WIP Wednesday: Knitting Polygamy

You read that right, everyone...I have more than one thing in progress! It doesn't happen that often (and honestly I wish it weren't happening right now), so you might want to take a moment to commemorate this day with me. I want to tell you that I hope I won't still have two things in progress next week, but unless something changes with my schedule and I get an unexpected run on knitting time, I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing these both again next week. That's the problem with knitting two things at once...it takes so much longer to finish anything.

Okay. So. First up is the Queen of the Waves shawl I had started two weeks ago out of some Kauni I had. I took photos last week with the intention of updating you on where things stood, but school/work won out and the post never got written. As of now I'm probably slightly less than a quarter of the way into ball 2 (finished ball 1 last Thursday) and am in the part of the shawl that is mostly garter stitch with only a few pattern rows, so hopefully that plus the rapid decreasing will help it go faster than it looks like it's going to go on paper when you think to yourself that you have more than 100 rows to go and you've only completed 70 rows in two weeks WITHOUT working on a second project. (Trying to get these both done by the end of February. I might be killing my chances of even finishing one by undertaking both. The tragic irony of me trying to become a polygamous knitter when faced with deadlines. It's the real reason I only knit one thing at a time.)

Here's where the shawl was last week (for reference and since I have the photos):

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And here's where it is this week:

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So, yeah. Some progress, but not a lot considering how far I managed to get between week 1 and week 2. The Kauni is really growing on me (I thought it might be slightly too scratchy, but it's not at all). It does have a lot of random veg matter in it though, so if that's a thing that bothers you, steer clear. I'm a bit surprised at the way the colours are striping in it since I honestly thought this was going to be a true gradient from dark to light. It's a bit of a pleasant surprise.

Before I leave this WIP, here's a closeup of the pattern stitches so you can perhaps get a better idea of what's going on with it. It's slightly bothersome to actually create because you have uneven stitch counts and lots of yarnovers that you need to drop which get hung up on the needles, but really it's only a few rows and it's not that bad. The pattern is easy to memorize/follow. I keep ending up with the wrong stitch counts, but it's a shawl so I'm rolling with it.

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Okay. Wow. Posts get long when you haven't updated for two weeks AND you have a second WIP. Yikes. I'll try to make this quick.

Also for the Knerd Girl Knits 2016 Bad-ass Women Craft Along round 1, one of the challenges is to knit from an historic knitting pattern. I desperately tried to find something that would be roughly the era of Outlander so I could double-dip into the Subway Knits Outlander KAL, but the earliest patterns I could find were Victorian era. One of the sites we were directed to was the Knitting Reference Library at University of Southampton, and I have a soft spot for Southampton, so I basically didn't consider looking anywhere else once I couldn't find pre-Victorian patterns. So, after going through a lot of books of doilies and all manner of impractical things I had no desire to knit, I came across "Weldon's Practical Needlework" which has patterns for all sort of things, but most specifically for my needs, a pattern for fold-over "Club Stockings" with a Union Jack, which basically means a regular sock with a fold-over section that has a Union Jack intarsia on it. And if you've been around the blog for a while you know how I can't resist putting a good logo on something.

Problem was, I didn't have the yarn I needed. I could have produced all the colours I needed (save white) in Knit Picks Palette, which does very well with colourwork, but because it's for socks, it needs to have nylon in it, which Palette does not. I had the grey and the red in Imagination, but not white or blue. And since I'm on a limited purchases plan, I was a bit stuck as to what I should do. And then it came to me. I pulled three balls of the heavier weight superwash wool sock yarn from my undyed yarn stash (yeah, I'm using business yarn for personal purposes. People do that all the time and it's not like anyone was buying it in a hurry lately) and dyed some up. 2 balls grey (which has now become the Lonely Mountain colourway thanks to fortuitous circumstances) and one ball half blue, a quarter red, and a quarter undyed. I was trying to estimate based on weights needed in the pattern, but the pattern is truly for knee-highs for men, so the stitch counts are very different than mine. I'll probaby have yarn left over, but there was no real sense in not just using the full skein.

