conquering techniques; the perfect green; party in the corner

I figured it out!

I wasn't happy with the 2-circ technique of knitting in the round because I found that I'd get insanely tight stitches at the end of a needle. That pesky problem was caused by the yarn getting pulled too tightly around the cord of that circular as I started to knit on the next needle. It completely ruined the technique for me, and I was avoiding it until last week.

I ended up buying 2 3.25 mm circular needles last Saturday because I'm stupid. Or a klutz. Or perhaps both. This past Spring I spent part of my lunch hour going to a local fabric store that stocks some knitting supplies to pick up DPNs for the Autumn Color Cardigan sleeves. I knew they carried Inox needles, and I thought that the tips on them may be similar enough to the tips on the circ. I used for the sweater body that I wouldn't have gauge issues. (The tips on my Clover DPNs were way too blunt.) I brought the circ I'd used for the body to compare before I purchased. On my walk home from the store, with my new DPNs in hand, I lost the circ. It must have just dropped from my hands on my walk back to work, never to be seen again. The time is drawing near for me to attach the sleeves to the body and knit the yoke, and I needed to replace my needles.

So I sat with the sleeve in my lap, and 2 new circs next to me, and decided to try the 2 circ technique again. I don't mind DPNs, but it's rather annoying to have to shift stitches around every so often because of the imbalance caused by the increases on needles 1 and 4. It was a good move, because I figured out a solution to my problem:



Instead of pulling the needle I just finished so that the stitches sit on the cord, I found that I was able to just scootch the stitches down a bit, so the last stitches on the needle still sit on the actual needle. When I knit the first stitches on the next needle, the last stitches on that previous needle get tightened up around the needle instead of the cord. Perfection! It only works if you scoot those stitches down, so you have some flexibility in manipulating that old needle, so it's closer to parallel with the new needle. Otherwise you'd trade too-tight stitches with some serious laddering. I'm so excited that I found a way for this technique to work for me that I want to use it more often. I do like the rhythm of DPNs, but there are situations where 2 circs are better, I think. Stranded colorwork is one, and socks with large pattern repeats (especially lace and cables) is another.



I'm about 40 rows from the end of the second sleeve. (That's probably in the ballpark of 10 hours of knitting.) I was so ready to finish this sweater before casting on for any major new projects. The sleeve is getting a bit tedious, but I'm so close to the really interesting yoke shaping (set in sleeves in the round!), and wanted to get there as soon as possible. New techniques are to exciting! Unfortunately, I found myself really tensing up in the shoulders and neck as I was knitting a few days ago, and decided that shooting pains were a sign that I should put the sweater down. I didn't feel tense while knitting it, so I'm not sure what was going on. My current theory is that the frequent spit splicing (every 2-3 rounds) is the culprit, because I really dig in with the friction to make sure my yarn doesn't break at the joins as I'm working with it. Ah, well. This sweater wants to take forever to knit, and it will get its wish. A few hours a week, and it should be done before the winter's over, at any rate.

To soothe my painful shoulders I cast on for something relatively easy and relaxing.



Nancy Bush's Anniversary Socks from Favorite Socks. I'm using one of the Skeins of Lisa Souza Merino Sock I bought and didn't use for my sock design. I am completely enchanted with this color (Sage), and tried to get as accurate a photo as I could. It was quite hard, because the camera wanted to capture it as grey. As you can see by my glowing pink fingers in that photo, some major adjusting had to take place to get the yarn to look right. It's still not quite perfect, as it's a touch lighter and maybe a tiny bit less blue in real life. If any of you know which color of Cascade 220 comes closest to this yarn, please let me know! I'm searching for a green very much like this (maybe a tiny bit lighter) for one of two sweaters I want to knit for myself this winter, and my LYS doesn't carry very many shades for me to check out in person.

