Silk: it is what's for summer

I have always been a lace or sock knitter in the summer months when I am rational. When I am irrational, I have knit heavy sweaters and bulky shawls and almost died in the process. This summer, I am enjoying the process of knitting with very fine silk. It is light and easy on the hands, and doesn't add any heat to one's body.

You probably saw the cone of silk when I was asking for opinions on what to knit for Camp. The swatch on the right is the one I knit before Camp that gave me a slightly smaller gauge than the pattern called for. The one on the left is the one I knit after, with 1 size bigger needle. Now the number of rows and stitches are not the same in the two swatches so they aren't comparable by observation.

Swatch on the right was on 4 mm needles:

• 36 sts = 5.5 - 5.75 inches (depending on how I pat it out) - not quite 6 spi
• 42 rows = 5 inches - not quite 9 rpi

Swatch on the left was on 4.5 mm needles:

• 30 sts = 5.5 inches - more than 6 spi
• 54 rows = 7 inches - way more than 9 rpi

Pattern gauge:

• 24 sts = 4 inches - 6 spi
• 36 rows = 4 inches - 9 rpi

I liked the fabric I got with the 4 mm needles so I am going with that and making adjustments as needed to the garment so it fits. I will also measure the gauge after I have knit a bit of the garment to see if my gauge is different. It is slow going as there are a lot of sts but I am enjoying the process and in no hurry to finish it.

In this photo you can see the top of the shoulder and the front to the left, and the rest of the cardi bunched up on the right. I wanted to show you the raglan line treatment that I am doing. I am not following the pattern on this as I love this particular raglan line. I may also add some lace to the bottom to lengthen it but that is a decision for later. The color is lovely, the yarn is beautiful, it is relatively easy knitting and very relaxing for the summer.

Gauge for gansey swatch

I measured the gauge last night. It is 13" for 61 sts over the
patterns and 3.25" for 26 rows. That is a tad under 5 spi.

I am sending this from my Blackberry.

Gansey Saga Part 1

Thank you for all the compliments on the mittens in Knitted Gifts. Ann, yes, the model is wearing the mittens front to back in the photo. That is why I deliberately labeled each side in the blog post.

Today I'll start taking you through the process I am using to create my son's gansey. I started by looking through a number of gansey books, and completed ganseys on the web for inspiration. My library contains the books in this photo, as well as some of Alice Starmore's books that contain ganseys. But I didn't look through the Starmore books because I was familiar with them and they weren't the type of design I was interested in. Looking through all these books was a lot of fun.

I decided to recreate a historical gansey for this sweater. One that caught my eye was Matt Cammish's gansey from the Gladys Thompson book. It has a lovely elegant design that is also interesting to knit.

But one of the patterns in the gansey is called 'Betty Martin' and it isn't charted. It is not even written out by itself. Instead it is part of the overall pattern and I would have to chart the whole thing. Here's the pattern as described in the book. You can see 'Betty Martin'. It is on either side of the cable but the photo isn't clear enough for me to re-engineer it. That was still definitely a possibility.

Next, I found this lovely gansey in Knitting From the Netherlands. The fisherman on the left is wearing it and you can see a diagram of it on the right side of the book. I liked this a lot and it was charted. That decided it and I went ahead.

I charted the design to my satisfaction - with a couple of minor modifications and started swatching. I set off the cables with purl sts on either side and changed the center diamond to seed st (it was originally reverse stockinette). I also worked out the ribbing to make it flow into the design. The swatch is done and is washed and dried.

I was playing on Picasa and decided to make a collage of the two sides of the swatch to give you a closer look. This is half the front/back with the center on the left. The triangle is actually half a diamond. I adjusted the chart so the point of the seed st diamon nestles into the mid-point of the two diamonds on the right. This gives me a clean repeat of all the patterns at 26 rows. The seed st diamonds will have a few plain stockinette sts dividing them.

Next up is measuring the swatch and coming up with a pattern. I will add either more of the garter st waves or stockinette if I need more width. The yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in the color Parchment. It is a dream to knit with and the swatch feels lovely. I am knitting it a bit tighter than called for to make the sweater last longer and to add more definition to the st patterns.

I am going to try an experiment next weekend from Retreat 2.75. I am going to try blogging from my Blackberry so that I can give you a day-by-day recap. Wish me luck. The gansey saga will continue after that.

And we are back...

...to our regular knitting content.

First a bit of blatant self-promotion. Interweave's Color Style should be coming out soon and I noticed that they have my mitts on a sidebar in the preview. Therefore I can now show you one of my FOs from last year. I will tantalize you with close-ups so you can see the finished object in the official pictures.
The mitts are made with 4 colorways of hand-painted yarn (3 multis and a solid) and the effect is that of color that is splashed on. They blend quite seamlessly and you can't see where one colorway begins and another one ends. They are knitted in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn.This is a photo of the top of the mittens and shows the pattern a bit more clearly. That is the end of the self-promotion.