So here's where it is now:

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(and here is the intarsia disaster mess I need to weave in at some point but have been putting off):

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The knitting is going fast, but I'm still skeptical that I'll be able to finish this sock and knit another sock by the end of February, even if it were the only thing I was working on. Also I pulled the floats too tight so it's puckering weird in the straight red column. It looks a bit too "homemade" for me. Odds are good I'll end up redoing this or doing it in a different way. But I do love the idea of the foldover sock! I think I'll make them for all my footy clubs someday.

So that brings us to the end of this very long post. I can almost guarantee you that I won't have a finished object for FO Friday, so I will hopefully see you back here next Wednesday with progress updates.

FO "Friday": It's Bigger Than I Am

First things first, I'm aware it's not Friday. I meant to do this yesterday, but I have a 20-point 3-page paper due tomorrow and a 30-point 2-page paper due Monday so priorities sort of necessitated a re-sort. I'm actually only posting now because I've turned in the former paper and I thought I owed myself 30 minutes of not doing schoolwork for a change. Plus I'm super happy with my FO and needed to tell everyone about it.

Second. It's true. This thing is bigger than me. Granted, I'm not that big, but still. I knit a thing for myself to wear that is both longer and wider than my actual self. Yikes.

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See. Bigger than I am. It's 90" long by 20" wide. I am probably 20-ish" wide at the widest point and 63" long.

For those who haven't been following along, this item is the Cocoon wrap by Anne Kuo Lukito. I knit it out of local Minnesota yarn that I'm very sure is not being made/sold anymore by a company called After the Sheep. It's 100% sport weight alpaca and it's soft and warm and cuddly as a wrap (it was formerly all these things as a sweater, but it's much happier being a wrap). Even though it wasn't cold in my house in the least after I finished weaving in the ends, I wrapped it around myself and then promptly declared I was never going to come out of it. Cocoon indeed.

Here are some photos of it so you can (hopefully) get a better idea of the stitch pattern. Sorry there aren't any photos of me wearing it, but by the time we got this all done it was dark outside and the inside lighting was horrible. I could model it now in the few hours of daylight we get up here during deep winter in the frozen north, but I'm not in the least presentable right now. I'll try to get a few on my project page and/or twitter and instagram in the next few weeks.

It's done and it's warm and it's snuggly and it's pretty and the lace blocked out wonderfully. Now if only I'd finished this while it was -10000 outside and not a perfectly reasonable 30F.

WIP Wednesday: Apparently 2016 is the year of the blue shawl/wrap

A few months ago (okay, so sometime this summer I started thinking about it, but it wasn't until fall that I started seriously thinking about it) I started thinking I should consider knitting a shawl. I'm still not sure what made me change my mind about not being a shawl knitter. I've gone to several classes about how to style shawls now and I'm still pretty convinced I'm going to look ridiculous, but I guess whatever. I didn't actually think the shawl thing would go anywhere (truthfully I still don't) since I don't even really wear the ready-made scarves/cowls that I've got (aside from winter stuff, though in the true cold I'm still finding myself reaching for a scarf), but many of my classmates in my graduate program would wrap themselves in huge (almost blanket-sized) wraps to keep warm in the overly air-conditioned buildings and I guess I got a little envy. And then I had 1200 yards of sport weight alpaca that had tried and failed at being a sweater, so the ginormous lace/drop-stitch wrap was born. 

And now...a true shawl.

I'd like to say that this came about because I was looking for something to do with the two skeins of blue (gradient) Kauni I bought at Shepherd's Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival back in 2014, but really it came about because I was trying to find a pattern I could knit that was even marginally inspired by a "woman in history" for the Knerd Girl Knits 2016 Badass Women Craft Along and I ran into a Faroese shawl pattern called Queen of the Waves which then made me think about the north coast of Denmark which then made me think about Kauni (which, truth be told., I did hope to use up this year). And the rest is history. Or will be, as soon as it's something besides 5 rows of 380 stitches of garter stitch.

