On the fitting of vests and downsizing

Thank you for all your compliments about the vest. I tried it on my husband and it fit him better than the last vest I made. When I was knitting this vest, people were surprised about how narrow and small it looked. Of course that was partly because of the broken rib pattern which pulls in. But even accounting for that, it seemed too small to those who knew my husband's size. Well, the last vest I made him was too big. Men's vests aren't like sweaters. They need to fit under things and therefore need a lot less ease than a sweater. In fact, I think they need negative to no ease. The armholes need to be cut in more all around, and one has to take the bands into consideration. So the shoulders always look too narrow till the bands are done. I forgot these basics on that last vest, since I had not made him a vest a long time. I made him one a few years ago that hangs over his shoulders and is too long and too wide. I have to rip it out and re-knit it one of these days. Fortunately, I remembered that gaffe this time and didn't make the same mistake twice.

I haven't knitted a lot this week. I started the Wild Apple Bohus on Sunday but haven't knit much. I am on the boring neck band part. However, I don't want to start the colorwork till my new Knitpicks Harmony needles arrive. I need a 2.25 mm needle for the colorwork as my stranded gauge is looser than my single color gauge. I use a 2.5 mm for the single color body. My only 2.25 mm circs are from Crystal Palace and they are not nice. The yarns catch in the join. I didn't enjoy knitting the Red Palm on them so ordered KP Harmony fixed circs to use. I also ordered the Swan, the last of my much coveted Bohus patterns. I'm done with buying Bohus kits. I have all the patterns I've drooled over since I bought Poems of Color way back when.

I have been reading a book called 'How to Survive your Diet' by Linda Moran. In conjunction with The Beck Diet Solution, I am working on forgetting about dieting and becoming a normal eater. I have gone through decades of dieting and not dieting, but there has been one thing in common all those years. Food was always been front and center. Both these books are based on cognitive therapy and what I'm working on is to think about food when I'm hungry and stop thinking about it at all other times. I am an emotional eater, even when I'm eating 'normally' and what I want to do is break that connection. The downsizing in this case refers to portion size. Linda advocates giving up greed - greed to be thin, greed for food, etc. and also focusing on the fact that stress is tolerable. Judith Beck has a whole program on keeping one's diet goals front and center. I've been working with the Beck Diet Solution program since last summer but I've reshaped the self-talk to focus on normal eating rather than on dieting.

Tapestry vest photos

There it is! The photo is a bit fore-shortened because it is photographed from near the bed. I laid it out to dry on the guest bed so could not get up high enough to give you a close to 90 degree angle for the picture. The neck depth looks very small compared to the body length.This one makes the neck look better but of course you can't see the full length of the body. I love the way the striping worked out. Tapestry seems to have unpredictable amounts of each color. That wide light stripe near the bottom of the sweater is from the same ball of yarn. Of course the wider stripes on the top are due to the fewer number of sts in the fronts vs the body. I like the way the striping ended up around the neck and here's a photo to show the fixed symmetric rib at the V. This is what I messed up the first time. You can't just keep the pattern going as in k 2, k 1 (center st), p2 if you want symmetry. You have to do a k2, k1 (center st) and a k2 on the other side to create the balance. In this case, I ended up picking up 2 extra sts on each side so it wasn't exactly like that but that example illustrates the concept.

Don't knit when you are tired

I started to swatch the Bavarian design but the needles and yarn weight were wrong and I wasn't getting what I wanted. So I put it aside and decided to finish the Tapestry vest which just needed armhole and neck bands. I did the two armhole bands without any difficulty.

Here's a tip that I figured out yesterday and probably is something everyone else does. When picking up sts for something that needs to be symmetrical, count up as you do the first half and count down as you do the second. That way you only need to remember one set of numbers. For example I needed 82 sts on each side of the armhole. Thirteen of these were from the armhole BO. As I neared the shoulder, I realized I had to pick up a few more sts than the usual rate of 3 sts to 4 rows. So around st number 68, I started picking up every row. When I went around the back of the armhole, I just had to remember 68 and 13. I picked up every row till I got to st number 68, then I did 3 sts for every 4 rows till I got down to st number 14 and I was not only perfectly placed for the 13 bindoff sts but I also knew I had the right number. In the past, I would subtract 68 from 82 and add that to 82 to figure out how many sts I had to pick up using the every row ratio and so on. Much less arithmetic this way. Stupid, but then I'm slow when it comes to this sort of stuff.

