Pretty Petals

Last week, I showed you a little teaser of the back of a cotton t-shirt I'm knitting.  On Friday night, I finished that piece and cast on for the front.

I wanted to knit the back first, to figure out exactly what I was doing, since the original design calls for both the front and back to be knitted in five separate pieces and seamed together.  While I don't mind a nice evening of mattress stitch, that seemed like a crazy amount of extra work when they could easily be knit in one piece for back and one for front.  However, doing so also means doing a lot of configuring and a lot of what knitters dread most: shaping that happens "at the same time..."

I had to put the shaping for all of the pieces together in one monster piece, and I thought it would be easier to do that on the plain stockingette of the back.  Having figured all that out, it's easy now to concentrate on enjoying the pretty flower pattern on the front of the t-shirt, bobbles and all.

Blast from the Past

I have a big stash of knitting yarns, it's true.  Enough for several sweaters and shawls and innumerable socks.  Most of the time, I've bought the yarn with a specific project in mind.  Of course, when I bought it, I was chomping at the bit to get started on that particular project.  All too often, I get distracted by one thing or another, and it is shelved while I get excited about something else.  In some cases, the yarn has been sitting in there for ages, just waiting for me to be inspired to pick it up again.

This particular project has been in my Ravelry queue for four years.  It's a summer project - a little cotton t-shirt - so every summer I intend to make it, and then the summer sneaks on by and I put it back down the queue for next summer.  Well, a couple of days ago, having finished the afghan, the shawl, the hats, I realized how few projects I had on the needles right now.  And I can't start my next Camp Loopy project until August 1st, so...  I felt inspired to cast this one on, and didn't hesitate.

Perhaps it looks a bit odd right now for a t-shirt, but all will be revealed soon enough.  (I hope.)

Let's Recap: Beatnik

It was a long time ago, in the depths of winter, that I last showed you my Beatnik sweater.  I made a bunch of changes to the original pattern as I knit it, like adding some length, creating a mashup of two sizes to make it fit me perfectly, and knitting the sleeves and body together at the yoke as an EZ set-in sleeve.  I feel like I might have also done some funny business at the neckline, to ensure it wouldn't be too wide, but it was so long ago that I can't remember for sure.

I finished the sweater in the winter, and have worn it a few times in the interim, weather permitting, but only just now have managed to get my photographer to take a few shots for me.  You can tell from the photos, I'm sure, that he was worth the wait.

Don't you love it?  The cables, the neckline, the fit, the colour...  Incidentally, the colour is Doeskin Heather, one of my all-time faves from Cascade 220, which I bought so long ago for a completely different project, but one day I just had to make Beatnik, and this beautiful yarn was just sitting there waiting for me to use it.

So glad I did.

Cabley Goodness

Things are progressing slowly, Chez Crafty, since I have a few big projects on the go, right now.  I have gotten out of the habit of showing off WIPs, and just putting up photos of my finished projects, so I thought today I'd take the opportunity to show off some squishy wooly cables on my latest sweater project.

The pattern is Beatnik, a freebie from the incomparable Norah Gaughan, and when I saw a customer at my work wearing a lovely grass green one, it inspired me to pull my bag of Cascade 220 out of the closet and wind it up to make my own.  The sleeves are done to the underarm, and I've nearly got the body (in one piece, not separates) up to the bustline, so if I keep at it, I'll be wearing it before the snow melts.  Of course, that gives me plenty of time, in Edmonton.

Oooh just look at those cables... I can't wait to see them once they're blocked!

Hi Score

I have been having some Yarn-Harlot-level difficulties in getting my completed pullover photographed, but today I managed to find a few minutes of (indoor) sun with my HLM, and we got some passable shots.

I kept the yoke pattern pretty top-secret until I got that far, partly since I knew that knitting the body (stockingette black sock-weight around and around and around, in case you forgot) would take forever, and I didn't want everyone to be anticipating the yoke for months on end. I cast this one on in the beginning of October, and I knew it would be a bit of a sleeper project, while I worked on much flashier items. The yoke design, in case you don't recognize it, is from the old video game Space Invaders. You can find the charts here, if you are so inclined. It has been used for a sock pattern in Knitty, as well as a lot of other stuff, which you can find on Ravelry. When I first thought of using this for a yoke sweater, I thought I was ingenious. I wasn't the first one to do it, though. Turns out there are a lot of us knitting geniuses out there.


