Wouldn't You Know It?

I'm a big fan of wooden knitting needles,they have a much better feel than plastic and are much warmer (and less noisy) than metal. With the exception of socks,* almost all of my projects are knitted on wooden needles.



But, one problem with wooden needles is that they can break. In my experience, they don't break often, just when you do things like step on them. Thankfully, breakage is usually pretty rare.

However, I'm knitting on a deadline right now. So, breakage was inevitable. Husband forgot that a house rule is to check for stray needles before sitting (though Husband would say that it was my fault for leaving my knitting of the couch). I was left with a broken stump of a needle, and a half finished sweater.

I was forced to order replacement needle tips, and of course, I had to include some yarn (I needed to qualify for free shipping after all). The package took about a week to arrive, so that forced gave me the opportunity to complete my Citron shawl. It worked out well, actually, I bound off the shawl on the same day the box arrived.

Still, that was a week with no progress on the sweater, and now the wedding is only 13 days away. I have divided for the armholes and have about seven inches left on the body, plus the sleeves, and the ruffle trim. As a precaution, today I ordered a cardigan that would also work well with the skirt.

*As a side note , I would love to knit socks on wooden needles as well, but when they are that tiny, wooden needles just don't withstand the wear and tear I inflect upon them (and yes, I'm reasonably certain that the problem is me, not the needles.

 

Long Overdue Sheepcote Photos

Okay, so I finished this sweater way back in March.

I just never got around to posting the pictures of it, which have been sitting on my camera since March. But here they are now. Late winter/early spring was a bit of a blah time for me, but hopefully spring and summer will renew my interest in both knitting and blogging and get me back on track with some other things as well.

Anyways, I am vey happy with the way the sweater turned out. It could have been a size smaller, but it is still very cute and wearable. There is something satisfying about finishing projects and about being able to say, "Thanks, I made it," to compliments.

I have two sweaters currently on the needles. The much anticipated February Lady Sweater is about halfway done. However, it is on pause as I race to finish another cardigan, the Teal Top-Down Cardigan (in yellow) for a wedding in the beginning of June. I also have the Citron shawl on the needles, but I'm waiting for another ball of yarn to arrive in order to finish it.

Hopefully, updates n those projects won't be so delayed.

 

Project Talk: Finishing Work

The Mythos Cardigan is finally knitted, off of the needles, blocked, grafted together, i-cord applied, and blocked again! In other words: It is finally finished!

Finally done!

The sweater was intended to be a quick little knit, and a perfect little cardigan for chilly summer nights. It never intended to be a warm cardigan for late fall wear. But the cardigan somehow took five months to complete and I now have a charming little summer sweater all ready to wear in late October in Wisconsin. Sigh, the best laid plans.

However, it is still a cute little summer sweater, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Mostly, I was impressed that it could go  two shapeless pieces of fabric, neither one remotely resembling an article of clothing (ok, husband said it kind of looked like a giant thong), into a perfectly wearable sweater.

In other words, it transformed from two of these:

The first side, knitted, but unblocked.

To this:

The pictures of me wearing the sweater aren't the greatest, but keep in mind that they are pictures of me taken by me (and I had no make up on and hadn't done anything with my hair, thus the cutting off at the neck).

Most non-knitters, and some knitters don't realize the amount of work that can go into a finished piece of clothing even after the main part of the knitting is done.

The first step in the process of finishing most freshly knit goods is a nice soak in warm water and wool wash. I usually use Soak Wash, which requires no rinsing and smells absolutely wonderful. I'm also a fan of Kookaburra Wool Wash as well. This particular sweater got a bath in Kookaburra.

Then I drain the sink, letting gravity do the first part of the water removal. Wool can soak up a lot of water, and can take a long time to dry, so it is best to try to get as much water out of it as possible to speed up drying time.

Then you wrap each piece in a bath towel, carefully rolling up the towel. I usually walk across the towel a couple of times to squeeze some more water out of it. After that both towels go into the washing machine and ran through the spin cycle.

Yes, I know you don't usually throw hand knit goods into the washing machine (at least I don't). But that is why they are wrapped up in a towel and run through for only the spin cycle.

After the bath, it is time to block the sweater. Usually this is only done with natural fibers, as blocking acrylic doesn't really work all that well. The method used for this sweater is called wet blocking, because you pin it out when the knitted pieces are still wet and let them dry that way (creative name, right?). There are other methods of blocking, but wet blocking is usually what I use whenever the knit fabric will allow.

