Hibernating mittens

The mitten is in hibernation. I finished the top and thought I was done with the body but all of a sudden sts started coming undone. I have to unpick the top and get all the sts on to needles and redo the top. Since I was frustrated and annoyed, I decided to put it away and work on other things.

Terry, the mitten is part Jamieson and Smith jumperweight (the blue) and part Harrisville Tweed Shetland which was on Elann a number of years ago. I think they were closing out that line. All the other colors are the Harrisville. It is also a true Shetland jumperweight.

I swatched the new body of the Lorna's Laces sweater. I used the pattern from the Coin lace scarf that was on Elann (the right hand side of the swatch) and a simple cable (the left hand side) along with dropped sts a la Clapotis. For some reason, the scarf pattern had extra twisted sts on either side of the coin lace pattern and I found that they masked the pattern. So I reswatched without them and this is the result. I really like it. I am debating whether to alternate the cable and the coin lace pattern or just do the coin lace pattern.

My daughter wanted a headband for running and I found a ball of this lovely alpaca. It is a beautiful heathered purple. I had some purple/green/blue aurora-borealis shiny beads (like the colors of a peacock) so I did a pattern with them. A fun, quick knit that should be done in another day. I just have the underside left to do and then I'm going to graft the beginning to the end for a seamless double thickness headband.

That is all for now! Maybe next week will see the return of the mitten.

Progress!

I made a fair bit of progress this week on the knitting front. I wasn't home a lot but I put the time that I spent at home to good use. First of all, I finished the work for the Interweave book. Here's the leftover yarn - to whet your appetite. Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Red Rover on the left and Violet on the right. I had to photograph it in a fairly dim area to get the colors close to being correct. I am checking the pattern this morning and will be mailing it off this week. After that it will be a year or so before the book comes out. It really isn't very satisfying at this point. It is much more fun when the book is finally published. I swatched for the VK Sideways Sweater that I showed you in an earlier post. Here is the first swatch. The right hand repeat is on a US size 5 (3.75 mm) needle. The left repeat is on a US size 6 (4 mm). Not much difference so I am going with the larger needle.
Here is the swatch seen at an angle. You can see the texture a bit better at this angle. It is a pretty straightforward pattern. Zig one way using a lifted increase and a ssk, then zag the other way using a k2tog and another lifted increase. There is a small lace panel in the middle which is just there to highlight the gentle zig-zag. I can see myself getting bored but it should go fast. While the swatch was drying, I started the other sock in the Shibui sock yarn. This represents a few hours of knitting. Now the sock is in a position where I can take it places and knit mindlessly.
Now I'm off to weed. The garden photography project is progressing. More photos on my flickr photostream. I am enjoying seeing the photos because the flowers themselves last only for a week or so. The lovely tree peonies that MaggieB commented on last week are just a memory. The other one is flowering now but will be gone in a few days. I am using the photos as a screensaver, which is fun.

Back to knitting

Before I talk about knitting, I thought I would show you a few more flowers. I found some really cute pansies at a local store a couple of weeks ago. One set are just yellow and purple but these are orange and purple and they make me smile when I look at them. Aren't they adorable? I love pansies with faces. They are so cheerful that they make me smile every time I look at them.
This is my Eastern redbud. It is native to the East coast of the US and is glorious when it is in full flower. The flowers are close to the branch as you can see in the close-up in the next photo. It has lovely heart-shaped leaves but systematically kills off any flowers I plant under it. I've given up and put the flowers in pots.I was trying to get a close-up of the flowers and didn't realize I had such an artistic shot! The reddish tree to the left of the photo is a finger-leaf weeping Japanese maple. I love that tree. Its leaves are very delicate and it turns a gorgeous red in the fall. Lastly, the flowers of a weeping peach. It actually produces peaches, although I tend to pinch off the fruit when they are tiny. I want energy going to the flowers and growth, not to the fruit. It produces the most gorgeous peachy-pink flowers (you can see the buds in the photo) but the tree has died off on one side so is lop-sided right now. I hope it all works out in the end. I don't know why it died off but it might be the same thing that is causing spots on the crabapples. We have to spray them with a fungicide each week during the growing season and one of the crabapple trees (one of my favorites) has also died.

I also have crabapples in flower this week. One is in full bloom and three others are about ready to burst into bloom. The lilacs have also begun blooming but won't be in full bloom till next week. Did I tell you I love spring?

