaty around the neck and the sleeves and I tried it on like a billion times and now everything is wonderful and I now know all these great skills to make the nice cardigan out of expensive yarn actually fit me on the first damn try.
No, I didn’t finish the Rios sweater. I’ve been told I’m a pretty fast knitter, but I’m not superhuman. What I did do, was finish my second attempt at a pattern I found on Ravelry called the $5 in Paris sweater.
(Welcome to my office. My selfie-taking device today was the webcam on my computer. I’m pretty sure I freaked out dude in the cube behind me a lot. Also…sorry about the photo quality. I just didn’t have time to use a real camera this morning)
The thing about this sweater (or things, rather) is that it was basically destined to be made by me. Yet somehow I still needed two tries to get it right. The pattern is designed for worsted weight acrylic yarn (which I think you‘ve learned by now basically describes my yarn stash), it’s intended to be knit with multiple colours, so it’s a good way to use up yarn that might not exist in full skeins (or sometimes you have to make this brown vest for someone like 4 times and the original pattern wanted the yarn held doubled (who doubles worsted weight yarn for a vest, IDK) so you have way more yarn than you needed, but not enough to actually make another sweater because it turns out it was a good thing you bought twice as much yarn because the vest was phenomenally longer than you thought it would be), it’s knit in the round (which, like, I don’t care. I’ll purl and seam all day long if I have to), so I basically just had to sit there and mindlessly knit and it’s REALLY fast, and best of all, it’s a raglan that’s knit top down, which means I can try it on as I knit. This last fact makes it even more comical that I managed to make it too big the first time I knit it. I don’t know what to tell you other than sometimes things get weird once I get my hands on them.
This is the first top down sweater I’ve ever made. It’s the first raglan sweater I’ve ever made. It’s the first sweater in the round I’ve ever made. But! I’m glad I learned all the skills because the sweater I’m now making with the Rios is a raglan sleeved cardigan that’s knit top down. So by some good knitting fortune I managed to do things in the correct order. Honestly, I was going to start the Rios project a few weeks ago, but one of the Ravellenic Games challenges during the Olympics this year was to reclaim some yarn, and I knew that if I was going to reclaim yarn from one of the many to-be-reknit project, this was going to be the fastest and the one that made me the least angry, so I frogged it. Then I had all this yarn sitting on my couch, and I thought I should knit it. It has the added benefit of being a good spring/fall sweater (I made it in ¾ sleeve, even though it’s supposed to be short sleeved. LBR about the weather where I live, okay. If it’s cold enough to wear an entirely acrylic sweater, it’s cold enough that you want sleeves.) So I worked it up (it’s fast) making a smaller size and making a point to do all the ribbing on smaller needles so it wasn’t so ginormously boaty around the neck and the sleeves and I tried it on like a billion times and now everything is wonderful and I now know all these great skills to make the nice cardigan out of expensive yarn actually fit me on the first damn try.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Thoughts on Swatching
I know that swatching is a contentious topic with a lot of knitters.
When I first started knitting (listen to me, I talk as though I’ve been
doing this for 20 years), I didn’t make swatches, but that was because no one told me to do it!
Honestly, when I learned to knit I made a garter stitch scarf and then a basic hat and some mittens and it was all in a class with sufficient hand-holding and it worked out great.
Then, because I’m not the sort of person who sees a utilitarian usage for more than the 5 hats and 15 scarves I already owned BEFORE I started knitting, I realized that if I was going to make things for myself (and dammit, I was going to make things for myself) they were going to be sweaters. Which is cool. I love sweaters. My sweater shelf (and the dresser in which I keep other sweaters) is overflowing. And exactly none of the sweaters on my shelf were knit by me.
That’s right. 3+ years later, I still have never knit myself a wearable sweater.
Now, I don’t say that I haven’t knit myself a sweater, because I have. Three of them, in fact. The problem is, all the sweaters I’ve made myself are in the bin (lbr, cardboard box) of things that don’t fit. Why is that? Well … partially, it’s because I use acrylic yarn in inappropriate ways, but also it’s because of swatching.
Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take the time to knit something gorgeous so you can have a beautiful piece of whatever, you sort of need to make sure that you’re knitting it to the right size, and if you’re following a pattern (or if you’re making up a pattern) you need to know what that size is. So … it’s important in my hat making, for instance, that I know how many stitches to the inch I’m getting so I end up with hats that are the right size for human heads (accidentally knitting on US5s instead of US3s aside). The only way to do that is to figure out how many stitches I knit per inch. Cool? Cool.
I actually first did a swatch when I wanted to substitute a yarn in a pattern. The yarn wasn’t the weight the pattern called for (but was the right fibre, so I thought the drape/shaping would be similar), so I needed to figure out what I needed to do in order to get gauge. Here’s the thing … that sweater STILL doesn’t fit. (That’s a wholly frustrating experience because a LOT of math was involved in that ish, and I’m super annoyed that it’s too SMALL, of all things. But that’s for another time, since I spent way too much on that yarn to *not* rip it out and try again.) For a while I just dumped the sweater in my box of shame and let it languish (not as long as the one I have to fix BEFORE that one because I made it before I knew how to swatch at all. It’s coat length, too. Delightful.), but since I’ve been listening to podcasts, I’ve gotten some insight that seems ever so obvious.
Wash your swatches.
That’s right. Wash your swatches. Wash them the way you would wash whatever you are knitting with that yarn. Because here’s the thing, right. I spend all this time swatching away to try to get the right gauge so that my garment fits, and then I wash it and block it and sometime in my blocking process I either realize that this sweater is either WAY bigger than I thought it was or it’s WAY smaller than it’s supposed to be. Why? Because the yarn is relaxing.
The podcast I got this from (they touch on it in several episodes, and I have no idea which one they really talk about it the most in … sometime in 2008-2009 is the best I can give you) is the Knit Picks podcast. There’s one episode where Kelley really explains what goes on in your fibre from the time it leaves the sheep until you wash it that’s really enlightening. The thing to remember is that even after it’s put on a skein and then wound into a ball and then knit into an object, the fibre is still all tense. It’s been through a lot. Once you get it in the water and let it just hang out and then let it dry on its own, it relaxes into the shape it wants to take … which is rarely the shape it had when it was on your needles. This, in turn, means the gauge you so painstakingly worked to get is now WRONG.
Solution: Wash your swatches, check your gauge again.
I recently did this with the swatch of Malabrigo Rios I showed you a few days ago. I knew I needed to get 18 stitches and 20 rows to 4”. So I knit up a swatch of 24x24 on US7 needles, did a few rows of garter to separate, then did it again on US8. I measured the gauge, and both were close (the 8 was closer), but neither was right. Ordinarily, this would have been super frustrating for me (and probably included swearing followed by me trying to recalculate the pattern math (incorrectly, lbr here) to get the sweater to match my gauge). But! Because of the podcast, I didn’t panic. I put the end caps on my circs, then tossed the swatch in a sink full of cold water with the tiniest bit of soap, let it soak for 5 minutes, rinsed it, and set it down on the blocking board and pulled it out so it was almost flat. That evening, it was fully dry and I measured gauge again. Turned out … size 8 was perfectly on gauge and now I’m happily knitting along on a delightful sweater.
The magic of the properly executed gauge swatch.
Honestly, when I learned to knit I made a garter stitch scarf and then a basic hat and some mittens and it was all in a class with sufficient hand-holding and it worked out great.
Then, because I’m not the sort of person who sees a utilitarian usage for more than the 5 hats and 15 scarves I already owned BEFORE I started knitting, I realized that if I was going to make things for myself (and dammit, I was going to make things for myself) they were going to be sweaters. Which is cool. I love sweaters. My sweater shelf (and the dresser in which I keep other sweaters) is overflowing. And exactly none of the sweaters on my shelf were knit by me.
That’s right. 3+ years later, I still have never knit myself a wearable sweater.