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I have until the end of February to finish this. Others have knit it in a month. Those others were probably not simultaneously working 60% time while in 10 credits of graduate school on the internet and trying to also finish socks from a vintage knitting pattern that they still haven't dyed all the yarn for. No one ever said I didn't do things big.

Wish me luck.

WIP Wednesday: Giant Blue Wrap of Fuzziness

Hi again all! I know I haven't been around to show you what I'm actually crafting for a while (it's like I just nebulously mention the fact that I'm a crafter and then never offer up any proof), and truthfully although my brain desires me to continue updating you on my knitting, my time management often thwarts my best intentions. Moreso these days when things like school are looming over me ready to begin again. Where did my break go? (That's right...holidays with my family, re-re-locating back to Minneapolis, and mass chaos as I overhaul an apartment that now has WAY too much stuff in it, not just a standard amount of too much stuff.)

On to crafting. I intend to do a bit of a project bags FO parade for you at some point (though I do have a knitting FO for you this week), but for the WIP section you get...the first ever shawl/stole/wrap thing I've ever thought it might be a good idea to knit.

I took a breakout session class at Zombie Knitpocalypse 2015 last summer about shawl styling. I've never knit shawls, almost entirely because I don't actually know what I would do with one. I feel like I always look awkward with them and I don't even really wear the cowl/infinity loop neck decoration wraps that all the kids these days seem to be so into (although I now own two of them and on the occasions that I think about wearing them, I do enjoy them). But! In classes this summer (when the AC was on way too high, thank you School of Business) one of my classmates had this enormous rectangular scarf that she'd bought in France. It seemed to double as a blanket and a bit of a miniature cape thing. I mean, it was huge.

Fastforward to December. As I was contemplating my stash goals for 2016 and deciding to use the oldest yarns first, I saw that there was the remnant ball of sport weight blue alpaca that I'd once made into one of my long list of ill-fitting sweaters earlier on in my knitting career. The yarn wouldn't get gauge so I tried to do math (this is guaranteed to make things go wrong), plus it had a stitch pattern that pulled differently, plus the pattern was written for wool and this was all alpaca and the drape was wrong, etc. etc. etc. Add to it that at the time I had NO IDEA that alpaca was so much warmer than wool, so despite it's somewhat open weave and it being sport weight I was basically guaranteed to start sweating the second I put that sweater on indoors. So I did what any self-respecting knitter who had made a poor choice in yarn/project matching years ago when they didn't know better would do and I ripped it out.

I briefly considered just putting the yarn in the destash bin, but it's so soft and blue and was spun and dyed by a local artist who I don't think is selling anymore and it was some of the first nice yarn I got. So instead, I dove into Ravelry determined to find something to do with 1200 yards of sport weight handspun alpaca.

I knew I didn't want another sweater, or, at least, I was only going to make another sweater that was specifically designed for alpaca yarn and was really truly going to complement the unique qualities of this yarn (and also use it all because I dislike having remnant balls more than I dislike many things). I didn't find anything, so I was on to shawls. That's right. Non-shawl knitter (dare I say anti-shawl-knitter) me was thinking that a shawl would be perfect for this yarn. Now. The thing is. It's cold in Minnesota. And being able to wrap a thing around my face/neck/head under my coat is truly a thing of bliss. That object being made from alpaca...had to be even better.

I tested out a few ideas (the one I really wanted was only available if you bought a full book of patterns and I wasn't THAT ready to commit to shawl knitting) and finally settled on a long rectangular lace wrap (it's not a shawl...it's a scarf!!!) that utilises a lace border and drop stitches to make an open design. It's called Cocoon and is a free pattern by Anne Kuo Lukito. The directions are slightly confusing, as you actually cast on provisionally in the middle and knit one way, then pick up and knit the other way and the directions don't really say that. Also, it's all charted, which is okay for me but I know may not be okay for some. Still, it's easy to follow and I really don't think it NEEDS to be knit centre out and then centre out if you don't want to. I've only done a little over half of the main body (less the edging) mostly because I'm using reclaimed yarn so I don't actually know what half my yarn is, so I'm trying to play a yarn balance game. It's giant, so I imagine you'll be seeing it again at least next week if not also the week after, but here it is as of now:

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And here's a sort of a closeup of the pattern detail. It's unblocked lace, so it still looks terrible, but hopefully you can get some idea.