I worked on a pattern for publication this week so no pictures. Not much knitting either as I wrote out the pattern and worked out the kinks. I started knitting it late in the week and have barely cast on for the second sock in the Shibui.

I also bought some Classic Elite Premiere in Intense Teal for the cover sweater of the Spring/Summer 2008 Vogue Knitting. We decided to do the sweater as a Knit-A-Long in the summer. However reviews of the yarn have been mixed on Ravelry. Some people said it pills and looks old very quickly. With such an intense color, I was concerned enough to return the yarn. I am going to choose between Rowan Purelife Cotton in Yellowwood, if it arrives at the store on time, or Euroflax Linen Sportweight in Shamrock. The latter is on hold for me as a backup. The pattern in the mag is written for a bulky cotton so the learning in the class will be the re-jiggering of the pattern to a different gauged yarn. In any case, I have neither yarn in hand to entice you with visual appeal. In a week or two, I hope to remedy this situation.

Swatching, swatching, swatching

I haven't posted all week because I was knitting things that didn't inspire me at all. I am signed up for two of Jean Wong's classes at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat. I had to do my homework for the classes - which consisted of lots of swatches. But not the kind of swatches I like to do. The swatch for the first class, Tailored Knitting the Japanese Way, IS my kind of swatch. I usually swatch in a couple of needle sizes, and I did so here. However, I ripped out the one I didn't like. The yardage in each ball of this yarn is so small that I used up one entire ball in my swatching. So I ripped out the entire swatch and re-knit it in the gauge I liked. The yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in a color called Casket. A lovely color but its relationship with a casket is beyond me. The ball band gauge is rather loose and the ball band recommended US size 8 (5 mm) needles. I started with a size 7 (4.5 mm) but the fabric was too stiff. My usual method is to do a swatch in one needle size, then a few rows of garter st, change sizes and continue to do another swatch. This way I can compare the two fabrics. In this case, I went up to an 8, and I liked the fabric even though it was tighter than the ball band gauge. I am getting 4.8 spi here. I got 5 spi with the size 7 which was way too stiff. I think the ball band recommended 4.5 spi. Anyway, I ripped out the swatch, did one in the size 8, washed and dried it, and here it is above.The rest of the swatches were for Fine Finishing Techniques the Japanese Way. There are 11 swatches in all for this class, mostly in various ribs but a few in stockinette. There's 10 of them in the photo above. nine are on the circular needle, and one is sitting down by itself on a st holder in the bottom left. Swatches ten (above bottom left) and eleven are in the round. Each swatch is labeled with its number and needle size (something I have started doing for all my swatches) so I can find it in class when the time comes. These are done in leftover Encore. Last, but not least, the two little circular swatches sitting by themselves on stitch holders. They look cute.

Now I am on to more fun swatching. I am working on a design out of the Lisl Fanderl stitch dictionaries. I spent quite a bit of time redoing the pattern chart in various ways before finally deciding that Interweave Knits, which does a variation of the way these charts are traditionally drawn, was right and followed their example. I tried the usual way that twisted sts are drawn in charts (like Eunny Jang's charts in her blog) and found it way too confusing for the complex pattern I was charting. Here's what I finally ended up with and I think this is readable for me. The little 'b's are twisted sts and the red lines indicate the direction they are traveling in. The '-' are purl sts and the plain squares are regular knit sts. I spent a lot of time last weekend working on charting this in various ways, another reason I didn't have a lot of knitting to share with you.

A Tale of two WIPs

I found the camera. It was hiding in plain sight but out of the case and I was looking for the case. Oh well. So I present visuals to complement last week's text. I have been knitting up a storm on the Earth Stripe Wrap so I have not been blogging or doing much else. I am up to row 70 on the second repeat. Each repeat is 186 rows. I present it with two different backgrounds, to give you an idea of the colors. They are amazing in the way they blend and contrast with each other. Plus the entire wrap is cushy and cozy. I am knitting it like a mad person because I want to wear it. Every day when I leave work and come out into the dark cold night, I dream of being bundled up in it.
This is the wrap on a light background with a bit more natural light. It is about 22" wide and is currently 63 cm long. I am supposed to knit till it is 148 cm long. I still think that is going to be about 410 rows or 2.25 repeats. I have a way to go. I am knitting about 35 rows every evening but I need to start by 7 pm and knit all evening. I am able to do that some evenings and not on others. This is the other WIP that I knit on when I can't knit on the ESW. It is the bottom ribbing of a man's vest. You can see the Tapestry yarn in the background. This is very mindless knitting, unlike the ESW and so far it is pretty portable. So I carry it around and knit it when I have a few minutes or am brain dead.
Here's a view of the swatch showing the broken rib pattern I'm planning to use. In the swatch, the stripes are wider but they will be narrower in the vest as there are many more sts.

