Knit Sisters

I sat down last night and sketched out Blue Bamboo.

 

On this one I’m thinking ahead and deciding on a size range from the start.  I thought about things like armhole depth, shoulder width, and length for the whole size range.  (And I wrote them down, too!  You would think this would be self-apparent, but unfortunately it is often not so.  I have fallen victim to the “I’m sure I’ll remember that” syndrome more often than I like to admit.)

Remember the charts?

 

This is where I ended up.  It’s still not quite what I want it to be; I want the leaves on the back motif to be a bit longer and more bamboo-like, which naturally requires some re-charting.  But this is enough to be going on with.

And then I sat on the couch late at night and cast on!

 

The embryonic Blue Bamboo back. 

I’m planning on side vents, so I’ll be working the back and fronts separately for a few inches before joining in the round.  You didn’t actually think I’d be knitting this in pieces, did you?  Never!

Onward.

P.S.  Ellen, I wore your silk shawl this morning when I walked the dog.  I felt simultaneously warm and glamorous!  Handknits can do that for a person.

On Saturday I met my friend Deb at the local Borders for some knitterly camaraderie.  We had a lovely couple of hours:  knitting, chatting, and making fun of some of the more horrifying designs in the new knitting mags. 

 

I worked on (and am continuing to work on) a new design which I am hoping to submit to Knitty.  Unfortunately, since I am hoping to submit it, I don’t feel I can or should offer photos on the blog.  So I offer you the following pictures and discussion of a UFO which has been languishing in a bag for several months. 

The yarn is Classic Elite “Studio” 70% viscose, 30% linen, which I purchased a few years back at The Studio in KC.  It was on sale, so I bought all I could of five colors.  The yarn has a beautiful sheen and is very soft; in fact, being a soft-spun single, it is almost fragile.  I thought for a long time about what to make with this yarn.  It had to be something multi-colored, since I didn’t have enough of any one color to make an entire sweater, but I did have more of the light green than any of the other colors.  What I finally settled on was a patterned yoke sweater in the style of a Lopi pullover.

 

In fact, I stole the yoke pattern from a sweater in The Best of Lopi.  Of course, the gauge on this yarn is smaller than the Lopi yarns; I think I’m knitting it to about 5.5 stitches per inch.  (This is one problem with setting projects aside for so long–you forget the vital statistics.  You have to hope that you had the foresight to write them down somewhere.  Then you have to hope that you can find the place where you wrote them down.)

I was a little worried that translating the yoke pattern to a much smaller gauge would throw off the decreasing rate, but actually, it has seemed to work just fine.  Actually, in my case, it’s an increasing rate, because I’m working from the top down.

It took me a little while to get the hang of stranding with this yarn, since it has no elasticity whatsoever.  (I wouldn’t recommend that for a first stranding project!)  I’m still a little worried that the yarn really is too fragile for what I’m asking it to do, and that once the sweater is finished it will just pill and abrade itself into nothingness as it’s worn.  But it’s too late to turn back now.  Ripping this stuff out is just the kiss of death for the yarn.

But it sure is pretty, no?  Maybe if I can’t wear it I can hang it on the wall.

I have to report that, though the I-cord edging on Nicola did not take as long as I had feared, it did take longer than I had hoped.  Nevertheless, I did not find it necessary to stick a pin in my eye this time, and I was able to finish the sweater last night.  (Well, the ends are not worked in, but that hardly counts after all that I-cord.)

Here she is:

                                                    (I apologize for the absence of a picture of me actually wearing Nicola, but it is just way too hot and muggy this afternoon to even think of donning a woolly sweater.)

A detail of the I-cord edging around the neck:

 

I had a hard time figuring out what sort of closure I wanted to put on the fronts.  I ended up leaving two “holes” up top where I didn’t attach the I-cord,

                                                   so that I could close the sweater with some sort of pin or clasp.

