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.

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?

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:

quirky hat for actual nomads

First off, shameless promotion. Hear me make a fool of myself on Quirky Nomads, in Quirky Quiz 7. You get to hear me babble on, lose touch with the English language, and try my hand at an Australian accent. All through a really cheap microphone, so sorry for the sound quality. (The sound quality of all the other players is great, so don't be scared away. I just wanted to reassure any potential listeners that, no, I don't talk in static in real life.) And in case anybody is wondering, the stuff about the silly string is not true.

Of course, in my fantasy world, everybody listens to Quirky Nomads, meaning that this announcement is completely unnecessary. But since I reluctantly acknowledge that my fantasy world is not in perfect sync with the real world, if you've never listened to Quirky Nomads before, do poke around the site and download gobs of episodes. For something completely different than the Quiz, listen to the episode Red Counter.


Oh, you expected actual knitting content? While I wasn't bantering with lovely, witty, funny women this past week, I was working on a new Dulaan hat. Here's a sneak peek:



The colorwork is based on a chart from Latvian Dreams, and the construction is my own design. It's actually turning out to be very similar in design to the Komi hat. I had more complex design ideas at first, but as I worked through them realized that the best option was the simplest. I did a provisional cast on, which I'll pick up later for a turned hem. I wanted the hat to look like it has a fold up brim, with a different pattern than on the rest of the hat. To achieve that I knit a purl round after finishing the border pattern. I'm not sure if it will have the effect I want when the hat is done, but it was worth an experiment. Knitting that border as an actual fold-up brim would have been complicated because of curling issues, as well as because I was completely undecided on how I wanted to finish the top of the brim. As you can see, when undecided, I simply practice avoidance by eliminating the need for the decision. Clever, eh?

I think I'm going to finish off the hat similarly to the Komi hat, with a solid color top. We'll see what happens when I get there, though. This is a design in progress. And speaking of design, I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction to the Wavy hat, both here and on Flickr. I'm going to set aside some time (hopefully this coming week, but we'll see) to write up a pattern for it. The hat that I knit is small. I haven't measured the circumference, but it's definitely sized to fit a child, not an adult. Of course, by changing gauge, you could get an adult sized hat. But perhaps I'll add an adult version, with an extra pattern repeat in there. I'll have to sit down and do a bit of math, but I think that should work out.

Of course, I'm about 12 rows and a toe away from finishing the second crustacean sock. That's going to happen before pattern writing. I can't wait to make my feet crabby. (In a happy sort of way.)

waves of color

I finally got around to washing and photographing the wavy hat, which I think I finished knitting about 2 weeks ago. It was just a fun little project with worsted leftovers, designed as I went along, with no attention paid to gauge. The yarn is Harrisville Highland (you might recognize the orange from my braid and bobbles hat), and the colorwork is based on a chart from Sensational Knitted Socks. (Pattern 2, on page 82, if you're really curious.) I cast on 96 stitches on size 6 16" circs, knit several plain rows for the roll brim, and then followed the chart until the hat was a good height. The chart is ridiculously easy, alternating 2 stitches of each color around and around. All that creates the wave effect is shifting the starting point on some of the rows. This, and many of the other basic colorwork charts in the book, would be a great starting point for anybody who has wanted to try stranded colorwork, and is looking for something easy as a first project.

The top of the hat took some tinkering:



I wanted to do my standard 8 decrease swirl, and played around with a bunch of options before settling on a way to work the colorwork with the decreases. You can probably tell that I abandoned the wave chart for the top, in favor of keeping the color shifts in one direction. I think it worked out fairly well.

The hat will join my very tiny pile of garments for the Dulaan project, which is why I was able to completely ignore gauge. This hat will fit someone, and getting any specific size didn't really matter. I have a couple of interesting ideas for more colorwork hats, using up some more of my leftover worsted weight yarn. For these, I'm probably going to use charts in Joyce Williams' spectacular book Latvian Dreams. I have an urge to gush over the book in this post, but it would be disorganized gushing. I have plans to do a proper review of the book at some point, so I'll try to refrain from too much gushing right now. Needless to say, the book is spectacular, as a pattern book, a reference book, and as a collection of charts. I'm frankly overwhelmed at the choices for colorwork charts, and must sit down and force myself to choose just one or two to play with, or else I'll never get anything done.