Last but not least, a podcast review. I listened to a few episode of She-Knits podcast. I was extremely underwhelmed and started thinking about advertising on podcasts. I contrast Ready, Set, Knit! with She-Knits as illustrations. Both have commercial undertones. Ready, Set, Knit talks about what is going on at Webs - the closeouts, book signings, etc. But there is also stuff that is not about the store and tidbits of knitting info in the knit-along section. Instructions on short rows, doing a sloped set of bind-offs on a shoulder, etc. There is no hiding that it is commercial. No apologies. Sharon of She-Knits, by contrast, states repeatedly that she is not plugging her Etsy shops but she mentions them, the patterns she has for sale, the blogs that she has to support and market her products, etc. all through the podcasts. There is no instructional stuff. Also, she rambles a lot and there were a lot of clicks and odd pauses due to the editing. She is not a professional and I can tolerate a lot of technical malfunctions but I found those very distracting. I am not comparing the delivery of the Webs podcast with the She-Knits podcast because that would not be fair. Just the content and the overt commercialism vs. the implicit commercialism. I prefer the over commercialism . I didn't listen to all 14 episodes I had on the ipod. I gave up after 4. I am now listening to Socks in the City and will review that next time.

Progress

I was holding off so I could post photos of my Earth Stripe Wrap (ESW) but the camera seems to be hiding. But I felt guilty about not posting so here's a text only post.

I am up to row 154 which is about 25% of the way on the ESW. I am estimating about 415 rows total. It is quite amazing to see how the colors blend. I can't even imagine putting some of the colors together but it works, and works well. I can't wait to finish it because it is now cold and I could use a warm, snuggly wrap. And it is warm and snuggly. But not mindless. Even though it is all stockinette, the colors change so frequently that it is not very portable or mindless.

I also started a vest for my husband. It will be pretty mindless. It is in Rowan Tapestry in the Antique colorway in a broken rib pattern - 2 rows/rounds of k2, p2 rib followed by 2 rows/rnds of stockinette. This is the same pattern as is used in the much-knitted Blueberry Waffle socks, and is a favorite pattern of mine. The Tapestry splits a great deal but the color knits up beautifully. I am also knitting it at a much tighter gauge than recommended on the ball band.

Which brings me to a rant about loose gauges: Loose gauges are the reason so many sweaters lose their shape and look old before their time. A loose gauge is quicker to knit, which is why many yarn manufacturers have loose ball band gauges. Rowan Tapestry for example is a DK weight yarn and the ball band recommends a 5.5 sts/in gauge. So far so good. However, it is also a very loosely spun yarn so, at that gauge, it doesn't wear very well. I've seen a bunch of comments on Ravelry about how quickly it pills and I suspect this is because people have been knitting it that gauge. I am making mine at a 6.5 sts/in gauge and I like the fabric. I washed and dried my swatch and I like the way it feels and looks.

I swatched for this and cast on over the weekend and I shouldn't really do math in my head. I cast on 304 sts instead of the 272 I needed. Then I twisted the join despite checking and rechecking. However, I remembered that Elizabeth Zimmerman said that you can untwist at the end of the first round s0 I did and all is well.

I hope to have pictures of both items-in-progress soon.

It is complete!