Now, I don’t say that I haven’t knit myself a sweater, because I have. Three of them, in fact. The problem is, all the sweaters I’ve made myself are in the bin (lbr, cardboard box) of things that don’t fit. Why is that? Well … partially, it’s because I use acrylic yarn in inappropriate ways, but also it’s because of swatching.
Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take the time to knit something gorgeous so you can have a beautiful piece of whatever, you sort of need to make sure that you’re knitting it to the right size, and if you’re following a pattern (or if you’re making up a pattern) you need to know what that size is. So … it’s important in my hat making, for instance, that I know how many stitches to the inch I’m getting so I end up with hats that are the right size for human heads (accidentally knitting on US5s instead of US3s aside). The only way to do that is to figure out how many stitches I knit per inch. Cool? Cool.
I actually first did a swatch when I wanted to substitute a yarn in a pattern. The yarn wasn’t the weight the pattern called for (but was the right fibre, so I thought the drape/shaping would be similar), so I needed to figure out what I needed to do in order to get gauge. Here’s the thing … that sweater STILL doesn’t fit. (That’s a wholly frustrating experience because a LOT of math was involved in that ish, and I’m super annoyed that it’s too SMALL, of all things. But that’s for another time, since I spent way too much on that yarn to *not* rip it out and try again.) For a while I just dumped the sweater in my box of shame and let it languish (not as long as the one I have to fix BEFORE that one because I made it before I knew how to swatch at all. It’s coat length, too. Delightful.), but since I’ve been listening to podcasts, I’ve gotten some insight that seems ever so obvious.
Wash your swatches.
That’s right. Wash your swatches. Wash them the way you would wash whatever you are knitting with that yarn. Because here’s the thing, right. I spend all this time swatching away to try to get the right gauge so that my garment fits, and then I wash it and block it and sometime in my blocking process I either realize that this sweater is either WAY bigger than I thought it was or it’s WAY smaller than it’s supposed to be. Why? Because the yarn is relaxing.
The podcast I got this from (they touch on it in several episodes, and I have no idea which one they really talk about it the most in … sometime in 2008-2009 is the best I can give you) is the Knit Picks podcast. There’s one episode where Kelley really explains what goes on in your fibre from the time it leaves the sheep until you wash it that’s really enlightening. The thing to remember is that even after it’s put on a skein and then wound into a ball and then knit into an object, the fibre is still all tense. It’s been through a lot. Once you get it in the water and let it just hang out and then let it dry on its own, it relaxes into the shape it wants to take … which is rarely the shape it had when it was on your needles. This, in turn, means the gauge you so painstakingly worked to get is now WRONG.
Solution: Wash your swatches, check your gauge again.
I recently did this with the swatch of Malabrigo Rios I showed you a few days ago. I knew I needed to get 18 stitches and 20 rows to 4”. So I knit up a swatch of 24x24 on US7 needles, did a few rows of garter to separate, then did it again on US8. I measured the gauge, and both were close (the 8 was closer), but neither was right. Ordinarily, this would have been super frustrating for me (and probably included swearing followed by me trying to recalculate the pattern math (incorrectly, lbr here) to get the sweater to match my gauge). But! Because of the podcast, I didn’t panic. I put the end caps on my circs, then tossed the swatch in a sink full of cold water with the tiniest bit of soap, let it soak for 5 minutes, rinsed it, and set it down on the blocking board and pulled it out so it was almost flat. That evening, it was fully dry and I measured gauge again. Turned out … size 8 was perfectly on gauge and now I’m happily knitting along on a delightful sweater.
The magic of the properly executed gauge swatch.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
New Project: Falling in Love With Yarn
Okay, so I’m not sure it’s “the one” yet, but I am knitting a new
thing and I just listened to a podcast that compared making a swatch to a
first date and I liked the analogy so I thought I’d run with it.
As a promise to my SO, I said I’d use up some of my stash yarn before I buy new yarn for myself (yarn for Etsy projects doesn’t count) and because I do things systematically, I sorted my Ravelry stash by date stashed and I’m finding projects I can make (in the time I have when I’m not making hats like I work in a factory) starting with the oldest yarns first.