Remember when I said, at the beginning of the year, that it might be a while before I do colorwork again? I guess I was wrong. I'm really excited by my hat design ideas, and have decided that my next sweater will be colorwork, too. I was wearing Vertical Stripes the other day, and realized that I really wanted to knit another one. Not another of the same sweater, but another fingering weight fair isle sweater with all-over patterning. I want to knit the Autumn Color Cardigan, which graces the cover of Sweaters From Camp. That sweater is the reason I bought the book in the first place, and it's long overdue that I actually get around to knitting it. I have some yarn money squirreled away, from earnings from my Stitch 'n Bitch calendar pattern, and from some commissioned knitting projects I've recently completed. It should be just about enough to pay for this project, though I'll have to kick in some extra to cover the expense of shipping from the UK. I had been planning to knit Am Kamin this spring, but the pull of fair isle is too great. I'm very excited. It will be my first time knitting set-in sleeves knit in the round and saddle shoulders, as well as my first colorwork project in which both the background and foreground colors are constantly shifting. A challenge, a learning experience, and the most gorgeous sweater I may ever knit.

not monochrome

pattern 25 (the one on the cover) from Charlene Schurch's Knitting Marvelous Mittens
Harrisville Shetland Style (fingering weight)
extra pointy size 00 needles

Should I go into the saga of getting a decent photograph of these mittens? I'm not sure what it was. Maybe I'm rusty with the camera, maybe the light was never quite right, or maybe I just need a better camera. But I took hundreds of photos over 2 days (not an exaggeration), and really wasn't fully satisfied with anything. I finally got the above shot this morning, which isn't my ideal finished project shot, but I figure there are enough in-progress photos to give a better idea of the size and shape of these particular mittens. My best modeled shot:



There's no particular reason for the Buddha, except that it was sitting on the windowsill, and was just the right size to cuddle in my new mittens. I like this shot because you get a decent view of the thumb gusset.



And the tippy-top.

For all my whining about photos, I'm really happy with these mittens. They're particularly special to me because Alex bought me the yarn on my birthday trip to Harrisville last year, and I finished the mittens on my birthday this year. (It was Sunday, and a big one. So I guess the nice, round Buddha in that shot above is appropriate, to go with my nice, round, shiny new 0.)

Again, I'm very happy with what a washing does to Harrisville yarn. I talked about it when I knit the orange Fibertrends hat last year, and I'll talk about it again. The yarn is so much softer after a washing, and the bloom really finishes the colorwork nicely. On a recent Weavecast, Syne and one of her guests were talking about finishing weaving, and how it's not really cloth until you wash it and do other necessary finishing techniques. I feel that these weren't really mittens until the wash. They were a big, pretty knot of 2 colors of wool. After the Eucalan bath (and an inside-out blocking), they relaxed into beautiful colorwork mittens. I don't think it's something I could have captured in photos, even if I had a better camera and more photography talent. But the change was quite salient in person.

And that blocking really was just washing and drying the mittens inside out. Very easy. For the most part, the mittens are true to the instructions in the book. I skipped the corrugated ribbing on the cuffs, and as I mentioned in my previous post, closed up the tops of the thumbs by pulling the yarn through the remaining stitches (like at the top of many hats), instead of grafting.

(All photos of this project.)

I may end up making a liar out of myself, but this may be the last colorwork for a little while. While I adore colorwork, I've done so much of it recently that I'm a little burned out on it. In the past 12 months, I've knit the Mamluke socks, Ingeborg, the Vertical Stripes pullover, the mitten and hat set, and a couple of bags. Considering the scope of a couple of those projects, I feel like I've barely done anything other than colorwork, though looking through my photo gallery, that's obviously not the case.

There are colorwork projects I really want to work on, when the bug hits me again. (And it will. I have no doubts at all about that. In fact, sitting here thinking about it, I almost feel like I'm ready to start a fair isle sweater. It's been, like, 3 whole days since I knit with more than one color!) I keep mentioning it, and still near the top of my list is the gorgeous cover sweater (Autumn Color Cardigan) from Sweaters From Camp. And there are some things in Latvian Dreams that I can't stop thinking about. But I am looking forward to delving more deeply into textures again, and to having projects that are slightly more portable than all of this colorwork I've been working on. Even when it's just a small 2-color project, like these mittens, it can feel like an ordeal to even move the project from one room to another, what with all of the yarn to get tangled and the chart to keep track of. Time to relax with those plain, grey socks for a few more days. Then on to the next monochrome adventure.

(A., if you're reading this, I couldn't help but borrow your fabulous pseudonym for this post title.)

super secret project

I finished the hat (and mittens!) for Sage (in return for the gorgeous crocheted beret), and have assurances that she won't peek here until she gets them. So I am free to share them with you, which I'm very excited about. The project has been finished since Monday, and was photographed on Tuesday, and it would have been difficult to wait another week or so to write about any of it.