Stash Confessional: Yarn Accountability 2016

Well...for those of you who were following along in 2015, you'll probably know that I failed pretty miserably at the lofty yarn stashing goals I set for myself. And then I just plain stopped keeping track. Much of the purchasing was enabled by Jonas, make no mistake, and I did give away somewhat ridiculous amounts of yarn to various charity groups, so I don't feel entirely bad about myself, but as I'm still a person with limited space and even more limited funding, I've put my foot down about purchasing (not just yarn...everything) in 2016. Between this and setting my goals a bit lower, hopefully 2017 will start with a more happy celebration of my 2016 successes instead of me still feeling like I own way more of everything than I really ought. Don't get me wrong, there's NO WAY AT ALL that I'm getting my stash down to even what I'd consider a reasonable size with just the amount of knitting/gifting I'm able to accomplish in one year, but I want to at least look back at 2016 and see that I didn't take in more than I removed.

I started 2015 with 55,081.4 yards/50308.7 metres of yarn. My goal was to end the year with 25308.7 metres of yarn, which I knew was basically ridiculous, but I also knew I needed to set the bar high if I was going to make it mean anything to myself. I did well the first month and actually donated around 4000 metres of yarn to the charity group at Yarn Harbour in Duluth, but things fell off pretty sharply after that. I did have another round of donating yarn in October when the lovely ladies of the KnerdGirl Knits Podcast were doing a charity drive as part of their year-long Bad Ass Women in STEM Craft Along (they're doing women in arts and humanities this year if you want in on the action. It's really low-key and super fun and features great prizes--some of them by yours truly.) So...how did I do? Well...

Here's where we're starting 2016 in terms of yarn stash. I think I got everything that I bought in 2015 and had not bothered to stash for one reason or another, but I fear I may still be missing some things. If that's the case I will, of course, update accordingly. There are still two Gilmore Girls yarn club skeins outstanding, so those will need to be added, but I don't remember what bases I ordered yet.

Here's where I'm starting the year in terms of yarn stash (yes...it's more than I started with last year despite knitting 11,461 yards into projects (granted a chunk of that was a REALLY LONG Doctor Who scarf), and donating/destashing around 19,000 yards:

Skeins of yarn: 230.67

Yards of yarn:  59,459.6

Metres of yarn: 54,369.6

Grams of yarn: 19, 054

This means my yarn acquisition in 2016 was around 26,000 yards. Which was basically the amount I wanted to get rid of. Yep.

With this year's resolutions being all about not acquiring things, I'm hoping I can make a significant dent. I did well last year with donating yarn, but this year the sale/trade yarn has been pretty pared down (because of all last year's donations), so even if I sold/donated all the things I'm willing to part with, I would only decrease the stash by 69.35 skeins/14,200.8 yards/12985.3 meters/4004 grams (roughly 20% of the total), which is an okay number, but not staggering.

Admittedly, my goal is to knit through all the yarn in my stash that's been there since pre-2014, which isn't really that much yarn if you only count the things that aren't in my trade/sell bin (around 6000 yards/5500 meters). Considering even in my light year of knitting this year due to school I managed 11,000 yds, I feel like this is an obtainable goal. If I also include the trade/sell bin (either by donating--although this is all stuff I like and would be willing to knit, so I'd rather either knit it or sell it--or by knitting it or destashing it) I would have to get rid of a further 8000 yards/7400 meters for a total of 14,000 yards/13,000 meters of destashing in 2016. I fully believe I can make it happen...tge trick will be trying to make sure that preference is given to the older yarns. I'm not going to completely adhere myself to that (if newer yarns need to be knit for a specific reason then why prohibit it?), but I'm going to try to look to those older yarns as I plan out projects and have leeway.