Blocking involves pinning the pieces out to the correct measurements. So I headed upstairs with a bowl full of rust proof pins, some towels, a tape measure, and the sweater schematics from the pattern.

I decided to pin the pieces out on towels laying onto of a mattress. This method works pretty well for larger pieces. It is nice because you can just stick the pins straight into the mattress. I also have blocking mats, but those work better for smaller piece. This sweater was pretty lightweight, and the pieces were symmetrical, so I just pinned them right on top of each other (this would never work for a heavier sweater, it would take forever to dry).

All pinned out.

Once all pinned out, it was time to let the sweater dry. Minerva, being ever helpful, decided to supervise the drying process. Perhaps she felt that being named after the Roman goddess of weaving also gave her responsibility when it came to knitting. Also, cats, mine at least, love to help with the entire knitting process.

After the pieces were dry, it was time to start the assembly of the sweater. First I sewed the sleeve and side seams. Seaming always seems to require stretching and squishing the pieces to get them to match up. I don't like poking sharp pins into the pieces to hold them, but I've discovered that bobby pins actually work beautifully. They clip the pieces together without damaging the fabric and are easy to put on and take off. So I pinned and sewed the side seams and sleeve seams. I wouldn't usually post a picture of sweater pieces pinned together, but I am pretty proud of my new use for bobby pins (yup, just like MacGyver).

My brilliant idea.

Then came the back seam. This pattern called for leaving the back stitches live, and grafting them together using a method called the Kitchener stitch. I've used the Kitchener stitch for the toes of socks before, but never on this scale. The first part of the back looks a little wonky, but by the end I was pretty good at it. Then, I used applied I-cord to add trim around the neck. Applied I-cord is tedious, but gives a very nice edge. I whip stitched the bottom hem, and the piece was ready to block again.

So, the piece went back into the sink, was wrapped in a towel, and took another spin in the washing machine. Then it went back upstairs to the mattress. Thankfully, it looked a lot more like a cardigan when I pinned it out this time.

Again, I left it to dry overnight. In the morning, I came back for it, shooed the cat off of it (Bode this time, not Minerva), unpinned it. There was nothing left to do but try it on, and attempt to take some pictures.

The sweater was knit out of Stroll Tonal from Knit Picks. The colorway is called Pearlescent. It combines shades of ivory, light grey, and medium grey as well as some light shades of platinum and silver. It is actually a pretty combination of neutral grey tones with some warm undertones. In some light, it appears to have some hints of a pinkish undertones, but in other light seems to be purely grey tones. It is a hard color to accurately capture on camera. In my opinion, the color is closest in the picture where Minerva is sitting on the sweater pieces or in this last picture.

All in all it turned out pretty cute. I'm excited for next Spring to roll around so I can actually wear it outside of the house. 


What's next?

I'm taking a brief break from large projects and making myself some new fingerless gloves, using Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts pattern. I'm also determined to finish husband's hunting socks before the opening of deer gun season (practically a holiday in Wisconsin). Then maybe I'll start thinking about Christmas knitting...maybe.

Project Talk: Seriously, WTF?

I consider myself an experience knitter. After all, I've been doing this awhile. However, believe me, I still make mistakes. Mostly the normal, run of the mill knitting errors, not reading the pattern properly, dropping a stitch, purling when I should be knitting, the normal stuff. But, every once in awhile, I make the sort of mistake that makes me sit back and say, "WTF?"

I did one of those today.

I was on hold on a phone call, so like any good knitter, I put the phone on speaker, set it aside and picked up some knitting. First, I grabbed my slippers, which have taken priority over everything else since chilly October weather has now arrived in Wisconsin. After a couple stitches, I figured that this pattern involved counting and short rows. Not the best for knitting I may need to put down at any moment (or be working on into the latter half of this century, given how being on hold usually goes).

Instead, I grab my mythos cardigan, where I currently knitting a long block of stockinette stitch. So I happily knit away until it was time for me to finish my phone call and set it down midrow.

Underwear or Uterus? You decide.

Later, I decided it would be best to finish the row, so I picked it back up and knitted to the end of the row. I held up the sweater to look at the progress, and ponder why I had so much faith that something that resembles either a giant pair of gray underpants or a really big knitted uterus would eventually turn out to be something pretty.

And that's when I saw it. In the middle of the last row I knit, there were two pieces of yarn dangling from two stitches right next to each other. It looked kind of like I had joined another piece of yarn at that point, but I hadn't.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what I might have done. I traced both pieces of yarn to see where they ended up.  One went back to the ball of yarn and the other connected to the end of the working yarn at the end of the row.