This yarn is an absolute pleasure to work with. I swatched for my sock design with the pink, and felt that the yarn was too loose and floppy. The sage green feels a bit sturdier, though I'm not sure if it's a real difference or all in my head. Just look at how gorgeous this fabric is:



The color is completely washed out, but I still love the photo. And these socks are a great relaxation project. They're fairly simple, but interesting (and beautiful!) enough to keep me going. I was planning to just knit to the letter of the pattern, but I ended up making an alteration from the get-go. The first round of the pattern is purled, and I didn't like how my cast on edge looked with that. I cast on again (German Twisted), purled back, then joined in the round. That left me with the purl side of the cast on on the public side of the sock, which I think works a lot better. I actually taught myself how to do the long tail cast on purlwise (the way you probably learned is knitwise), so I could do a neater cast on for ribbing. (Part of my striving for absolute perfection in the sock pattern I submitted to Knitty.) I wanted to use German Twisted for this sock, for the extra bit of elasticity, but haven't yet figured out how to reverse it so it goes purlwise. I'm sure I can, but with all those extra twists, I was too lazy to work it out. Maybe I will before I cast on for the second sock.

Before I end this post I want to respond to a couple of comments from previous posts. Jamie asked for a clarification on my Scroll Lace Socks pattern. She wanted to know if there were "plain" rows every other row that I didn't chart out. The answer is no -- the chart is as written. There are yarnovers and decreases on every row. Compare those socks to Brenda Dayne's Brother Amos socks to see the difference that makes. The stitch pattern she used does have "plain" rows every other row, and while the patterned rows are not identical to the patterned rows in the Scroll Lace socks, they are similar. You get a much different effect with the plain rows than you do without them.

Pamela and I exchanged a few emails about the Montse Stanley book. She is totally right in pointing out that Ms. Stanley is quite opinionated. Another reason the book may be more suited to someone who isn't first learning, and who already has more opinions of their own, I suppose. While Pamela stands in the corner being all ashamed about being a slow English knitter, I'll stand in the other corner because Ms. Stanley doesn't approve of how seldom I use tubular cast ons and bind offs. We should be ashamed of ourselves! (But secretly, I've got brownies in the oven, fresh apple cider in the fridge, and am planning a party for knitters who don't knit exactly like Monse Stanley. It will be a blast! Join us! In addition to the above two offenses, you can also gain entry if you have knit yarnover buttonholes. I can hear the children screaming in horror already...)

teased

I was all prepared to on at great length about our beautiful autumnal weather, my sudden urge to knit everything in my Ravelry queue right now(67 projects and counting, the horror), and how all three of my current projects match the new season so beautifully. Too bad we're going to teeter on the edge of setting a record high temperature today (in the mid-90's Fahrenheit), with enough humidity that I'm sure I'll feel like I'm drowning in my own living room. Thanks, friggin August, for taking the fall breeze out of my sails and replacing it with tropical gusts.

But at least I can show you what I was working on, and what I'll try to continue working on in our one (cramped and poorly lit, alas) air conditioned room. First of all, I finished The Socks. I can't show you them yet, but here's a teaser of what the Harrisville looks like in stockinette, from the sole of the foot.



I haven't blocked them yet, so the fabric is still looking a bit rustic. This yarn benefits dramatically from even the laziest of blockings. (In other words, wash and let dry flat.) Isn't the heathered lilac just lovely?

And of course, these socks have earned me my first Cast On Knitting Scout badge:

Normally, of course, such a gesture would be in jest in this situation. But you've read the story (or are welcome to, if you haven't but are curious about what this whole paragraph is about), so it should be clear that the gesture is meant quite literally. As an update, my swatch was finally returned to me last week, without explanation or apology, accompanied by a quite generic and uninspiring rejection letter (fake digitized signature and all). Horrid timing, as I'd just spend a lot of time and energy reinventing the wheel to finish the sock design without that "lost" swatch. I'm glad to have the letter in hand, so I can feel perfectly free to do with the design idea as I like. But I feel even more like a number than before. Well, at least the lesson that this impersonal (and in my case, disrespectful) Knitting Industry is not for me has been well learned. Happy to buy the magazine issues that interest me, and leave it to more hardy (and famous) souls to deal with them on a one-on-one basis. (Bitter much? Yeah, but I have faith that the Knitty rejection will be downright pleasant compared to this fiasco.)