I bound off the large black wrap last evening, wove in ends today, and it is soaking in a warm bath, as I write this, preparatory to being blocked. Pictures in my next post. I am so excited because it turned out well and it is complete. I love working with color and the black was getting to me and my eyes. Since I can't show you the next swatch I'm going to be knitting, I thought I'd show you the yarn. The colors excite me. These are all colors of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in a few colorways. I have recently (in the past couple of years) been fascinated by what happens when you combine colors of hand-painted yarn in a pattern. If you pick colors that don't blend, you get one sort of effect but if you pick colors that blend, you get a different kind of pattern that doesn't look as if it is made with different yarns. You don't get any pooling or striping. I did this with the socks that were published in Big Girl Knits. This first picture shows the fabric achieved by combining River and Irving Park. You need to scroll down on the linked page to see the two colorways. While the blue of River stands out, the violet blends with the violet in Irving Park.
The next picture shows Irving Park by itself so you can see the difference. Irving Park is also represented in the two right-most skeins in the top photo. Since then, I've been experimenting with blending more than two colorways. These are good ways to use up that single skein of hand-painted yarn or leftovers from other projects.
I listened to PassioKnits and purl diving over the past couple of days. Passioknits is about knitting, a single voice and the content was fine. Length was also in my preferred 20-30 min range. It didn't grab my attention. however. Purl diving was a whole 'nother story. They are short little episodes - 8-20 mins each. The first one I listened to grabbed me immediately with the choice of music - The Ride of the Valkyries and Led Zeppelin's the Immigrant Song covered by Ann Wilson. Katharine Matthews also has very clear enunciation that avoids monotony and makes it very easy to listen to what she is saying. I really enjoyed listening to the 4 episodes that filled my 2 mile walk yesterday.

Designing on the fly part II

Ambition is not a good thing. I thought I could do a theme a week! Well, maybe a theme of every 2 weeks or a theme of a month is more likely. But this is very similar to my knitting. I always think I am going to finish things a lot faster than I actually do.

Anyway, more on the large black thing. You can see the st pattern in the swatch above. That is 1.5 repeats of the pattern above the garter st divider. The swatch is blocked so while you can see the different heights of the knit and purl sections, the swatch is actually quite flat.


I put in the garter st dividers when I switch needle sizes in a swatch, to allow me to compare the qualities of the fabric created by the different sizes side by side. I typically swatch at least 3 needle sizes to see how they affect the resulting fabric. But in this case I didn't see a lot of difference so I went with the smaller size as the yarn is alpaca. A tighter gauge is better for stretch control.


Here you can see the wrap itself. It is scrunched up towards the top as it is still on the needles. At the very top you can see the pins I inserted to mark my short row turns. This is the unblocked fabric and you can see how much more pleated it looks. That is the characteristic of the pattern that I think will counteract the alpaca's tendency to grow. Time will tell if it works.

I have completed the neck shaping on one side and have started on the back. which is unshaped. It is half the width of the wrap. The neck shaping is similar to the neck shaping for a V-neck sideways knit cardigan.

The designing on the fly part comes about because there are times when I just can't count. The pattern repeat is 28 rows but I originally counted it as 14. So my first attempt at calculating the short row turns was off by a lot. I found I was running out of sts faster than I was building up the width of the front. I've modified the schematic I put in the last post on the wrap to add in the measurements and the direction of knitting . You may want to go back and look at the schematic.

After I ripped and re-did the front neck shaping I had a sudden, scary thought. I had partial repeats at the center front! That in itself is not a bad thing as the front bands will break up the front so as long as the two are mirrored, it is not a problem. But the back is a whole 'nother story. The back needs to have a smooth flow so that when I'm done with the other front shaping, the back and the front end up at the same row in the pattern. Also, partial repeats in the center back will look amateurish. Back to the drawing board.

I stopped knitting and started charting. That is the beauty of charting. It allows you to see what is going to happen and you can play with alternatives without too much wasted time and effort. I first put in the rows that matched my completed left front. Then I flipped them to show the rows that would have to be done to match the to-be-knit right front. That left the lovely little gap in the middle where the partial rows are. Here's the math:

My short row shaping is 32 rows each. So there are 64 rows for the two fronts total.

My pattern repeat is 28 rows. So the back is minimally two repeats which is 56 rows.

That leaves a gap of 8 rows.

I tried playing around with little motifs to fill in the 8 rows. Given they have to be mirrored, that is not a lot. So I am just going to put in a set of small triangles that will have their points facing down to the bottom of the wrap. While I'm not there yet in terms of knitting, and I may change my mind when I get there, my mind is now calm because I have a solution to the problem. Whew! I can knit again.

