The View from the Podium

Look at this:

That is a completed February Lady Sweater, it is done. And by done, I mean done, except for the buttons. Ends have been woven in, and it has been washed and blocked and I have already picked out and purchased the buttons, so I’m calling it done.

And, I finished with a week to spare as part of the Ravelympics. That gave me plenty of time to devote to my second Ravelympic project. For project number two, I decided to make a pair of fingerless gloves. The pattern is called Zombie Vixen, which under any circumstances be almost enough reason for me to make them, but they are also super cute. This project is intended to be a gift, but I like the pattern so much, I think I’m going to have to make a pair for myself. Plus, I always need more fingerless gloves, I love fingerless gloves. The gloves went quickly, and I was able to finish those Friday night and wove in the ends Saturday morning.

However, success at the Ravelympic projects has come at the cost of progress on other projects, namely socks. My Michigan Lakeshore socks are idling at a standstill. I was almost to the heel of the second one when I discovered a problem that forced me to rip back to the cuff. Seeing as how those socks are my mom’s birthday present, and my mom’s birthday was July 27, I might want to get those done some day.

I’m not going to worry about those things now, instead, I’m just going to bask in my Ravelympic success.

I'm on the podium for several events:

WIP Wrestling

One Skein Sprint

Cable Steeplechase

And, Mitten Medly

 

 

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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: Toasty Toes

Over the summer, husband and I replaced the carpet in our living/dining room area with wood laminate flooring. It really changed the whole look of the room (for the better). But about a week ago, I discovered an unforeseen consequence of removing carpet. 

Finished product!

Cold floors. Fall weather has arrived in Wisconsin, bringing chilly temperatures. Couple that with my determination not to turn on the heat in this house until November 1 (though the last two days, my resolve has been wavering a bit), and you have a need for slippers. 


Last fall, I bought a pair of suede soles for slippers, purchased a pattern, and then failed to ever get around to making the slippers. However, last Wednesday morning, I came down to make coffee, and the need for slippers became apparent. I combated my cold feet the way that is obvious only to knitters, I cast on for the slippers.


Thankfully, it didn't take too terribly long to get the slippers off of the needles. There are meant to be felted so in this first picture, they are very big and floppy. 

Big and floppy, not unlike clown shoes!

The slippers are knit out of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Cherry Blossom, with two strand held together. The cuffs are made from two different scrap wools that I had lying around the house (one leftover from the Carry All Tote and the other from Husband's Hunting Socks), a strand of each held together. 


The pattern itself is Felted Clogs from Fibertrends. It is a basic pattern with lots of options for customization and for different sizes, making it well worth the $8.00 price tag (which barely counts in this case since I bought the pattern last winter).

No more clown shoes!

After felting in hot water and agitation, I shaped the slippers on my feet and then stuffed them with plastic bags to hold the shape while they dried. 


Now, here's something you might not know, felted slippers take forever to dry. I felted them Sunday afternoon, and on Tuesday night they were finally dry enough for the next step, attaching the soles.


I sewed on the soles with the project yarn, but it wasn't as easy as I first anticipated. It involved a lot of stretching and squishing to make the sole and slipper the same size. I still think they might be cuter without the soles.

However, function sometimes does actually trump cuteness, even in my world, and the soles are needed to both extend wear of the slippers and to keep me from slipping and injuring myself (felted slippers are slippery otherwise).

After getting the sole on the first one, things went a little more smoothly with the second one. In addition to the suede sole, which has padding the slippers have a double sole of garter stitch. This makes for a super squishy, comfortable base. The material felted into a nice, thick fabric, which also is proving to be toasty warm. This morning, my feet stayed nice and warm while making coffee and letting the dog out. 

Project Talk: Loose Ends

I have weaving loose ends on my knitting, I despise it, I detest it, and I avoid it whenever possible. To join yarns I usually try to spit felt (such an attractive term) or splice them together, I leave them hang if the project is going to be lined, I use the ends up and seaming. But sometimes, there is no way to avoid it, and you end up with somewhere between one and two, or a whole mess of ends to weave in. In these cases, the only thing to do is to grumble, complain, curse, and deal with it. 

A pile of loose ends.

This is the main drawback of working on my Scrap Sock Yarn Blanket. It is one of those projects that I am destined to be working on forever. It is designed as a blanket made up of mitered squares joined together. Each square only uses less than 5 grams of yarn (for comparison, a single sock uses between 30 and 50 grams), so this project is the perfect way to use up those little balls leftover from socks. However, this construction leaves you with at least one, and sometimes two loose end per square, which annoys me, but I cannot figure out a way to prevent it.

Much better!

I've taken to stopping at the end of each new row of squares and going back to weave in the ends from that section. Rows are either 14 or 15 squares long, which gives me somewhere between 15 and 30 ends to weave in per row. This is not ideal, but I'm certain that I will appreciate the effort I put in to stop between rows when I finish the blanket.

And there's much more to come!

However, at this point finishing the project seems like a far away dream to me at this point. This is the epitome of a long-term project. I started this project in September 2008 and at this point am completing the fourth row of squares. Also, for some reason now unclear to me, I decided to make the blanket about 5 feet wide. When it is finished, it will be huge, but right now it is a blanket that is 5 feet wide and only 8 inches tall. I have, however managed to amass a large collection of sock yarn to use, which I guess, is something. Plus, each pair of socks I knit provides me with more yarn.