Anyway, after the armhole bands, I started on the neck band. Did a great job picking up. Did a lousy job planning. The ribs on either side of the center st at the bottom of the V were not symmetrical. I was off by a st or two at the end of the round and decided I was just wrong in counting. Wrong! I found out on the next round that I had forgotten to keep in pattern at the V and I didn't even realize this till I finished the round. I was not in the mood to go back and re-do just that half of the V given I had only done two rounds. So I ripped it out and decided to start over this morning. I should have an FO at the end of the day to report.

Faith

There are some things in knitting that take faith. I taught a sock class this weekend and grafting is one of them. I had to keep repeating to my students to take the instructions one at a time, not to worry about how sloppy it looks and have faith that it would work out. We had the same conversation about turning heels. That takes faith too. The instructions don't make sense, the thing looks like a mess when you are in the middle of it and it feels as if there must be a mistake somewhere. But when you are done, voila! there is a heel!

I think felting and i-cord take faith too. I-cord always looks like a mess for the first few rows. I am attaching i-cord to my felted bag this week. I did an i-cord bind-off on the top and am now working attached i-cord around the bottom - like a cording. Once that is done, it is time for the handles. I looked for handles at the LYS but I couldn't find any that looked just right. The dyed leather ones were nice but the color was just off and so I didn't like the effect. I am planning on taking Nancy's advice and making braided i-cord handles. I hope I have the patience to finish it. I don't like knitting i-cord all that much although I like the effect of the i-cord once it is done. The colors on this are wacky because of the flash. It is much darker but the flash shows the pattern more effectively. This looks like candy while the original is very ethnic and much more intense and darker in color.I also finished the Tapestry vest on Sunday. I worked on the front on Saturday in the car on the way to the Met and over to Penn Station in Newark and back home. Fronts of vests go so much faster than the backs! Anyway, I finished the shoulder shaping and joined the shoulders using a 3-needle BO on Sunday. Now I have to work the armhole and neck bands but the bag comes first.As an aside, did you know there was a Penn Station in Newark? We were prepared to pick up my daughter at the Penn Station in New York but she called and said she had dis-embarked from the train at Newark because she thought it was Penn Station. Fortunately, the two are only about 10 miles apart and the Lincoln Tunnel and the New Jersey Turnpike were not backed up. So we drove over and picked her up.

The Gates of Paradise were spectacular. It was so nice to get up close and personal with them and see all the details. I didn't realize that they had 3 different levels of perspective/distance in each one. There is a foreground where the figures are almost 3 dimensional; a middle distance where they are carved in some relief; and a distant perspective where they are almost 2 dimensional. Yet, there is texture and detail even in the distant perspective. You can see that in the Genesis one. God is giving life to Adam in the foreground. See how 3 dimensional God is in the lower left corner. Eve is being created from Adam in the middle distance in the center of the panel and the Temptation of Adam and Eve is in the distance just above the creation of Adam. Their departure from Eden is also in the foreground on the lower right. You can't see it in this photo but the snake coiled around the tree has wonderful texture on its skin.

We also saw the Age of Rembrandt at the Met and one on European clocks and watches. They were really really nice although the Rembrandt exhibit was crowded. I want to take this opportunity to tell you that the Metropolitan Museum of Art isn't just about paintings. There are Egyptian mummies, a Japanese tea garden, a Tuscan courtyard, a Frank Lloyd Wright room and lots of carvings and furniture and musical instruments, jewelry and armor in it. There is even a Costume Institute that has fashion. In fact, to relate it to blogging, the current exhibit at the Costume Institute is blog.mode where one is encouraged to blog one's reactions to the fashion on display. All in all, the Met is one of my favorite places in the world to visit. I am lucky that I can go there often and I go there at least once a year. The only places that are similar that I'd love to live near are the British Museum and the Louvre.

Ode to my ESW

Do you remember my telling you that I was walking out in the dark and dreaming about how wonderful my ESW would be?

ESW , how do I love thee?
Let me count the ways
I wear you at home
I wear you in the car
I wear you on the couch
I wear you on my walk

You are so soft
You are so snuggly
You are so warm,
and touchable that
I cannot imagine
living without you

The past few days have been very cold. I went for my lunch time walk on Wed and today when it was in the teens Fahrenheit outside with the wind-chill factor. I was bundled up in my ESW under my coat and I really enjoyed my walk.

My only problem is static. It gets very static-y.

I leave you with an updated photo of the vest I am making out of Rowan Tapestry. The back is done and I'm ready to start the front. I'll post a pic of the bag early next week.
Tomorrow I hope to be seeing the Gates of Paradise exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I saw the doors for the first time in Florence a few years ago and I knew they were copies. So it is exciting to see some of the originals.

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.