                                                (This second pin is a shawl pin from Designs by Romi, and it is truly a beautiful thing.  That’s a big chunk of turquoise there.)

I can also just leave the fronts open with nothing closing them, and the openings between the sweater front and the I-cord don’t show at all.  Or I could find two cool buttons and attach them to each other in a cufflink sort of way and poke the buttons through the openings.  I feel quite clever about this hedging of my bets.

The stats:

Pattern:  Nicola cardigan, adapted from the Nicola pullover in Simply Shetland

Yarn:  Neveda Alpaca 70% wool, 20% acrylic, 10% alpaca

Yarn source:  Elann

Time to finish:  2 weeks and 2 days

The baby judging last Friday evening at the Fairfax fair turned out to be not quite what I was expecting.  Although there were babies,

                                     we did not actually judge them.

Instead, we judged the aspirants to the Little Mr. and Miss Fairfax crown.  These were 4-to 6-year-olds who were dressed to the nines.

                                       A few hopefuls waiting for their turn on stage.

I had two fellow judges:

                                             Rob and Jesse, who will be a sophomore at the University of Missouri this fall and is studying nursing.

Our scoring sheet.

                                                            And you can see from this that we actually were to take points away if the kids were crying!  (Although thankfully none of them did.)

There was quite a crowd there. 

                                  (This is about half the crowd; there was a roughly equal number sitting on the other side.)

And this guy:

There were also homemade funnel cakes, which looked pretty darned good.  I was lucky I didn’t have any money on me.  (Or unlucky, depending upon how you look at it.)

We finally picked our winners, and they seemed a little stunned.  (This little girl is indeed going to be in Rob’s kindergarten class this fall.) 

 

All in all, it was a good time, and especially good to see a small rural town that is still a vibrant community, whose occupants seem genuinely proud of their tiny town.  Fairfax seemed idyllic that night–the rural America that we would all like to believe once existed and might still exist if only we were lucky enough to stumble onto it.

P. S.  I’m a little stalled on that I-cord edging for Nicola.  I picked up the stitches around the borders,     

 

and started the I-cord, of which I have about 6 inches done.

Now I’ll be sticking that pin in my eye.

My husband Rob has a new job starting this fall.  He is going to be teaching art at a small school nearby, and when I say “small,”  I do mean small.  160 kids K-12.  (The 4th grade has 6 kids.)  He is also, because everyone does double duty at these small schools, the librarian.  And because he is the librarian, he has an extended contract and has been at the school working all this week even though school doesn’t officially start until next week.

So, Monday or Tuesday, he was asked by the school secretary if he wanted to judge babies at the town fair on Friday night.  “People in town want to meet the new teachers,” she said.  Also, apparently, the new teachers’ spouses, because I am going to be judging babies tonight as well.

How in the world does one judge other peoples’ babies?  Are they going to give me some criteria to follow?  A rubric?  Do I take off points if the baby cries?  It’s great that the community wants to meet the new teachers; I give them full marks for that.  But this particular activity seems just as likely to make enemies of the townsfolk as friends.  What if we place the mayor’s baby dead last, for example?  Or worse, the president of the school board’s?  The pitfalls are numerous and hidden. 

Oh, Lordy.  Good thing we both have natural charm and good looks. 

I finished the first sleeve of the Nicola cardigan the other night.

                                                    As you can see, I did decide to make these 3/4 length.  (My sister-in-law Pam agreed that this would be a good idea.  Thanks, Pam!)

The other emergent sleeve:

                                           Not yet very emergent.

Here’s the I-cord edging on the sleeve.

Did I ever mention that I really dislike knitting sleeves?  I don’t fall prey to second sock syndrome so much, but I definitely have second sleeve syndrome.  In fact, I believe I have first sleeve syndrome.  It’s unclear to me why I feel this way; no doubt it’s some deep seated moral or psychological deficiency, but there it is.  Yet I am pressing on with these sleeves.