After my frenzy of finishing last week, I decided to take it easy for a week and avoid any projects that are driven by a deadline. I enjoy process knitting much more than product knitting anyway. I had met two of my deadlines and have almost a month to meet the next one, for which I'll cast on this weekend. I also need to post both finished photos and action shots of the Invisibility Shawl, which turned out quite lovely. It looked great with my dress and received many compliments this weekend. But right now, I'm going to continue to work on tiny squares and enjoy the simple, easy knitting.

Not a Silver Lining

I'll admit it, I cannot sew. I can repair a tear, or put a button back on, but I cannot really sew well at all. Usually when I admit this, people look at me like I have eight or more heads and exclaim, "But you knit!" Yes, I do knit, but shockingly, to a dismaying number of people, knitting and sewing appear to be the same thing. Let me help you out, people, they are not the same thing, even if they both involve some sort of needle and some sort of string.


Anyway, I'm off subject. The point is, when it comes to finishing work, I can do the minimal amount of sewing, but I don't always expect it to look good. I managed to line my Carry All Tote, but there are some spots where it doesn't look too good (which my mom was all too happy to point out, thanks for that :)). I can live with something not being perfect, what I cannot accept is something looking like total crap.


Which is what happened with my first attempt to line my Coco Purse. It looked bad, really, really bad. So bad that I ended up ripping out the lining and cursing. I thought about just leaving the bag as it was, but it really needed to be lined, it also needed some sort of interfacing to give the bag a little shape. So, back to the drawing board.


Background: The Coco Purse was a quickie project. I had it queued up on Ravelry for some time. I wanted a little purse for going out. In my day purse, I carry a lot of crap, but when I'm out for the night, I only need a few essentials (usually my phone, id, cash, camera, and lip gloss), and I prefer not to be burdened with a big purse to lug around. The Coco Purse was the perfect size, and the outer shell knit up quickly in some Noro Silk Garden yarn, which was a giant pain to work with, but the colors are beautiful).


First I needed to gather some new materials. I had used craft foam for the first interfacing, which worked all right, but was destroyed in the first lining fiasco. I needed something that would hold a little shape, but was still flexible and it needed to be in my house, as I was on a deadline with the bag, and didn't have time to run to a craft store.


Luckily, what turned out to be the perfect substance was sitting in my closet. Husband and I just replaced our downstairs carpet with wood laminate floors, and a roll of the under layment pad was left over. The material could be cut with scissors, was flexible, and gave just enough shape. Thankfully, I had enough fabric scraps to  use for the lining and would still be able to use the clasp and the chain handle. 





Next, I cut the interfacing material to fit inside the bag, then attached the lining fabric with some fabric glue (I was really going for a no-sew project here). So far, so good, every thing was clipping along at an easy pace. 
Then I marked the sports where the magnetic clasp would go and added that. 


Finally I glued the interfacing/lining combination to the knitted purse and let all the glue (I used a lot of it) dry overnight. The bag was mostly lined, the sides were not lined, but that would not affect the function of the bag, so I wasn't going to let that worry me.


Now, I was on the last step, adding the handle. I was reusing an chain rescued from my mother-in-law's pile of jewelry headed out the door. It was a thick, brushed gold (not real) chain, which I actually can't even picture her wearing. However, I saw it and knew it would make a great handle for a bag.


I'm pretty picky about the length of my purse handles. I like them just long enough to put over my shoulder, but short enough that the bag sits right under my arm. I used my current purse as a guide, shortened the chain, and attached it to the sides of the purse. 



Voila! My new purse was ready to hit the town!

Finishing Touches

One panel done, one to go!

After successfully steeking my new tote bag, the next step was to knit the other pieces (gusset, strap, and button band), and then tackle the finishing work.


The first of the finishing steps was the addition of green accents on the bag. The accents came in the form of green trim on top and green duplicate stitches throughout the front and back panels of the bag. Duplicate stitches are tedious, slow, and in general a big pain. But the green added so much to the bag, that it was worth all of the trouble of the work.

The Carry All Tote, some assembly required!

The next step was the assembly of the bag, first gathering all of the pieces together, then sewing the gusset to one panel, then to the other. After that, adding the strap and the button flap, creating the bag.

A fun spotted lining!

But, it wasn't finished yet. Knit fabric stretches, which can be a problem for a tote bag, but this problem is easily remedied, with the addition of a lining made from woven fabric. The lining adds durability, strength, and shape to the bag. For the lining, I selected a fun black fabric with brown and orange spots. A smarter person would have selected a lighter fabric to make it easier to find things inside the bag, but I'm not going to dwell on that.


After some debating, I also decided to line the strap, to prevent it from getting stretched out of shape during use. Especially if I loaded the bag with anything heavy.


Finally, I added the last touch, a button, which I discovered while searching in my button collection. And, viola, my carry all tote is complete!

The finished product!

I am absolutely thrilled with how this project turned out. It was a quick knit (only 10 days, start to finish), and looks great! I love how the colors turned out (the last picture represents the colors the best). I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I think it should be highly utile and should make a great bag to haul teacher supplies to and from school. Now, if only the job hunt turns out as well as the bag!