The project started out as just a hat. I decided I wanted to use one of the charts from Charlene Schurch's Knitting Marvelous Mittens as the basis for the hat, and as I was flipping through the book for my inspiration, thought that I might as well knit the mittens, too. In a sport weight yarn, they'd take no time, in comparison to the fingering weight mittens I was working on. I suppose "no time" is all relative, but in the end it was actually a fairly fast project, for something with so many pieces.



I used pattern #29 for the mittens. Mittens #29 in the book are in two shades of pink, so I thought this would be a funny one to base my project on, since the one hat request was no pink. More importantly, I liked the pattern, it worked with the weight of yarn I had available, and I thought it would expand well into something larger, for the hat. If you have the book, you'll see that the one obvious change I made to the pattern was on the cuff. Instead of corrugated ribbing, I used plain 2x2 ribbing, with that bit of red at the bottom for some visual interest. As you'll soon see, the red also coordinates with part of the hat.

Another less visible modification is that instead of grafting together the stitches at the top of the thumb, I simply pulled the yarn through, like at the top of a hat. I was concerned that grafting would make the top of the thumb too wide, and this method produced a thumb that looks and fits very nicely. I usually enjoy kitchener stitch, but liked this method so much for these mittens that I'm using it on my own Komi mittens. I did graft the tops of the hands, which I think was necessary in terms of both form and function.

On my list of things to come in 2007 was the story of 4 thumbs. I ended up knitting almost 4 full thumbs for these mittens, though obviously only 2 survived. The first thumb had stitch evenness issues, as I found it quite difficult to do stranded knitting well on such a small number of stitches. The second attempt was better in that department, but humongous. I don't know if it was my knitting or again the challenges of doing colorwork on such a fiddly, small number of stitches, but my gauge had drastically changed. I figured this out after the second thumb was almost completely knit, so then picked up the other mitten, and started its first thumb on size 1 needles. (I knit the mittens on size 2.) That did the trick nicely, and I went back and knit that first mitten thumb for the third time. It was a pain, but each thumb only took a couple of hours to knit, and it was completely worth the effort in the end. (Unless Sage has mutant, lightbulb-like thumbs, in which case she better be reading this, and warn me before I mail them out in a few hours.)

I knit the set with Brown Sheep Naturespun Sport, leftover from Ingeborg and Elizabeth I. I still have a lot of leftovers, but this was a great way to use up a chunk of them. It's the same yarn (in different colors) used for most or all of the sportweight patterns in the book.



I simply expanded on the mitten chart (fun with Excel) to create the hat chart. I pretty much knew that I would get gauge on the mittens, as my Nordic Mittens were also knit with Naturespun Sport (my first experience with the lovely stuff), on size 2 needles. But it's been a while since I knit those, so in some sense the mittens were an extended gauge swatch for the hat. It turns out that my gauge with that yarn/needle combo hadn't changed, but it was nice to be able to use such a fun project for a swatch. Using my gauge info, I calculated the stitch and row count I'd need for the hat, and adjusted my chart accordingly, to get things nicely centered in the horizontal and vertical. Here is what the jog looks like, on the back of the hat:



I toyed with the idea of putting in a faux-seamline there, like on the sides of the mittens. I eventually decided against it because I think it looks better this way. Obviously, the jog and partial pattern repeats can be seen if you are looking for them. But that spot is a lot less obvious without a big solid line running through it, don't you think? Plus, I like that XX marks the spot. (The spot being the part of the hat that should be at the back of the head, though that preference is obviously up to the wearer.)

The next question was what to do about the brim. Ribbing? Icord? I eventually settled on a folded under hem:



I knit it on size 0 needles ( 2 sizes smaller than the rest of the hat), and sewing it down was the last thing I did. It was a bit fiddly, because of all of the floats between me and the stitches I wanted to attach the hem to. In the end, I actually ended up sewing through a few floats where it was more convenient, as I noticed that it didn't produce any ill effects on the public side of the hat. I really love this secret splash of color, and also like how the turning row reveals just a hint of the surprise inside:



At the top of the hat, I did something a little different than my usual 8-section swirling decrease. I wanted to add some bit of texture or visual interest to that plain black section, so after a few repeats of every-other row decreases, I switched to decreasing on every row. I think it still looks neat and controlled up top, but adds a bit of movement and character.




So that's what I was working on while I wasn't posting. I'm about halfway through the second thumb on my own Komi mittens (and, thankfully, there will only be two of those to knit), and am almost halfway through the first grey sock.

I want to apologize to anybody who got a zillion (or 25 or so) of my old posts appearing as new in their blog aggregator, after my last post. I just upgraded to the "new" Blogger, and I think that's what did it. I really cringed, because I know that the livejournal feed flooded some people with a lot of old posts, which is a lot more annoying there than it is using an aggregator like Bloglines. I promise I didn't do it on purpose, and here's hoping that it doesn't happen again.