This led me to Malabrigo Yarns Rios. Way back when I was a brand new knitter sometime in 2010, I got it in my mind that I was going to make SO a brown vest (per request). We trekked down to one of our many LYS in town (this is how long ago it was…the store is no longer where it used to be, it has since moved and is, in fact, the place where I bought my emergency ball of Rowan Pure Wool DK tan for 4th Doctor Scarf of Frustration) and started looking for brown yarn. What you should know is that this was literally the first time I had bought yarn anywhere that wasn’t a big box craft store and I had no idea what I was doing. The poor employee had to watch me while I wandered around for half an hour lamenting the price of yarn, then had to show me how to wind the yarn into cakes because I’d never seen an actual yarn hank before, then asked me if I knew about stranding with that yarn (obviously I didn’t since I didn’t even know WTF that yarn was). I said “yes” though, because I can’t possibly admit to a complete stranger who might be able to help me that I don’t know something. That’s just a particular quirk of me though. I imagine I had at least done something smart like write down what weight of yarn and what length of yarn I needed for the project, but I can’t be sure that ending up with the right amount wasn’t just a happy accident. So…if I bought the yarn for the vest, then what’s going on with it now?
Well. I made the vest a few months ago (after about 5 tries because SO is bigger than the pattern and I don’t can maths), but I ended up making it out of Red Heart Soft. I don’t know why. Don’t ask me why. I imagine it was because I decided that after I spent US$45+ on yarn I was making something for myself out of it, dammit. So it sat in my stash, probably waiting for me to make *myself* a vest.
Then, at some point, I realized that I don’t wear vests.
For a long time, this was *still* my only trip to a non-chain craft store and my non-big brand acrylic yarn purchase. What can I say, no one ever raised me with the stigmas against acrylic yarns. Michael’s/JoAnn/Hancock would sell me yarn on the cheap, so I bough it. I ain’t ashamed. But, since I’m a borderline hoarder, and the Rios was still the most expensive yarn in my stash, I knew I needed to do something important with it and I didn’t have anything important to do.
Fast forward to now-ish. Periodically, I’d pull out the Rios (now not the only nice yarn in my stash) and think “I should make this into a thing”, but not have the time or the energy or the whatever to actually do anything about it. So it would sit there. And I’d buy more yarn (funny thing, I now own like 4 colours of Malabrigo worsted that I *also* don’t know what to do with). I had these plans for what order I was going to knit things in, but then I opened an Etsy store and had to make like a billion hats and forty 4th Doctor scarves, so that threw all my plans out the window.
Since I got hardcore into knitting podcasts over the last month, I’ve been getting all sorts of inspiration and ideas (usually from back in 2009) lately. One particular podcast did a challenge over the course of 2012 (yeah, I’m behind…story of my life) that encouraged people to post their goals for the year in the Ravelry group and then they’d draw prizes once a month for everyone who posted in that month’s thread that they had met a goal. Most of the goals included using up stash. Which, of course, was what gave me the revelation that I should use up stash. It wasn’t possibly the fact that I recently bought a plastic shelving unit to keep my yarn in so it wasn’t just haphazardly piled in paper bags in the corner of the bedroom and all the yarn STILL didn’t fit in there and had to expand into the ottoman and the antique chest that SO’s mom gave us. No. It was people talking about using up stash.
But, it’s gotten me down this road and I’ve finally finished up some other things (I frogged a sweater that I’d made last fall and decided to reknit it…I’m blaming/thanking Ravellenic games for that one), so today I was home and I knit a swatch. Well, I knit two swatches in one, which is why the photo looks a bit wonky. I’m sure that’s not the approved method of swatching, but I’m lazy and I’m sure as hell not cutting any of this yarn (I’m not actually sure I have enough for the project I chose), so it is what it is.
I learned some things about swatching from yet another podcast, but that’s another post. I’ll keep you posted on how the Rios sweater adventure turns out.
As a promise to my SO, I said I’d use up some of my stash yarn before I buy new yarn for myself (yarn for Etsy projects doesn’t count) and because I do things systematically, I sorted my Ravelry stash by date stashed and I’m finding projects I can make (in the time I have when I’m not making hats like I work in a factory) starting with the oldest yarns first.