But! Most of all...I need to minimise yarn buying. As I've given myself a total of 12 purchases (of anything deemed non-essential/gift for others by Jonas, who has been appointed acquisitions commissioner) with Jonas setting the total dollar value allotted to each purchase, I think I can curb this stash before it REALLY gets too big for its space. Wish me luck though...Jonas is weak under pressure, now also has a yarn-buying habit, and is a horrible enabler if I use the word cute when talking about how much I like it.

WIP Wednesday: Socks and Hats

Well... part of a sock and one hat. Still, I know it's a bit weird to see me with more than one WIP. It happens on occasion.

The sock is yarn that I dyed inspired by one of my favourite football teams (Real Madrid) and their amazing pink/black/white kits they've been wearing all season. They were (until today...) competing for a second straight European championship, and I dyed the yarn while watching them beat their in-town rivals and cast on the sock during their match last Wednesday then knit some more rows on it today. They lost, but I'll still wear my socks proudly.

The colourway is "Real Fans Wear Pink" and the base is my superwash sock base, which is 75% Superwash wool and 25% nylon in a fingering weight.

The sock pattern is from Socks a la Carte by Jonelle Raffino and Katherine Cade. It's a pretty cool book that gives you a bunch of different cuff options, a bunch of different leg options, and a bunch of different foot/toe/heel options that you can combine together to make your own unique socks and hopefully will inspire you to design your own. There's even a cool flip book part in the back that lets you see how the cuff/leg/foot combo you choose will look together.

Since Real means "Royal" and the Real Madrid logo has a crown in it, I went with the top that looks a bit like a crown. Since they're one of the most high profile teams in the world, I chose the cuff called "eyes on you" since I thought it was only appropriate. I still haven't decided on a foot/toe/heel, but I'll let you know when I get there.

Second...return of the stochastic hat. I first posted about this two weeks ago and then subsequently finished the hat. However! It was way too small even for my tiny head, so I knew it wouldn't fit a regular-sized adult. I left it alone, figuring I'd finished what I needed to for the challenge, but over the weekend I found myself project-less and having just completed another Turn-A-Square to use up some acrylic I bought for a different project (more on that when I talk FOs), I ripped back and re-started this hat. This time I changed some things.

For one thing, I'd run out of the red yarn when I got to the crown shaping, so all of a sudden there was a hard grey line against the red. It didn't look as bad as I thought it would, but it still wasn't what I wanted. For another I knew I needed to be sure to control the floats. So, what I did was rip back to where I'd joined the ribbing together, then knit 10 rows straight in grey before jumping in to the stochastic pattern at row 11. I've now knit 11-25 in the stochastic pattern and will begin the crown decreases in straight red. Hopefully I have enough. I'm playing yarn chicken right now. I'm hoping to wrap up the crown decreases tonight or tomorrow.

FOs: House Stark Fingerless Mitts and Fifth Doctor Socks!

It's still not Friday (but it's kinda close) and these have been finished for two weeks now, but better late than never, right.

In my post about my resolutions for March, I alluded to these finished objects, so I should probably show them to you. Plus they're pretty awesome.

First: T.A.R.D.I.Socks by Anna Richardson (round 2)

It's really hard to photograph your own feet.

So... I mentioned above that this is round 2 of these particular socks. I also mentioned in my resolutions post that these socks resulted in a net gain of yarn. Here's the story.

You can first start here with the story of how I decided to knit myself knee-high socks for my Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who) costume even though I had never knit a single sock before in my life and previously had no desire to do so. So I knit myself knee high socks out of a cotton/bamboo/spandex blend yarn (because the costume was originally for summer) following a pattern that's lovely and beautifully charted, but presumes you've actually done some moderate amount of sock knitting and are using wool and know how to adjust socks to fit your feet. Needless to say, I was setting myself up for failure before I even started. So I knit them over the course of 6-weeks desperately trying to finish them in time for the convention I needed my costume for (the only time in my life I've ever knit more than one thing at a time. I will never do it again.), and I was pretty proud of myself. For one thing, I've heard many people who attempted these socks either don't finish or take forever to finish since there's a lot of purling and cabling and charting and they're REALLY LONG, so I was pretty impressed that I not only managed to make socks that look like socks, but that they were also socks that experienced sock knitters don't even finish. So I put them on for the convention and they were HUGE. Four inches too long, too big in the gusset, bunchy in my shoes and didn't stay up if I took more than 10 steps. So...they were socks, but they weren't socks that fit.