Nothing terribly exciting about the construction of it -- I used Elizabeth Zimmermann's yoke pullover design (from Knitting Workshop) but rethought the numbers a lot to make it fit everywhere just the way I wanted. I made a good-sized gauge swatch and did a lot of math. The circumference has a bit of negative ease at the hip and bust, so it looks like it has some shaping, even though it doesn't. There is a nice broad garter stitch hem at the bottom, and matching cuffs for the sleeves. The sleeves are a little bit long, as is my preference. I did some short rows in the back of the sweater, to lengthen the back a bit, and lots and lots of short rows for the bust, to allow the sweater to hug my assets. It also ensures that the sweater won't ride up in the front because of the extra distance it has to travel over that area. After I knitted the stranded yoke, I did a few more short rows along the neckline, sides and back, to raise it up a bit. I hate it when the back of my neck gets cold, don't you?


The only real challenge, as I mentioned somewhere along the way, was the math for the stranded yoke. I had envisioned little columns of marching alien invaders, as you see in the game, but of course there is room for so few invaders around the neckline, and if I followed that scheme, it would have left long stretches of black between each invader at the bottom of the yoke, which isn't at all right. So I had to re-envision the whole thing, and let go of the perfect video game image. The original game image would also have had a different colour scheme, since it would be two rows of Granny Smith aliens at the bottom, then two rows of Mermaid blue aliens, then two rows of Grass green. Since I decided I could only fit five rows in total, and I was rethinking the spacing of them, I also decided to mirror the colours from top to bottom. I think it ended up looking pretty good.

I love this sweater, because it is everything that I wanted: lightweight but warm, a cute nerdy design that makes me laugh, a comfortable and fitted sweater that is flattering. Isn't it great making something exactly the way you want it to be?

Colours

The ongoing yoke pullover is at long last all in one piece, since I knitted the sleeves and body together -- this means that I finally get to work the stranded yoke. I started it last night, and it took a while for my hands to remember the rhythm of stranded knitting. It was slow-going for a bit, but then it all began to feel natural again, and I made decent progress. It will start to go even faster, as I begin the decreases through the yoke and it gets progressively smaller. I can't tell you how nice it is to pick up that Granny Smith green, after knitting miles and meditative miles of plain black.


In other colourful news, my final yarn purchase of 2009 finally arrived in the mail the other day -- I have been eyeing the Corrie Vest kit on Knit Picks for ages, and since it is on sale, I decided to treat myself with one. Well, actually, with two, since the kit has enough yarn to make up to a 42" bust, and since mine is (ahem) bigger than that, I bought two kits (since I didn't know which colours I would run out of.) Not only will I have plenty to make my vest, but I will happily use the leftovers for some fair isle fingerless mitts or possibly a fantastic tam. Sweet.

Limbo

I am in a strange state, right now, where I feel like I'm making no progress with all the various things I've been working on. I've been reading the same books for ages, and working on the same projects. In fact, it might be the sheer number of them that is keeping me from getting anywhere with any in particular.


Take my knitting, for example. I am still working on the leg of the second Knetted sock, as you can see on bottom left. I have doubled the amount of completed ribbing for the Honeybee Cardigan but still haven't quite felt motivated to start the more-complicated lace pattern. The best progress I've made is on the little stripey mohair scarf -- that piece you see is the second half of the scarf, for the record. The two halves get grafted together in the middle when the knitting is done, to allow the lace at either end to be identical.

Then there's the sleeves for the black yoke pullover. They are truly the black hole of my knitting. Not only have I been working on them forever, but now, as I finally near the underarm seam (the point where I can put them aside on stitch holders until I knit the body of the sweater and then join everything together) they are somehow making no progress at all. I tried them on a few nights ago, and decided they were about 10 rows from the underarm. No matter how many times I knit 5 rows and try it on again, they are always 10 rows from the underarm. They are defying the laws of physics. Maybe just 5 more rows will do it...

Flower Garden Pullover

This pullover from the Spring 2009 issue of Verena Knitting caught my eye immediately. When my birthday rolled around, I used one of my gift certificates to stock up on some amazing aran-weight cotton in a nice light blue. The knitting was a joy, since the yarn is so soft and fluffy, and went quickly, because of the heavier weight of the yarn.