This led me to Malabrigo Yarns Rios. Way back when I was a brand new knitter sometime in 2010, I got it in my mind that I was going to make SO a brown vest (per request). We trekked down to one of our many LYS in town (this is how long ago it was…the store is no longer where it used to be, it has since moved and is, in fact, the place where I bought my emergency ball of Rowan Pure Wool DK tan for 4th Doctor Scarf of Frustration) and started looking for brown yarn. What you should know is that this was literally the first time I had bought yarn anywhere that wasn’t a big box craft store and I had no idea what I was doing. The poor employee had to watch me while I wandered around for half an hour lamenting the price of yarn, then had to show me how to wind the yarn into cakes because I’d never seen an actual yarn hank before, then asked me if I knew about stranding with that yarn (obviously I didn’t since I didn’t even know WTF that yarn was). I said “yes” though, because I can’t possibly admit to a complete stranger who might be able to help me that I don’t know something. That’s just a particular quirk of me though. I imagine I had at least done something smart like write down what weight of yarn and what length of yarn I needed for the project, but I can’t be sure that ending up with the right amount wasn’t just a happy accident. So…if I bought the yarn for the vest, then what’s going on with it now?
Well. I made the vest a few months ago (after about 5 tries because SO is bigger than the pattern and I don’t can maths), but I ended up making it out of Red Heart Soft. I don’t know why. Don’t ask me why. I imagine it was because I decided that after I spent US$45+ on yarn I was making something for myself out of it, dammit. So it sat in my stash, probably waiting for me to make *myself* a vest.
Then, at some point, I realized that I don’t wear vests.
For a long time, this was *still* my only trip to a non-chain craft store and my non-big brand acrylic yarn purchase. What can I say, no one ever raised me with the stigmas against acrylic yarns. Michael’s/JoAnn/Hancock would sell me yarn on the cheap, so I bough it. I ain’t ashamed. But, since I’m a borderline hoarder, and the Rios was still the most expensive yarn in my stash, I knew I needed to do something important with it and I didn’t have anything important to do.
Fast forward to now-ish. Periodically, I’d pull out the Rios (now not the only nice yarn in my stash) and think “I should make this into a thing”, but not have the time or the energy or the whatever to actually do anything about it. So it would sit there. And I’d buy more yarn (funny thing, I now own like 4 colours of Malabrigo worsted that I *also* don’t know what to do with). I had these plans for what order I was going to knit things in, but then I opened an Etsy store and had to make like a billion hats and forty 4th Doctor scarves, so that threw all my plans out the window.
Since I got hardcore into knitting podcasts over the last month, I’ve been getting all sorts of inspiration and ideas (usually from back in 2009) lately. One particular podcast did a challenge over the course of 2012 (yeah, I’m behind…story of my life) that encouraged people to post their goals for the year in the Ravelry group and then they’d draw prizes once a month for everyone who posted in that month’s thread that they had met a goal. Most of the goals included using up stash. Which, of course, was what gave me the revelation that I should use up stash. It wasn’t possibly the fact that I recently bought a plastic shelving unit to keep my yarn in so it wasn’t just haphazardly piled in paper bags in the corner of the bedroom and all the yarn STILL didn’t fit in there and had to expand into the ottoman and the antique chest that SO’s mom gave us. No. It was people talking about using up stash.
But, it’s gotten me down this road and I’ve finally finished up some other things (I frogged a sweater that I’d made last fall and decided to reknit it…I’m blaming/thanking Ravellenic games for that one), so today I was home and I knit a swatch. Well, I knit two swatches in one, which is why the photo looks a bit wonky. I’m sure that’s not the approved method of swatching, but I’m lazy and I’m sure as hell not cutting any of this yarn (I’m not actually sure I have enough for the project I chose), so it is what it is.
I learned some things about swatching from yet another podcast, but that’s another post. I’ll keep you posted on how the Rios sweater adventure turns out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)