Close up of the mistake.

There was only one possible explanation. For some reason, somehow when I picked up the knitting to continue the row, I left a length of yarn dangling. I have no idea how or why I would have done it. The important part was that I had found the root of the problem, I was able to fix it.

The solution was to tink back to the mistake and reknit the remainder of the row properly. It is all fixed now, but I'm still left wondering how on earth I actually managed to do it. After all these years, knitting can still be a mystery.

Process vs. Product

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again (and again), I'm a process knitter, not a project knitter. From what I've observed about knitting, most knitters fall into one of these two camps, though I think most are unaware that you can categorize knitters into these two types.


For me, it all comes down to a basic difference in knitting philosophy, a different reason for why we knit. I do not knit to make stuff, I knit for the enjoyment of knitting. I enjoy the click of the needles, the feel of the yarn, and the action of manipulating the yarn into little loops. The stuff that is created is an added perk, but not a reason to knit. It is all about the journey, not the final destination.


On the other hand, creating stuff is what it is all about for product knitters. After all knitting is a way to make stuff. I'm not saying that they don't enjoy knitting, it wouldn't make sense to knit if you didn't, but they enjoy the creation of a hand-knit item. The goal is to arrive at the destination. And in my experience, project knitters tend to complete more projects faster than process knitters.


Being a process knitter also explains some of my knitting habits to me. I don't mind having projects that sit on the needles for long periods of time, because it's not about getting the projects done. This is also why I have pieces that are almost finished sitting in a basket because they simply need to be assemble, or have ends woven in. I enjoy the process, but I don't necessarily enjoy the finishing work, and since I'm in no hurry to have a completed item, I don't mind letting the pieces sit. I'm pretty sure this is also why I'm not so good at knitting on a deadline.


However, despite of my love of the process, every once in awhile, a project gets in my head. I'll come across a pattern or design or idea, and it will become an obsession. I will toss everything else aside and focus solely on one project until it is done. It happened with my Llama hat, my Owls Pullover, and my Carry-All Tote.


But this is rare for me, up to today, it had only happened three times in years of knitting. But now, it has happened again. I was browsing patterns in the latest issue of the Twist Collective (an online knitting magazine) and came across a pattern that I knew that I had to knit, the Sheepcote Pullover. I can't explain it, it was love at first sight.


I saw the sweater, followed the link to the pattern, and printed it out. Then I spent time digging through my stash to see if I had yarn that would work (I didn't). Then I spent a good portion of the afternoon going back and forth. Logically, I knew that I should first knit with the yarn I have stored upstairs and not by new yarn. But that would mean putting this sweater on hold. I wrestled with myself for a long time, but finally gave in to my impulse. I ordered the yarn for this sweater. I also know that as soon as the yarn arrives, I will cast on and knit on it obsessively until it is complete. That's what happens.


In the end, it's not so bad. I'll have a new sweater to wear by the time sweater weather hits Wisconsin (probably before). And I fully intend to not buy more yarn before the end of the year. I know I have a good sized stash, and I should be able to knit from it for some time after this project. And I don't feel too bad about giving in to this urge, knowing that it most likely will be a long time before the next one hits (I hope, it hasn't been that long since I finished the Carry-All).


Because I know there is some obsessive knitting looming on the horizon, I am going to be working overtime on the Bridges of Roses socks, I've started on the leg of the first sock, so hopefully I can get it finished (especially as they are a birthday present for my mother-in-law, whose birthday was five days ago). I'd also like to get in some progress on the Mythos Cardigan, so here's hoping that shipping is slow!

Project Talk: Looming Deadlines

In knitting, I don't find myself facing a lot of deadlines (note the addition of "in knitting" to that statement, in other areas of my life, deadlines are more of an issue). This could be because I allow myself lots of time to finish a project, such as the baby blanket I had completed by May for a baby due in July, or because I mainly knit for myself. Once in a while, I do find myself up against the ticking clock. And that clock is ticking away right now.

These might actually fit!

Deadline # 1: Mom's Birthday, July 27

In a post from yesterday, I mentioned that I was in the process of designing/knitting some Green Bay Packer inspired socks for my mom's birthday. What I think I failed to mention in that post was that my mom's birthday is coming up quick. I had to start over from cast on today, which gives me one week to crank out a pair of sock (not only crank out, but develop and correct the pattern as I go). Despite making pretty decent progress today, I'm thinking mom's birthday gift may be a little bit late this year.