Fast forward to now. I needed to re-wear the costume for a Doctor Who panel at a convention in April, and I knew I needed to re-make the socks. I'd been trying to knit my way through the basic sock patterns in Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up book so that I could have some knowledge of how to make socks fit my feet, and I'd also knit the (still don't fit) butterfly knee-highs to try to figure out the calf sizing. Armed with this knowledge, I ripped out the socks (3.5 balls of RIDICULOUSLY SPLITTY YARN), re-wound, and started again with a modified pattern. I dropped a needle size so I didn't have to modify the width, but I took out a portion of the chart and recalculated the row count so I could shorten the socks and still keep the calf shaping. I managed to use about 55 fewer yards (50 fewer meters)/15 fewer grams of yarn this time, which is where the net gain came in. But the socks are the right height and fit better around my calf (though still not perfect, but I devised a solution with a ribbon that holds them up just fine) and I'm much happier with them. They are a bit of a slog though, so I can definitely see how people who don't need them for a specific purpose on a deadline would get tired of doing it. The only reason I made it through without quitting was that I knew I needed them for the costume.

In addition, this yarn is terrible. I won't mention what it is here (although you can see it if you look on my project page), but I don't think I'll ever knit with it again. I chose it because I wanted lighter weight and hopefully cooler socks to wear with the costume in the summer, but the cotton and bamboo don't have the memory to hold the socks up and the spandex makes the yarn INCREDIBLY splitty, making it very difficult to work with, especially when you're knitting and purling and cabling with yarnovers. I'm not impressed and it definitely wasn't fun to knit it twice.


Second: Game of Thrones House Stark Fingerless Mitts

These are for the Game of Thrones swap package I put together (which I'll tell you about as soon as a package actually arrives for me and I can do a sent/received post like I did for the Downton Abbey swap). These are my own design, modified from a very basic fingerless mitts pattern. I've done the same sigil on a hat and on an eReader case, so it was just a matter of modifying the stitch count and re-charting it. The grey main colour is Knit Picks Palette in Ash and the sigil colour is Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted in the Castle Walls colourway, which screamed Winterfell to me from the moment I saw it.

These were super quick and easy to knit up and my recipient loved them. I'm not really into fingerless mitts (I find them hugely impractical) but I'm thinking about modifying the other designs I have (Targaryen, Lannister, and Night's Watch) into the fingerless mitts too. Someday I'll write up the patterns for actual. I started writing up the hat pattern, but I never finished it. These are super fun and a great way to show your support for various houses. If you're interested, I sometimes list the hats (and may eventually list the eReaders and the fingerless mitts) on my Etsy page. Let me know.

FO(s): High Tea Cuffs and Jabot

Hi all,

I have one totally finished object today (blocked and the ends woven in) and one that is completed, but hasn't been blocked or had the ends woven in, so I figured I'd talk about them together. They are a set, after all.

If you've been following along, you know I've been working on the High Tea Cuffs and Jabot by Andrea Jurgrau from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 for my swap partner for the Subway Knits Downton Abbey swap. Well...they are done. 

The jabot was easy and basically took the lace motif from the knits, applied a second panel of the lace motif that you attached over the top, then knit the scarf in the twisted ribbing for a desired length, then repeated the lace motif. It's a nice construction and very straightforward. Again, I was using the Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted Sock Yarn in the Ruby Slippers colourway, and I am no less enamoured with it than I was at the start. It's beautiful yarn and has a really nice hand and just the littlest bit of the alpaca halo. The hand-painting is gorgeous and I think it made a really beautiful end product.