So now that I've filled the room with bitter spite, how about some other knitting? I discovered that a small gnome or elf of some sort had been tinkering in my knitting basket, and managed to cast on for the second sleeve of the Autumn Color Cardigan while I was busy with other things. I swear, I have no memory of casting on for it weeks ago, but apparently did so, and knit the cuff and first 10 rounds of the first chart. Or it was a gnome. Imagine that! I worked a little bit more on it this past week:



I also cast on a new pair of socks. Brenda was kind enough to have Erin send me one of skeins of yarn dyed in an attempt to perfect the colorways for the Brother Amos socks. It turned out quite autumnal (see, there's that cool breeze, trying to push its way through the humidity again), and very much to my liking. It's busier than I'd ordinarily choose for a yarn, but I'm making it work for me in that nearly ubiquitous simian sock pattern:



The yarn is from C*EYE*BER Fiber, and the unique colorway is called "Purgatory Orphan", which tickles me to no end. Monkeys In Purgatory. My kind of socks. Especially in these gorgeous colors. If you want a closer look at the eye of partridge heelflap (a new favorite technique), there's this photo.

The third project I kinda, sorta have started is another secret, for now. I can tell you that it's lace, it's self designed (no stitch dictionaries), and is part of a collaboration with Zabet for a project that will hopefully appear in the fall issue of The Anticraft. It was the product of a very fun brainstorming session, and should be rather weird and slightly gross, while also being highly functional and sensible. My yarn just arrived (earlier than I expected), so it may be my weekend project to finalize the design and cast on. Look for it in a couple of months!

I was going to do a couple of book reviews in this post, but I think that would be too much content for one day, so I'll put them off a bit. I also have an unexpected "disappointed in product" review, but I've already whined more than my fair share in this post, and couldn't possibly subject you to more of that right now. Instead, I'll end with many thanks to the people who congratulated me on my county fair ribbons. I assure you, the sweater and mittens are blushing profusely, and quite appreciative of their adoring fans.

delayed gratification

That's a lot of sock. It's knit in Brown Sheep Naturespun sport on 2.25 mm. needles. The shaping is altered to fit my leg. I'll go into more detail when the pair is done, but a word of advice to anyone knitting these, or other knee socks: Determine your decrease (or increase) rate by measuring the sock when it is on your leg. My sock is significantly shorter when on my leg than when not, because of the horizontal stretch. If I'd gone by the flat measurements, there's no way this sock would fit me.






I had every intention of getting a lot of sleeve knitting done this weekend. I knit the hem on my smaller needles, wrote out my increases cheat sheet, dug out my 3.25 mm. DPNs, and saw this:



(My needles aren't really this pretty. I was just playing with my photo editing software.)

That's a Clover DPN on the left, and the SRK The Collection circ I used for the sweater body on the right. I don't want to knit with those Clover needles. Not only will it be annoying, but there's a chance it will be bad for my gauge. I think the grey Inox needles might be closer to the SRK needles in terms of pointiness and taper. Maybe I'll run to the fabric store during lunch tomorrow to see if those will do. I think they carry Inox DPNs.

It might be a low-volume knitting week for me. I'm going away Thursday and Friday (and maybe Saturday), and want to spend more of my free time this week on the writing I've been neglecting. I was in a generally crabby mood last week, for no apparent reason, and need to figure out a good way to snap out of it. I thought that way would be to knit 6 beautiful inches of sleeve this weekend, but as even my knitting needles are conspiring against my pursuit of happiness, I'll take the hint from the universe and try to be a more well rounded person. (Sage, if you have my muse, send her home!)

one big tube

My needles are liberated. I love the moment when you finish binding off, or, as in this case, putting stitches on holders. Free needles! They get to breathe, after days or weeks or months smothered in wool. It's a grand feeling.

The sweater obviously isn't done, but I've reached a real milestone here. I've completed the bottom part of the body, up to the armpits. My next step is to knit 2 sleeves. Then the sleeves will be joined with the body, for some in-the-round set in sleeve shaping, to go along with the yoke.

I was asked about both spit splicing and evenness in the comments on my last post. First of all, my fabric isn't perfectly even. That's what blocking is for. Secondly, I think the only way to become confident in your stranded colorwork skills (and happy with the products) is experience. My skills have certainly improved a whole lot over the past couple of years. As for spit splicing, there is a nice illustrated explanation here. For the record, I use water, not spit. That way I can eat chocolate while knitting. I also found that sucking on the wool (because there's no way I'd have the stomach to spit onto it) resulted in fibers in my mouth. A little cup of water is really the way to go, in my book.



