Mishap

Just finished knitting up the front and joining those front panels to the back on this sweater.

It wasn't until I put the photo on my computer and rotated it 90° that I noticed the problem. It's rather more visible in the photo than it is in real life, but yeah, it's definitely there.

What do you think? Live with it? Or unpick the shoulder seam and rip back?

Idiot forgets knitting, makes do

Is anyone else thrown off by the timing of Thanksgiving this year? I intended to spend the week of Thanksgiving with my sister in Maine. Instead, I booked my flight for the week before. I have continued to confuse dates (when rescheduling a haircut, when signing out for the week on my work intranet, etc.)

I can't blame my date confusion for this blunder though: I left on vacation without my messenger bag. This means I brought no knitting with me on the trip (or books, but I had an extra book in my suitcase). I don't think I've flown without a knitting project since 2000. So a trip to the knitting shops was called for, and long story short:


The yarn is Halcyon's Botanica, a line I've never noticed before. It has beautiful stitch definition and an attractive pallet. My plan is to knit a mostly plain, olive-colored sweater, with a few maize-colored stripes for accent.

Downeast Maine is lovely this week: cold but sunny. The cold gives me an excuse to wear thick, handknit sweaters, and I'm looking forward to being able to wear sweaters like this one in progress on days like today.

Wash's Sweater Pattern

It's been quiet here because I've spent the weeks since the Olympics creating the pattern for Wash's Sweater.

Initially, I used Excel to create my adaptations of the cable pattern originally drafted by Maggs. I found great instructions for charting cables by Marnie MacLean. Results were satisfactory, but I wanted something better. I played with a few knitting fonts, and then shelled out the money for Knit Visualizer.

This program is awesome. Every stitch I needed was right there in the library. It took me almost no time at all to translate my work into Knit Visualizer. And the program can automatically generate a chart legend and text translation of each row.

I made my prototype sweater in the round, because that's what I do. But I could tell from screen caps that the actual sweater in the Firefly episodes was knit flat and seamed together, like Aran sweaters traditionally are. So working from my copy of Aran Knitting, I started drafting the pattern in Alice Starmore style, later revising toward a more Knitty.com style. Jeremy told me I should write up the pattern exactly as I did it, so when I was done with the flat version, I worked on a circular version. It's not exactly what I did: more like what I would do if I did it again.

I've spent the last week hammering away at the layout. This morning, I used PDF Online to convert my documents, and slapped together a quick homepage for the patterns.


I'd love to know what you think. Any suggestions for improving the instructions, charts, and layout, or offers to improve the graphics I've slapped together for the pattern and website are welcome.

Final Rounds

The Olympic Torch will be doused at noon, Eastern Daylight Time, on Sunday. Coincidentally, I have to start work at that time, but I'm off today and tomorrow, which (barring accidents) should be plenty of time to finish my Ravelympics project.


What remains is to shape the front of the neck, join the shoulders, lengthen and attach the sleeves, and knit the collar. The first of these remaining tasks will be the trickiest for me. No pattern; just working from screen caps.

It probably would be bad luck at this time to say, "I am a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar."

Ravelympic Moment

[fanfare] DA-da-da DA-da-da DA-da DA-dl-aaaaa! [/fanfare]

Yarmando has performed strongly so far during the Ravelympics, rapidly progressing through the qualifying rounds of his event, "Work In Progress Wrestling." But he made a fatal error in judgment this evening which, even more than costing him the gold, could place him out of medal contention entirely.

Fans will know that Yarmando began training with Team Browncoat in early March. His commitment was spotty, but he seized the chance to enter Ravelympics and emerge a champion, with the Wash Sweater finally finished.

When the torch was lit, the body was already complete to the underarms, and the sleeves had barely begun. Yarmando chose to work the sleeves with a high degree of difficulty: knitting both sleeves at once. This would slow progress, but also insure that the sleeves were identical in construction, the rates of increase perfectly synchronized.


For extra style points, Yarmando had chosen to knit the sweater seamlessly in the round. Some of the judges are likely to subtract points from the authenticity of the finished object, but others will appreciate the adherence to traditions set by the great Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Sadly, Yarmando discovered that, for this particular design, Zimmerman's ingenious method of combining the sleeves with the upper body would clash with the established cables. Though it might appear to observers that he was showing strong progress, he was losing his form. After some soul-searching, he forfeited the latest round (the latest 8 rounds, in fact), losing an entire day's work.

Hope is not lost. Yarmando performed well in this event in the past, and so his fans and coaches know he has it in him. But is there time for him to change design direction before the Olympic torch is extinguished?