The cuffs were also easy, but because the Imagination yarn (never stops being funny) is fingering weight instead of lace weight, it did require me to do a bit of math and chart fudging. I knit both the mitts and the scarf on a size 3 needle instead of the size 1 called for by the pattern, which meant I got the row gauge right, but not the stitch gauge. I thought I'd calculated my gauge right, but apparently I hadn't because the first time I made the mitts they were far too small to fit any adult-sized hand, so I re-knit them. Thankfully they're a very quick knit and once you're out of the lace section it's just 20 or so rows of the twisted stitch ribbing with a few decrease rows and check points and they go pretty fast. So I re-knit them with 3 pattern repeats instead of the 2 I started with and the 4 called for by the pattern, and they are slightly large on my very tiny hands pre-blocking, so I think they will fit just fine. Here's hoping. The scarf is probably skinnier than it's supposed to be because of the gauge things, but it's working out okay for me so I'm going to leave it. It's a scarf, it doesn't exactly have to "fit" a particular size as long as it's long enough.

So, this part of the swap package is done. Still much to do, but it feels good to have the knitting over with. The added bonus of this project is that I can count it toward the Stitch Red KAL that Geknitics and Knotty Knerd at Knerd Girl Knits are running! Hooray for one project serving two purposes! I love it when things come together like that.

Finished Object: Summer Cardigan

Perhaps you remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned I was playing around with the Malabrigo Rios I’ve had laying around for years now. Well, I finished the cardigan I was knitting with it! Which also means that I’ve successfully completed a second sweater for myself, and this one actually fit on the first try!

The pattern is: Katrina Ballerina Lace Layering Cardigan by Nicole Feller Johnson. Photos below, then my thoughts on knitting it.

(Sorry about the poor photo quality on the first two photos. SO just hasn’t yet mastered the art of not mashing your finger down on the shutter button so hard that it makes the camera shake, yet.)





The Malabrigo yarn was absolutely lovely to work with. I chose the short-sleeved cardigan because I thought I’d run out of yarn (I only had three skeins and all the patterns I was seeing called for 4 at a minimum), but I ended up with nearly a full skein leftover, even after adding a few extra rows to make the lace begin where I wanted it to. This means I get to do another project — the Evenstar gloves by Audrey M. It seems perhaps a bit silly to some of you to undertake a summer cardigan and follow it up with a pair of mittens, but as it’s mid-April and where I live there’s snow on the ground and the current temperature is 17F (-8C), I wonder if I shouldn’t perhaps have started with gloves and moved on to making the sweater sometime in May or June. I did wear it the other day though, because I finished it (really it just took me two weeks to buy buttons and then sew them on because I’m a procrastinator about such things) and I was damn well going to wear it. You can see my creative solution to the short sleeve sweater in winter problem in those photos.

The pattern itself is also lovely. It was a breeze to knit, being just several rows of stockinette stitch while you work the raglan increases for the sleeves and then moving in to a simple two row lace repeat over and over until you get the right length. The most difficult part was getting the arrow points in the lace at the bottom, but that could be because I was trying to do it while we had a friend over to watch Frozen and I had to try to count and it just wasn’t happening for me. Once the film ended and everyone was out of the flat, I managed them just fine. It’s not a free pattern, but it’s only $7US, so it’s very manageable. It’s also incredibly well written. The instructions are laid out in sections with adorable ballet terms and they’re clear and easy to follow no matter what size you’re making. I would take the advice of the pattern and size it up one if you’re planning to wear the sweater over anything substantial. I made a size M and, as I think you can see from the photos I’m a rather petite person and it fits me well.

In summary: I adore Malabrigo Rios (while I was wearing the sweater yesterday I kept squishing the end of it in my hand because the yarn was so lovely) and hope I can find some again and create something else lovely, and this pattern is a dream to knit, fits like a charm, and is really the perfect pattern for a summer layering cardigan. I have dreams of making several more in different colours and perhaps seeing what it would do if I moved on to a cotton/linen yarn (more on Knit Picks CotLin in my next post) to make it even lighter for the hot summer months.

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.

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.