The back:

 

I’m hoping to finish this weekend.  I’ll need to lay in some Honey Brown for that I-cord, though.

(OK, Rob just told me that apparently “babies” means children age birth to six years.  This is not reassuring.  Six-year-olds could actually be his students in Kindergarten.  Oy.)

Well, I gotta tell you, today I got nothing.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Plus I’m feeling just a little cranked out over this whole “back to school” idea.  My free days are growing short and I’m beginning to feel a little frantic, running around madly trying to cram in as much relaxation and fun as possible into these last precious days of summer.  That can make a girl tense and prone to snap at her loved ones.

So, in lieu of true blog content, I offer these photos of the day.

                                                                                         Harvey, with his brand-new backpack laden with brand-new school supplies.  He’s ready.

                                     Hugo, who says, “I don’t really want you to go back to school.  I like it when you’re home all day.”  I do too, Mr. Puppy, I do too.

                                   My progress on the Nicola cardigan.  I’m coming along on that first sleeve.  I think I’ll make these 3/4 length.  Also, I decided to finish all the edges on this thing with applied I-cord.  I know that I will want to stick a pin in my eye regret this decision 5 minutes after I start the I-cord and discover that I’ve only knitted 1/4 inch of it and then do a quick mental calculation of how long it will take me to go around the whole durned edge at that rate.  Good times ahead.

                                      Brown wool and chocolate angora combed together.  I want to spin this up real, real bad.  But first I must finish spinning this:

                                            Lime green superwash wool that I’m spinning to a sockweight 2-ply.  I have a plan for this which involves planting little tufts of the combed waste fiber into the 2-ply as I ply it.  Won’t that be fun?  (Picture the tufted yarn as the sock cuffs with some plain 2-ply for the feet.)

And finally,

                                               Rob.  With an egg. 

‘Cause nothing’s sexier than a man holding a hard-boiled egg.

Last Tuesday evening, seized by a wild and restless longing, I started a new project.

 

This is the Nicola pullover from Simply Shetland, and I hadn’t even really been contemplating making it.  So, I found some likely yarn in the stash (that I had already swatched in stockinette) and cast on.  Of course, being constitutionally unable to leave well enough alone, I turned it into a cardigan and made a few other changes to the pattern:  set in the sleeves a bit more, included short row shoulder shaping, changed the neckline shaping, and naturally I plan on knitting the sleeves from the top down.  Other than that, it’s just like the picture.  (Except for the color and the yarn.)

Here’s my progress as of last night.

 

I started the first sleeve last night while watching The 4400.

Here’s a detail of the stitch pattern.  Simple, yet effective.

The yarn is Neveda “Alpaca,” 70% wool, 20% acrylic, 10% alpaca, which I bought several years ago from Elann.  Some while back, I tried to coerce this yarn into becoming an Alice Starmore Aran sweater, with somewhat limited success.  Alice Starmore, knitting genius notwithstanding, knits everything to a stunningly tight gauge, and this yarn, while making beautiful cables, had approximately the hand of cast iron at her gauge.  Plus, my hands cramped so bad from knitting to that gauge I could scarcely hold a pencil.  I ripped it out.  Now it is becoming the Nicola cardigan with very good grace.

And, because I spent a good portion of my weekend outside in 1 million degree heat watching Rob play tennis in a local tournament, (and he kicked some booty, I might add!) and one cannot reasonably knit a woolly sweater in 1 million degree heat, I also started a new pair of socks.

 

Isn’t this just the prettiest, girliest sock cuff imaginable?  Even Rob, secure in his masculinity as he is, has not been tempted to say “Are those for me?” 

S4, aka Sarah’s Simple Summer Sweater (sizes 1X-5X) Fits bust sizes: (1X 49-51, 2X 52-54, 3X 55-57, 4X 58-60, 5X 61-63)

A link to this range of sizes is also available under “Free Patterns” in the side bar. For more and larger pictures, click here. For all posts on this sweater and its evolution, click the category “S4: Sarah’s Simple Summer Sweater” in the sidebar.