Copycat Spiral Yoke

Last year, I was out in Maine when BrooklynTweed posted photos of Cobblestone on his blog. I should have started knitting it immediately. Instead, I started knitting something else that I just had to frog in favor of the Cobblestone. His Spiral Yoke sweater looks intriguing, but I have my doubts. Still, I've learned my lesson:

Obey the Tweed.

I made my sister drive me to yarn stores in search of some worsted merino. I hit the jackpot at Purl Diva. Loki the shop dog was hopped up on dog treats and kept barking at me, but Ellen was great. She looked up the sweater on Ravelry, suggested good alternative yarns, and I found ample amounts.

I've started the project three times, trying to get the tubular cast-on right. Finally, I found TECHknitter's instructions. Easy to follow, quick, and with a beautiful result. I was so turned on by this cast-on that I....

Well, I better just stop there.


Thanks, Gerald, for the bit of Blimey that not only completed Mike's socks but provided a bright contrasting tail for the tubular cast-on.

I'll work on this until the Olympics start. I've joined Team Browncoat in Ravelympics, hoping to complete the Wash Sweater before the Olympic flame goes out on August 24.

Wash Sweater, back on track?

I worked on the Wash Sweater for about a month, then stalled out two months ago, when it came time to plan the sleeves. Not that the sleeves will be hard, but some decisions are required, and whenever I tried to summon up the energy to make these decisions, I was struck by this stark fact:

I don't have enough yarn to finish.

I got the yarn from Mary who was stash-busting. She got it from Handpaintedyarn.com. When I started the project, there was no more to be found in this color ("Sea Foam," which you might
think would be green but actually is the dirty beige color that real sea foam tends to be). I thought I might try to find something close, then dye whole garment when it was finished. But even better: when I went to the site this morning, there were three skeins to be had.

So. Back at it. I've been keeping my planning notes in a Google document, which I just made public today, so you can follow along if you want.

Meanwhile, Dodger reminds me that, if I decide not to finish, he'd be perfectly happy to make use of the work-in-progress.

Green for St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In celebration, I'm wearing the Enormous Green Thing to work (with a baseball jersey underneath, because the Green Thing is itchy).

I am a leaf on the wind

There's a Ravelry group for Firefly/Serenity fans, and of course I belong to it. It's longest thread is "The real Firefly knitting challenge," a discussion about a particular Aran sweater worn by my favorite character in a couple episodes.

Ravelers KnottyLa and Maggs have done some amazing pioneering work to replicate the cables. I was dying to get started on this, especially now that the tweed pullover is done, so I grabbed yarn and needles and tried my hand at cable design.

This was some serious fun. I love cables. Mom taught me how to cross stitches for a cable before she taught me how to purl.

I've done lots of cables, but I'd never tried to replicate something from pictures, building the design stitch-by-stitch, row-by-row. I was pretty proud of myself, then Maggs put out her charts, and I realized that I'd made the cables too thin -- they should be three stitches wide instead of the two I used.

I decided it was time to jump in. I've got gauge (4 sts/in) and I've got a general idea where I'm going. So I cast-on and started the ribbing.

And because the outside looks like this today, I've got plenty of time to make some progress.

(Note: ordinarily, there would be a street in this picture).

Tweed Pullover

I finished the tweed pullover.

The bottom is a little wrinkly from the drive to where the photoshoot took place. Special thanks to JKLsemi for the pictures. (Portraits aren't really her thing; check out the pictures she took today that are more typical of her work).

I want to reblock the sweater. As expected, the ribbing pulled it in pretty snuggly, so I had to stretch it out, but now the bottom flairs more than I'd like. It's also just a tad too short. But I'm picking at it; friends have told me they think it's the best I've done so far.

I bought feet

In the excitement of all the cleaning, I forgot to mention these:


Yep, I bought feet. Lately, all the socks I've been making have looked misshapen when photographed on flat sock blockers, so I decided I needed a mannequin foot. Eventually, I discovered that the correct term is "hosiery form," and I found an eBay store that carried them. I bought the women's form (on the left) first, and then decided to get I needed the men's form as well.

Here's the form in action, displaying my current sock in progress: "Fountain Foxglove" from New Pathways, with an eye-of-partridge heel.

These were promised to my boss at Christmas, so I need to get cranking on them. But I've been distracted by progress on the tweed pullover. I finished the second sleeve and connected the sleeves to the body yesterday.

My plan is to continue that stripe of ribbing up the sleeves and over the shoulder. I'm pretty sure I'll have to block the ribbing out flat or the sweater will be too tight, but it's going to be sharp when it's done.