I followed the pattern as written, for all of the shaping, and I'm pretty happy with the fit. The place that I began to change things was when I started the finishing. The pattern is written to have a knitted picot hem at the cuffs, where you begin knitting the sleeves. Then the neck and bottom hem have a crocheted picot hem, added after the pieces are seamed. I wasn't sure why the pattern writers would use two different picot styles on one sweater, but I gave it a try. The crochet picots looked nothing like the sleeve picots, so I ripped it back and decided instead to pick up stitches along the neck and bottom edge to knit a picot hem like the other one. The one at the neck edge is shallower, and the one at the bottom hem is deeper. Alas, I forgot EZ's rule about making hems 10% less stitches than the main knitting, so they bell out a bit from the body of the sweater.


I am not completely happy with the sleeves, which is partly my own fault. They could be an inch longer, but shame on me for not measuring more accurately before I began the shaping of the sleeve cap. The part where they bell out could also stand to be a bit wider and a bit longer. But now I'm just nitpicking.

I had finished the knitting and seaming on this for weeks before I finally picked it up again for the final touches. When it came to adding the embroidery, I also changed it up. The original had a nice garden scene of flowers and leaves across the belly of the sweater. It was the embroidery that made this sweater so unique and eye-catching. I didn't think I need to attract attention to my belly, however, so I decided to make some little flowers along one shoulder of the sweater, instead.

When the weather cools off a bit, I will have more of a chance to pull this one out.

Hot Summer Knits

While I am frustratingly close to finishing the lacy alpaca shrug, I have run out of yarn. I knew it would be a stretch to knit the whole thing from one skein, but I thought I might squeak by. Yesterday, while knitting the peplum, I realized that it's just not possible. Hopefully I can get to my LYS today, and hopefully they will have another skein of the same yarn. Cross your fingers.


Meantime, I started the sleeves (two at a time, of course) on the pullover, at the pub last night, and they are very cute. If you can't interpret the photo, they have a little picot hem (which I will have to fold inside and sew in place, after seaming) and then they bell out at the wrist before snugging back in to a normal size above that. I keep holding them against my arm to try them on and assess how adorable they are. They are going surprisingly quickly, considering I am doing them at the same time. Thank goodness for aran-weight yarn.

Unstoppable Knitting

Last night, I was happily knitting away on my pullover when a crazy thunderstorm suddenly knocked out the power. Not one to be put off easily, I knit about 14 rows on my pullover in the dark. Well, only one of them was in absolute dark. After the first row, I lit some candles and did the rest by flickering candlelight (not much better, incidentally, than the intermittent lightning flashes.) Even looking at it today, in good lighting, the knitting looks pretty even.

It brings me to the point of beginning bust increases on the front -- good progress.

Good progress is also been made on my lacy shrug, by the way. I am ready to graft the sleeves together, I think. Hopefully the weather will give me occasion to wear it when it's done.

The New Projects

I've been puttering away on a couple of cute summer projects. One of them is a pullover from Verena Knitting magazine (ravelry) in aran-weight cotton which I got with a birthday gift certificate in May (thanks to my sisters.) The yarn is fat and soft and squishy -- it really fulfills the promise of its name: Cloud Cotton. Of course knitting with it is much faster than knitting with the DK, sock, or laceweight that I've been using in my other projects. I'm already finished the back of this pullover. Don't get your hopes up for a really quick finish, though -- I still have the front and two long sleeves to go.


In the meantime, I've been using that gorgeous alpaca laceweight yarn I got at the Fiber Festival to make a little shrug (ravelry) that I fell in love with. Mind you, I didn't fall in love with the lace pattern used in the design, so I spent a day or two swatching different patterns with different needles until I found something I liked. This is an Estonian star pattern (which I borrowed from Knitty's Laminaria shawl pattern) done on a huge needle (US9, or 5.5mm.) It has an interesting three-dimensional texture right now, and doesn't look like much, but as is the case with lace, it should open up and flatten out and show its beauty with a stern blocking once this piece is knit. Then comes the real fun -- the seaming, the peplum, the lace edging, the showing-off.