My daughter just returned from a winter in Argentina. She brought back some lovely alpaca knits (sweaters and chullos) for others but I got natural alpaca yarn. She even had it wound for me. The colors are all natural shades of the alpaca. I think this will become a nice warm shawl to remember her winter visit there. The yarn is very lustrous and soft, which I think is a characteristic of the undyed alpaca. I noticed that with the black alpaca yarn I used to make the shawl/wrap for my SIL. It feels very different from the dyed alpaca I have used.
I have been knitting, and knitting, and knitting away on my Wild Apple. One sleeve is almost done. I am at the cuff. I need to do the little colorwork I am adding to the cuff and then the hem. I took the colored yarn with me on a trip last week but I forgot the chart. So I broke off the yarn, put the sts on a small circ and started the other sleeve. I'll finish the second sleeve and then do the colorwork on the first cuff. I can see the end now though it may take a couple of weeks. The pictures don't look any different so I'm not posting them.

Instead, I am going to talk about thoughts going through my head regardin another design. As you remember, I won yarn at Camp this year. I want to make an Elizabeth Zimmerman design to honor the fact that I won the yarn at Camp. The Hand-to-Hand Aran came to mind as knitting a hand-painted multi sideways makes vertical stripes. I was also inspired by one of the coats in the Japanese book that I talked about a few months ago. That coat is done in a variegated yarn with tiny cables that disappear into the fabric but affect the colors in a subtle way and add a hint of texture.
Of course, I am not doing an Aran. I don't have enough yarn and the patterning would be lost in a multi-colored yarn like this. I am just using the concept and the construction to create my own version. The yoke will be textured and the body in lace, which will enable me to eke out the yarn a bit more. Also, that way I can go up a needle size or two in the lace and make it flowing and drapey without compromising the structure of the sweater. The weight of a sweater hangs from the shoulders so making the shoulder area too loose causes the sweater to droop.
I swatched and came up with a combination of cables and background that I liked. Here's the swatch.
When I was on one of my trips this summer, I had some problem with the Wild Apple and couldn't continue. So I started on this as a stopgap. Since the Hand-to-Hand begins with a sleeve, I started a sleeve in the pattern above. But after knitting for a few inches above the ribbing, I realized that I really liked the plain purled fabric between the cables. Since I only have 1000 yds, I decided to eliminate the cables. I re-started the sleeve.
This makes a nice fabric. I like the way the colors play on the surface. However, I am getting 6.8 sts to the inch and I'm wondering what would happen if I went up a needle size and got closer to 6 spi, which is what the ball band recommends.

I am really in two minds about this. A tighter gauge, like the one I have above, will keep the sweater from stretching too much. I tend to prefer the tighter, denser gauge for wearability, especially in sweaters. But I've been told that my gauges are bullet-proof and maybe I should loosen up a bit. Maybe I'll start another sleeve in the new gauge and compare the two and then frog the one I don't like. Decisions, decisions...

For now, this is on hold. I'm working on the Wild Apple till it is done and then I'll start on this again. I love the colors in this yarn and I can't wait to work with it.

More on the Earth Stripe Wrap and gauge

Laura had two comments that I wanted to address. Thank you Laura!

First, the concept of a tighter gauge. This is one of my pet peeves. I think that we are getting too sloppy in our knitting. Knitted fabric is inherently elastic and knitting at a loose gauge for the yarn just makes it more elastic and floppy. I tend to knit most things at a much tighter gauge and when I haven't, I've regretted it. Two recent examples come to mind. You can see from the dates that these are from 2004 and 2005 respectively.This was knit in a cotton and nylon blend called Reynolds Madrigal which I picked up years ago on clearance. I am very happy with the way the sweater looks and feels but it fits horribly. The fabric is too sloppy with no body. The reason I knit it at the ball band gauge is that I was afraid I'd run out of yarn. I made a mistake in my calculations and I had plenty but I was nervous as I had multiple colors and needed to combine them to have sufficient yarn for the entire sweater. I doubt I'll wear it much. I'll keep it as a teaching tool but it looks awful when worn. This is knit in Plymouth Galway, a lovely yarn. I love it. I love the color, I love the way it fits. But again, I had bought the yarn on clearance many moons ago and I created the sweater at a gauge to fit the amount of yarn I had. I didn't make a mistake in this case and I have about half a ball left. The gauge is 5 spi which is perfect for a worsted, right? Wrong! At 5 spi, the yarn is pilling terribly. It would have been better at 5.5 spi or even 6 spi. I will wear this till it is too threadbare to wear any more. So that's my rant on gauge and why I now knit things far more tightly than I should for sweaters and socks and hats .

Lace is a different animal. I knit lace much looser than most people. I like lace to be ethereal. I like the stockinette parts to be gauzy. So shawls and scarves are knit looser than most people would recommend.

On the Earth Stripe Wrap, Laura asked if the yarn was doubled. Yes, it is but not in the way you'd think. There are two colors held throughout and the colors change frequently. Sometimes one color changes and sometimes both. The combinations are not ones I'd consider without thinking a lot about it - hot pink and brown, or teal and mauve, for example. But the resulting effect is striking and will go with anything in my closet. I'm up to row 105 on the second repeat.