New Years Knitting

I began 2007 by casting on for a New Year Sweater, which I think makes a great tradition. Here's the 2008 New Year Sweater in progress:


It's another seamless hybrid pullover. I'm using Plymouth Tweed yarn. Once again, inspired by Brooklyn Tweed, I'm adding some accent ribbing on the sides. I think I'll rib the top of the sleeves too.

In sock news, the theme for January is pink, a color my mom had specifically requested. I had some pink/blue/purple striped cotton Sockotta in my stash, so I cranked out these.

I decided to try following the Queen Kahuna method to the letter. Pretty good results. Mom likes them, but they're not sufficiently pink, so she bought me a skein of Sea Wool, a blend of merino and Seacell.


I'm using the Coriolis pattern from New Pathways, and it's going very well. Love the yarn, love the needles (a new set of KnitPicks), love the pattern. The trick for me is to remember that both Queen Kahuna and Cat Bordhi socks will get 50% bigger, so I need to plan for that and start them a bit smaller than I would for Simple Socks with short-row heels.

Knitting Update

I buckled down and finished the Cobblestone Pullover last weekend. I've worn it four times already, and I'll probably wear it again today. Here I am modeling it, in what S. criticizes as a MySpace angle.

Generally good pattern. The garter stitch circular yoke gives the sweater a medieval, Robin Hood-ish look, which is growing on me -- it makes my chest and shoulders look broad. I did the garter stitch welt at the bottom in a smaller needle size, which I think keeps it from flaring out. I hated the garter stitch sleeve cuffs, so in the end I snipped the yarn, picked out the cuffs, and knit new plain cuffs that finished with a short, reverse stockinette roll.

I've got two sock projects in process. One I will talk about when they're done, but the other is the pair I started in Maine last month. I call them the "Mummy Case" socks.

A little weird looking, but "mummy" says they fit nicely. I did some Cat Bordhi Riverbed-style increases on the bottom, a short-row heel, and then decreased up the back. I drew lines to highlight the shaping: red for gusset increases/decreases, yellow for the short row "seam." The heel seems to cup the foot pretty tightly. I probably wouldn't do this again, but it was in interesting experiment.

Cobblestone Sweater

I wish it were otherwise, but when I decide to knit a sweater, it's generally because I think the model is cute.

So this is why, more than one skein into a plain, green EPS sweater, I broke the yarn and cast on for BrooklynTweed's Cobblestone Pullover from the Fall issue of Interweave Knits.

There's a garter stitch strip about 3 inches wide running up each side, which keeps the knitting fairly interesting. I'm eager to see whether the circular yoke construction fits me. And of course, as always, I expect the sweater to transform me physically so that I look like the model.

In a fun little change of pace, I've been winding the skeins by hand -- not into balls but into yarn cocoons. This is cool technique from Jacqueline Fee's The Sweater Workshop.


The yarn lies in this bundle, somewhat more loosely than in a ball. It's held in a figure-8 shape, and it unravels back and forth from the top of the cocoon. Mary Lou Egan posted instructions and a video on the Yarnerinas blog (instructions below the spelling stuff).

Enormous Green Thing

Yesterday we held a staff potluck at work, and the staff wore green. I don't seem to own anything green anymore, except for the enormous green Aran sweater. Even after asking a seamstress to take in the sides, and reknitting the collar into a turtleneck, this sweater is just too big to wear, even as a jacket.

Which is a shame, because it's gorgeous.

So I'm going to ask another seamstress to take another crack at it, removing the moss stitch side panels completely and significantly narrowing and re-shaping the sleeves. I'm thinking something like this...
Tell me if you think this plan won't work. And what about the underarm gussets: bad idea? This is just a sketch; I'm hoping in the actual execution, the sewing done on the inside of the sweater, the gusset diamonds will go flat or stay on the inside.

Sweater Diary: Camel Gansey

I'm going to try an experiment: create this one post as a placeholder for notes, updating it as I progress. I think this is a better plan than separate posts that no one really cares about or wants to read, but it lets me create a record for myself. See my Camel Gansey Flickr set for pictures.

After my recent happiness using the Zimmerman Percentage System, I wanted to jump right in and do another, possibly one with ribbing like the Leo sweater from Knitty.com. But I bought the yarn a couple years ago specifically because I thought it would make a good gansey/guernsey/jersey, possibly the one by Penny Olman on page 78 of Arans & Celtics.

Yarn: Jo Sharp Luxury 8 ply DK Pure Wool
Shade: Camel (005; dye lot 2)
Gauge: 5.75 st/in on size 6 (4 mm) needles

Chest: 41 + 2 inches ease = 250 stitches
Ribbing: 224 stitches

I want split welts at the bottom, in a double-garter rows (purl rows 1&4, knit rows 2&3). So I cast on 113 stitches (doubling the tail for a stronger edge), knit the welts, then combined them into a circle, overlapping two stitches on each side for a tighter join. Rather than increasing all 30 stitches at once to get the chest measurement, I'm creating a more tapered look by increasing gradually, 4 stitches (a stitch on either side of the side seams) every inch (eight rounds).