And how about something completely different? Vastly, wildly different. For me, at least. This weekend, I walked down to my local bookstore, and bought a copy of Spinning in the Old Way.

I swear, it's not because it's trendy. It's because a co-worker has a farm, and has offered me a fleece. And even though I don't know how to spin, if someone is going to offer me a fleece, I'm going to accept it. Spinning is one of those things I knew I eventually wanted to learn how to do, because it will bring me one step closer to making things from scratch. And starting from a fleece, as opposed to pre-dyed and processed roving, is the way I envisioned I'd start. I didn't expect it to happen so soon, but now that the opportunity is here, I'm getting quite excited about it. A couple of friends recommended Spinning in the Old Way to me when I mentioned this new potential undertaking, and as they both know my personality and crafting style pretty well, I took that as a sign that this was the book for me. I've skimmed through the entire book and closely read the first half, and am about ready to declare my devotion to top-whorl spindling, though I have yet to lay my hands on a spindle. Or fiber.

While I wait for my fleece and read up on spinning, I have some planning and preparation to do. I've already received excellent instructions on how to wash the fleece, and am in the process of deciding between using a drum carder (which I'll probably be able to borrow from another co-worker, as I obviously work for the best employer in the nation), or trying to track down (or *gulp* buy) cards for hand carding. I'm leaning towards hand carding, and would commit to it full force if it weren't for the necessary expense of buying the equipment. (If you really want to alleviate my anxiety over this, feel free to buy 10 or 15 copies of the hat pattern. That should cover it. She says with a wry smile.)

Despite my desire to do things from scratch, with a raw fleece, I expect to buy a drop spindle and some prepared fiber to start out with. I don't expect to become an expert spinner right away, but I'd prefer that my first spinning experience isn't with the fiber that I slaved over to prepare. Plus, if the fleece thing doesn't work out, Gibson-Roberts' book has gotten me so excited about all of the geeky, scientific aspects of spinning that there is no turning back now. The mere prospect of a fleece has bootstrapped me into a spinner. So this is going to happen, one way or another. And now I have a really good reason to try to make it to the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival next month. I'm hoping there will be some good deals on locally made spindles, cards, and fiber. I'm just bursting to learn these new skills.

eighteen

This photo was taken a row or two after I finally incorporated the eighteenth (of eighteen) colors into the sweater. I guess this counts as a milestone.

I've had some questions related to using so many colors in one sweater. For those of you who are wondering, I'm spit splicing (so there aren't a kajillion ends to weave in), and there are only two colors used per row. Furthermore, no more than one color ever changes from one row to the next.


I was just talking to a friend about my knitting, and mentioned my knee-socks in progress. She had no idea what I was talking about at first, and I realized that I only blogged about them once, and very briefly. Here's an updated photo of my Schottische Kilt Hose:



That's still the first one. I'm mostly working on it at knitting group once a week, so the progress is slow. Because the sweater is going more slowly than I anticipated, and since I want it to be completed by the end of July (in time for the county fair), I'm avoiding the temptation to knit the socks more than once a week. Perhaps I'll pick up the pace again once I'm more secure in the progress of the sweater. I'll be out of town (and not knitting) for a couple of weeks in July, and I don't want to have to do silly things like pull all-nighters just to get the sweater done in time for the fair. It should ideally be a leisurely, non-stressful process.





While I have your attention, I have a third topic to discuss. (I promise that "eighteen" does not refer to the number of topics in this post. This is the last one, I swear.) Becki recently sent me a beautiful skein of sportweight Morehouse Merino yarn. It's a soft single ply, and I have 220 yards of it. I think that it would make a great scarf, and I've been contemplating making a mini-Cozy. The problem is that I have no sense of whether I could get a decent length scarf with the amount of yarn I have. For those of you with more experience knitting lace scarves with sportweight yarn, what do you think? Could I get a respectable length (say, 48" or longer) 6" or 7" wide Cozy out of 220 yards of sportweight? Or should I give up hope and think of another use for the yarn?

diagonal

I don't have much to say today. I've been knitting. The sweater is slowly growing. All is well. The rooster flies at midnight.