The bottom line is that there are always opportunities to fix problems in such a way that it looks intentional. My mother taught me this when I was a teenager and we made a cake for a party. It fell. Badly. The center was concave. It was dense. We cut it into pieces and made a lovely hard sauce to pour on it and served it that way. No one knew we meant to make a cake. It tasted like pudding. We got compliments on it. My mother said 'Why tell people that it didn't turn out as intended? Tell them we meant to make it the way it turned out' and I have lived by that motto ever since.

Mistakes are good learning experiences and one should learn from them and tell others about them so they can learn from our mistakes. But sometimes it doesn't matter and as long as the finished product makes the creator and the recipients happy, the mistake can be turned into a design feature.

And speaking of admitting mistakes, I have to find knitting friends who are not named Maggie. Darn! Maggie Brown, super lace knitter, I owe you a huge apology. I didn't even see the little 'b' at the end of the name. How can I make it up to you? How about a lovely adult beverage at next year's Camp or some luscious yarn?

For the rest of you who don't know her, Maggie Brown is my travel companion to Knitting Camp and was my room-mate this year. I can't believe that I didn't recognize her scholarly erudition in the Latin correction. Mea culpa, Maggie!

Theme of the week

I think I will organize things with a theme of the week based on what is on my mind. This coming week's theme is designing and finishing a lace stole. I just completed a stole for a class. Let's start at the very beginning: I was asked to teach a lace class at my LYS this fall. Great! I love lace. Then the owner came over with the yarn (#34 of 48 - look in the lower right for the numbers) and I fell in love with it. It is a gorgeous color - the color of my favorite beverage - coffee! I look at the label and it is coffee-dyed! But something about the yarn made me think cables, not lace. So I decide to combine them. The yarn is a merino/cashmere single. Absolutely luscious in look and feel.

The next step is to look for a pattern. I scoured my very large library of knitting stitch dictionaries. These represent possibilities. For some knitters, their stash represents possibilities. For me, it is the books and the ideas contained in them that represent possibilities. In this case, I wanted patterns that were relatively simple because it was for a beginning lace class. So patterns with repeated rows are good. Also patterns with some plain rows. And the patterns have to look cohesive together.

The next step was to think about construction. This is iterative with the process of finding the stitch patterns. My past experience with lace classes is that people don't finish their projects. I've done little lace sachets, scarves and a shawl. This stole class is going to be similar to the shawl class. Multiple sessions, walking students through each step of the process and then having them do the rest of the work at home. In the shawl class, this worked very well BUT, the edging tripped everyone up. Who wants to knit endless repeats of edging when the teacher isn't there with the whip cracking? So no edging. Which implies the stole needs to be self-edged. I had been pondering an up-and-down center with sideways knitted sides for a while and so that is what I decided to do. I didn't like the idea of cables going horizontally so the cables had to be in the center section.

What does this mean vis a vis the stitch patterns. Well, the side stitch pattern's stitch repeat count must divide evenly into the center stitch pattern's row repeat count. You'll see later that I blew this but for now, I had the math I needed. Back to the books with this decision in mind.

I found what I was looking for and I started swatching. The patterns are in two different books - both Japanese stitch dictionaries. This is the way I swatch. I knit with different needles (usually 3 sizes) so I can compare fabrics and decide which gauge to use. In this case, I used US 8, 9 and 10. The little tags indicate needle size for future reference. The first repeat of the cable/lace pattern at the bottom left is the size 8. The repeat above that is the size 9. The top two repeats on the left and the sideways knit pattern are on size 10s. You can see that the swatch is misshapen because of this.

The swatch was washed and blocked (w/o the tags of course!). Next comes a big decision. How wide do I make the center section. There are 3 possibilities: center and sides equal in size, center larger than sides and center narrower than sides. I was leaning towards the latter because the first was too symmetric and offended my sense of asymmetry. But luckily I was at Meg Swansen's Knitting Camp so it was easy. I walked around and polled people. Bridget Rorem, who designed Ingrid's Bridal Knot Shawl in A Gathering of Lace, had a really good rationale for her recommendation. Making a narrower center section would make the wearer's body look larger as the back would be divided by the sections. That made a lot of sense so I decided on a 3' center with 1.5' side panels giving me approximately a 6' shawl that would be approximately 22" wide. I measured the swatch and calculated the st count based on the size 10 needle fabric. I had to make sure that I had a half repeat at the end to mirror the beginning. Now I could cast on. I did and knitted a few inches. But I found the fabric too floppy. So I ripped carefully and started over with size 9 needles.

To be continued...