Good enough to wear to work

I've been saying that the sweaters I've made are too casual to wear to work. Friends have been telling me I'm stupid. So in their honor, I wore this to work today.


I'm having a hard time getting a good picture of this, but I really like how it looks on. And even with all the fussing I did with it (reworking the bottom, doing the sleeves backwards, starting the yoke over after I'd already knit 3 inches), it ultimately was fairly easy.

I'm not thrilled with the collar. I'm not thrilled with any collar I've ever made on any sweater at all, so I think I need to be on the lookout for one I do like.

Meanwhile, I've knit the gauge square and done some test cables for my next sweater: possibly a gansey, but maybe just another EPS sweater, maybe with vertical ribbing.

My commute

Twenty miles, 30-40 minutes each way.

My day really does feel an hour shorter, but I'm generally enjoying the commute. You'll probably be seeing more audiobooks show up over on the right.

Nancy Pearl came up with the Rule of 50: "...time is short and the world of books is immense. If you're fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up." I've been giving audiobooks the length of one disc to convince me whether I want to spend any more time in this world or with these people. The Fire-Eaters? No. Tenth Power, with people singing magic? I thought so, but 3.5 discs in, I realized I didn't care at all what happened. Just minutes after I ejected it and popped in Acceleration, I knew I made the right choice: smart narrator with a fresh perspective worth listening to (he calls the books in the subway lost-and-found "the library of forgotten books") discovers the diary of a serial killer.

On the knitting front, I got inspired to take this sock...

...and fix it.

I re-knit the whole heel and cuff. Seemed easier than darning and grafting. But ultimately a pointless exercise: the other sock is about to wear through as well, and even this new heel won't hold up. Lesson learned: Jaeger Matchmaker merino isn't good for socks.

Meanwhile, sweater has new bottom, and I'm ready to start sleeves.

Knitting in the Fifth Dimension

I had a student in my first sock-knitting class who said she was a two-dimensional knitter: she followed directions step-by-step, following each instruction in turn until her work was done. That made me realize that I'm a three- or four-dimensional knitter: I like to have a vague sense of how what I'm doing at the moment fits into the whole, of where I'm going and how I expect to get there. It's why I made the rainbow sock, to show where you begin (in white), and the order of the sections you knit as you construct the sock (in spectrum order: red, orange, yellow, etc.).

Last night, I may have broken through into the Fifth Dimension, going back in time to change the future.

As I pondered how to start the sleeves of my sweater, I was troubled by something: I didn't like the ribbing at the bottom. My favorite sweaters don't have ribbing; they have a straight silhouette, much like Brooklyn Tweed's seamless hybrid (and the sweater Matt is working on). I'm too far along to just start over, so I decided to alter the past.

I ran a circular needle through the stitches back down near the ribbing, just above a round of accent color. I then pulled out the accent yarn stitch by stitch, leaving live stitches on the needle at the bottom of my sweater. Now working in the opposite direction, I purled a round, switched to a contrasting color, and began knitting the cuff that I will hem on the inside.

I'm going to be a lot happier with this. And I think the fact that I skipped backwards to change what had already been done just makes the whole thing that much cooler.

Amazing Week

This has been a fantastic week. I'll try to avoid writing endlessly about my new job. Suffice to say, it's wonderful. I love the place, and I adore my new colleagues. I'm exhausted, but I'm thrilled.

And The Stitch Stops Here is two blocks away. I dropped in after work on my first day and blew my raise on sock yarn and another Addi Turbo.


Koigu, Colinette, Tiny Toes, and Strapaz Cotton Effekt. I've already made socks in that color Strapaz Cotton before. I like it better than Fortissima.

My "Wider-Scale Wyvern" socks with the gusset experiment are coming along nicely (pictures and pattern to be posted soon), and the lower body is nearly done on the tweed sweater. It's time to cast on for the sleeves, but I haven't yet decided how I want to handle the stripes of color on the sleeves. Options include:

1. Don't worry about making the colors match.
2. Do ridiculous amounts of math to calculate sleeve length and the placement of the stripes.
   
3. Continue the body, learning to do steeks at the arm holes, pick up the sleeves at that point and knit them down to the wrist, matching colors from the body.
   
4. Cast on the sleeves provisionally at the upper arm, knit the chest (I'm in love with the look of the seamless hybrid), and then knit the sleeves downward.

I'm leaning toward option 4. What do you all recommend?