There is an error in chart B, which is the chart I'm knitting now. It's a fairly obviously error if you compare the charts (charts B and D are the same, except with colors value reversed and stitches offset), or if you compare chart B to the photo. Of course, I needed Jessica to confirm that I wasn't just hallucinating. If you're knitting the sweater, let me know if you don't find the error, and I'll email you a scan of my corrected chart. I'm also going to let the folks at Schoolhouse Press know, so perhaps they can correct the chart in future printings or adjust the errata sheet for books that are already printed.


The hat pattern is coming soon. In fact, I hope that it will come tomorrow. I'll be selling it for a small fee, and am trying to figure out payloadz right now. The basic pattern is for a 16" hat, with tips for altering the pattern for up to a 22.5" circumference. But more on that when the prep work is all done.

Symphonic Knitting

I know it's a cliche to say that something is a "symphony of colors," and even though I want to say that, I don't mean it in that cliched way.

Let's talk Beethoven. He wrote beautiful and interesting music, and he liked to play head games with people. Not only is there a great deal of humor in his music, but there's the occasional whiplash moment, as well as at least one instance of brilliant teasing. (I'm sure there are more, but I am alas not a Beethoven scholar.) I can imagine him snickering to himself as he composed, imagining how audiences would react, and in some cases squirm uncomfortably in their seats. You know that college admissions essay topic, about having lunch with a famous person from history? Sneaky, wry old Beethoven would be near the top of my list. I'd love to pick his brain a bit.

I bring this up because I thought of him while knitting my Autumn Color Cardigan hem. In particular, I thought of the beginning of the last movement of his first symphony. It teases you with a scale that builds... and builds... and builds... but just takes way too long to complete itself. If you're paying attention, it feels like an itch you can't scratch, or like when someone says the first half of a favorite quote, and then leaves off the rest. You just want him to get to the point, already, and finish the damn scale. It's beautifully torturesome -- a drawn out diatonic agony, forcing you to hold your breath until it reaches its climax, and the movement gets moving.

This is exactly what knitting this hem felt like. I loved it, but it was also somewhat torturesome. Similar to the irritation of hearing just a few notes of a musical scale, at first I was only seeing a few colors of the spectrum. I knew that something approximating a rainbow was going to result, but as each row took about as long to knit as the entirety of Beethoven's first symphony takes to play, this rainbow was slow in coming. With each color change, I anticipated the next one, to draw me closer to the chromatic conclusion. And it felt so good when I finally got there:



(In other words, pumpkin yellow and forest green look like arse together. But you just know that when the rest of the colors come into play, there will be metaphorical harmony. And it will be good.)

Wondering what that section of Beethoven's first symphony sounds like? I'm sure you are just on the edge of your seat. Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I can deliver. Click here for a video of that movement. Yes, do it. NOW. I command you. You only have to listen to about 42 seconds to hear the entirety of what I was describing above. (Or, if you can get your hands on a recording, listen to that. The sound quality in the video isn't spectacular.)

Now I want to design garments based on composers. Or famous works. Or sections of famous works. That could be a fun concept for a book, and might only take me 2 or 3 decades to complete...

For those of you wondering, yes, I am using the same colors of yarn as in the book. There is no way that I'm prepared to re-design a colorway this complicated on my own. I consider this project a learning experience in many ways, and one of those ways is a lesson in color theory. I already know that I'm going to learn a lot.

objects of great promise

It was a great idea, then a troublesome idea, then a disappointingly bland idea. As I was knitting, I was quite unsure of it. One of those projects where the idea that you thought was brilliant might end up being a more complicated and less attractive variation on something that didn't need to be tinkered with. One of those projects where, in the midst of it, you're sure you'd be better off cutting it off the needles and throwing it to a pack of feral dogs. In the end, I'm fairly pleased at the results. No dogs involved. (I'm quickly learning this is the greatest mental pitfall in designing. Doubting oneself too much right before or right after doubting oneself too little. How does one learn to doubt themself just the right amount?)



The construction is my own design, and the colorwork charts are adapted from Latvian Dreams. I used leftover worsted weight wools -- Elann Peruvian Highland Wool in purple, and Naturally Merino et Soie in grey.