Please note that if you downloaded the previous pdf, there has been a correction on page 3. This minor change is highlighted for your convenience. Happy knitting!

S4, aka Sarah’s Simple Summer Sweater Fits bust sizes: xxs 34-36 (xs 37-39, sm 40-42, med 43-45, lg 46-48)

Link also available under “Free Patterns” in the side bar. For more and larger pictures, click here. For all posts on this sweater and its evolution, click the category “S4: Sarah’s Simple Summer Sweater” in the sidebar.

I’d like to claim that my time with Rogue has all been a joy, a lark, a summer fling, but I’m afraid there is a darker side. See this?

And this?

And, from the other side, this?

Hard won, hard won. What I never mentioned before when I was proudly showing you all those photos of the emergent hood (and brazenly fishing for compliments) was that when you finish with the two sides of the hood, you must graft them together at the top. Since this is a cable pattern, that means grafting in both stockinette and purl and alternating between the two over stitch combinations of two, three, four, and five.

I’ve grafted before, I thought. No problem. What I failed to appreciate was that I had never before grafted a combination of both knit and purl stitches with aran weight wool in 98 degree heat and 85 percent humidity.

So what?, I thought. I’ve got the chops. And with a little help from Montse Stanley, of Knitter’s Handbook fame, I can do this thing. Now you must understand that I love Montse Stanley. I love her not only for giving me instructions for eleventeen million cast-ons and cast-offs, but for help with beading and seams and…the list goes on. But there is this side to Montse, a Calvinist side, an uncompromising side, a side that has no truck with the kind of person who would call knitting “just” a craft or who might (great seething intake of breath here) suggest a quick, half-*ssed fix for a mistake.

Here’s Montse on errors (emphasis, by the way, as in the original):
“DON’T LIE TO YOURSELF. You will know the mistake is there and you may even feel compelled to point it out to others. It is better to face the truth and correct the mistake, no matter how painful.”

On a lapse in tension:
“Stitches that are uneven are NOT a charming sign of a handmade item. THEY ARE A SIGN OF POOR CRAFTSMANSHIP.”

Every time I try to rationalize some cockamamie solution (one that does not involve frogging, you see) to some awful knitting mistake I’ve made, I can hear her words ringing in my head: “…poor craftsmanship, poor craftsmanship, POOR CRAFTSMANSHIP…”

Okay, Montse, okay! I’ll do it right. Just leave me in peace. Just…get out of my head!

Montse was pretty much her old reliable self on the question of grafting—how it must be invisible, how you must not pull it too tight or leave it too loose—but after half an hour of struggling to understand her grafting instructions, I was not my old reliable self. I was sweating, I was angry, my yarn was knotting up, I was splitting stitches with my tapestry needle, and the graft was looking like a “sign of poor craftsmanship.” Actually, it looked worse than that. It looked like the work of malicious wild tree elves on crack.

I may have said something along the lines of, “The devil take Montse Stanley and the friggin’ high horse she rode in on! Oh, and you know what, Montse? I would never feel compelled to ‘point out a mistake to others.’ You know why? Because I’m not crazy. I’m not an obsessive compulsive like you. I’m not…” But then I realized with a thud that I am both obsessive compulsive and slightly crazy.

Just like Montse! My heroine!

Anyway, I let it sit overnight while I tried to decide if I ever wanted to knit again, let alone do this graft. The next day, I tried again with another set of instructions (sorry for the betrayal, Montse, but it just wasn’t working out between us…) and things went much better. I used the instructions for Kitchener stitch in Simple Socks by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, which for whatever reason was much more intuitively obvious to me. For the purl grafting, well, I just kind of had to feel the magic.

After all that,

“Is my head still here or has it exploded?”

Rogue, the Vest Years:

Now the only thing that stands between me and an FO are those sleeves. More on that Friday…