Deadline #2: Karen's Wedding, July 30

Harry Potter & knitting, a perfect combo

Progress so far

Karen is a dear, dear friend from elementary school. She's getting married at an outdoor wedding in Wisconsin Dells the last weekend in July. Since it's outdoors, and will most likely be hot, attire will be pretty casual. I have a navy sundress that I'm planning on wearing, but I felt that it was a little blah. And what better to add some zing to an outfit that a hand knit lace wrap? I cast on for the Invisibility Wrap from Charmed Knits, a collection of Harry Potter inspired patterns. I'm knitting it out of Knit Picks Shimmer Hand Dyed yarn in Cumulus, which is different shades of gray. I'm also adding beads to the design. The wrap is turning out beautiful, in my opinion, but I just don't know that I will be able to get it done in time for the wedding. But, as I have no backup plan for accessorizing my outfit, I am remaining optimistic. It was slow going at first, but the speed is picking up as I memorize the lace repeats in the pattern.  Fingers crossed!

Deadline #3: Bridges of Roses KAL, August 26

This is only my second Knit-A-Long (KAL). I participated in one before when I made my After Hours Shawl . This one is sponsored by the same company, Knitters Brewing Co. This time the KAL project is a pair of socks with embroidered roses. I'd love to show pictures of my progress on these socks, but truthfully, I haven't even cast on for them. I have the yarn sitting on my end table, reminding me, but the other two deadlines are just so much closer.

Thankfully, right now I only have those three knitting deadlines. But those are not the only projects on my needles. I also have another pair of socks, the Devil's Snare socks (Harry Potter inspired), but those are on hold while I work on the two other pairs.

See? It looks nothing like a sweater!

I'm also working on the Mythos Cardigan from knitty. It is a casual cardigan with beautiful drape to it. The process has been interesting, it is constructed sideways, starting with the end of one sleeve and working to the middle from there, so the work in progress looks nothing like a sweater of any kind. It is also knit out of fingering weight yarn, but on size eight needles, which is what gives the sweater it's drape. This yarn/needle combination produces a fabric that grows much bigger upon blocking, so not only does the sweater not look anything like an article of clothing, it also looks like it will be way too small. This does not create the most inspiring knitting conditions. I've finished the first half, and will cast on for the second as soon as I finish the Invisibility Wrap (or at least that's what I'm telling myself).

Project Talk: General Updates

Farmer's Market Cardigan

Every winter, I overestimate the amount of knitting that I will be able to accomplish. For some reason, I think I'll be able to whip through large projects and create a mountain of finished goods. Sadly, that is never the case. I'm human, I get distracted, I decided to watch t.v. or read a book, I have to rip out and reknit entire sections of my work, I have less time than I think I will. You know, life happens.

Still trying to get a
decent picture.

Since the beginning of January, I completed a sweater and a pair of socks. The Farmer's Market Cardigan took forever to complete, especially the shawl collar, but was totally worth it. I love, love, love the finished product (though I've been struggling to get a decent picture of it). It is warm and super comfortable.

See, nothing is really
wrong with them.

The socks also felt like they took forever to complete. By the end of the process, I hated the pattern, hated the yarn, and even hated the knitting needles. I have since found other needles, but that is entirely another story. Even though they are finished, I still haven't warmed to them. I still haven't bothered to take them off of the blockers or even try them on. There isn't anything wrong with them, I'm just rather apathetic toward the entire project.

Cat's Paw Lace Socks

Currently on the needles is another pair of socks. These are Cat's Paw Lace socks, knitted in Poems Sock by Wisdom Yarns. The yarn is a cheaper version of Noro's Silk Garden Sock Yarn, and is pretty roughly spun. But the colors and beautiful and the pattern is easy. The socks are done from the toe up, with a short row heel. It just has a simple, single lace repeat on a stockinette background. It goes fast and I'm already past the heel of the first sock, so I will carry on.

Coming Soon!
Super Secret Project

My current non-sock project is a gift, so it is under a media blackout. But it is going well, and I'm pretty happy with the results so far. Pictures and project details will be posted later.

On deck, are a number of projects. I'd like to get another sweater done before abandoning heavy woolen knitting for the summer. I'm torn between making another Wicked Sweater, this time in a nicer yarn or finally taking on the February Lady Sweater. I'm leaning toward the February Lady Sweater, because I have been wanting to knit that one for a long time, but it always seems to get pushed back as other projects shove their way to the front of the queue.

As far as summer knitting goes, I need to make some washcloths for around the house, but I also have a number of summer weight projects I want to work on. And we cannot forget those unexpected last minute projects that always seem to crop up.