I was originally inspired to design and knit a colorwork hat with a fold-up brim by a hat I've seen a woman wearing around Keene. (Do you ever find yourself with an urge to go up to someone and ask to examine their clothing? It's so hard to resist, but I want to avoid being known as the town knitting crazy, so I exercise a bit of willpower and leave people alone.) I'm fairly certain that the hat I was admiring is double knit, as the brim pattern is a negative of the pattern on the rest of the hat. It's also obviously machine knit at a very tight gauge, and I knew there was no way I was going to recreate it with the materials I had at hand.

I realized fairly early on that a fold-up colorwork brim wouldn't be easy to execute well. I was concerned with curling, as well as with a way to finish off the top edge of the brim in a neat and tidy manner. I considered an icord edge, but finally decided that it might be interesting to design a hat that looks like it has a colorwork brim, but doesn't really have one. I provisionally cast on the stitches for the hat, knit the brim pattern, and then knit a purl row before moving on to the patterning for the rest of the hat. I hoped this would give the illusion of the edge of a brim, but was unsure of whether the effect would work until the hat was done.

The rest of the hat construction is pretty basic. There is a turned hem, which I knit after the rest of the hat was completed, picking up stitches from the provisional cast on. I knit it in that order because I was frankly not sure how deep the faux brim would be, and wanted the turned hem to attach to the body of the hat where the faux brim ended. That way it added some extra bulk to where the faux brim was, as well as lining up well with some plain (non-colorwork) stitches at the brim transition, which made tacking down the hem a lot easier than it would have been in the midst of floats. Best of all, I didn't have to bind off any stitches. I simply used whip stitch to attach the live stitches at the end of the hem to a row of purl bumps on the inside of the hat. Super simple, and super stretchy. Take a peek:



I don't have a pattern written up for this hat. I eventually want to do it again, but perhaps in a tighter gauge (with sport or fingering weight yarn), and with different colorwork charts. I'm not completely satisfied with the charts I chose for the hat, and would prefer to use something I've designed on my own if I'm going to write up a pattern. Look for it in many months. Many, many months. (Oh, and if you're wondering, there will still be a pattern for that orange and white wavy hat. I've just been dealing with some logistical issues and decisions, which have delayed me. But it's coming. Eventually. Sooner than in many months, if that helps.)


Finishing that hat felt good, but not nearly as good as knitting these:



Swatches for my Autumn Color Cardigan! The largest one, in the top left, is the winner. I started out with 2.75mm needles (bottom left swatch), which were just way too small. The 3mm needles were too small, also, so I channeled my inner Goldilocks and made things work out on the third try. 3.25mm needles it is. I'm going to have to block a bit for length, most likely, but not too much. I was having a lot of trouble getting anywhere near the row gauge I needed (8.5 rows per inch), but got pretty close with the 3.25mm needles, and don't want to go any larger, as that will be very bad for my stitch gauge. All in all, I'm satisfied. I won't have to redesign the sweater or block it to death to get something the right size.

I really love the fabric I got on the 2.75mm needles. I think that's what I'd be likely to use if I were designing my own sweater from scratch. In case you're wondering why the losing swatches are so small, it's because they're not done. They don't need to be done because it was pretty obvious from initial measurements that they weren't going to work. But one of the great things about the method I use for knitting fair isle swatches is that they never need to be done. I always knit on the right side, breaking the yarn at the end of the row, shifting the knitting back to the other end of the circular needles, and starting again for the next row. You can always add more rows to your swatch later, if you put it on scrap yarn instead of binding off. I don't purl back in fair isle sweaters, so I definitely don't want to purl back in my swatches. I know that there's an option to leave loops of yarn across the back, instead of breaking them off, but I don't like that method. With my method, I can tie the yarn ends together to keep the edges nice and tight. I also find that the looping method creates a lot of confusion and potential tangles for me, and don't think it would be as easy to block as the method I use. It means you need to be willing to sacrifice some yarn, but I also think it's worth keeping a couple of extra balls of yarn around just for this purpose.

By the way, those aren't the colors of the sweater. I just used some J&S I have sitting around for swatching purposes. The real sweater will be a lot more colorful: