A Week of Knitting

My friends thought I was crazy when they heard I was going on a “knitting cruise.” In truth, there were moments when I thought I might be nuts. For one thing, the ship that was far larger than the other ships I had been on, and the thought of being onboard a floating city had always been horrifying to someone with a dislike of crowds and a terrible sense of direction. But when my friend Debby heard about Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ‘N Beach cruise a few months ago, we decided to sign up – even before we knew about the horrific February we were going to have to endure in New Jersey before the much-needed escape.

We had doubts about whether we would make it to the ship, whose main virtue in my view was that it left from Bayonne, NJ, so we didn’t have to fly (unlike many of the participants, some of whom had real horror stories to tell), but departure day was the third day of a snowstorm that paralyzed the entire Northeast. Amazingly, there was absolutely no traffic on the turnpike (for the first time in recorded history) so we made it to the entrance to the port in about 45 minutes, but then it took another hour to crawl to the less-than-2-miles to the terminal. Once on board, we were able to delete those images of snowdrifts, badly shoveled sidewalks, and dangling icicles from our minds and imagine sunshine and balmy Caribbean breezes.

Or not. The first two days were pretty rough. The second night was interesting. I happened to be awake before 4 AM and decided against getting out of bed because it seemed especially rocky. Suddenly I realized that the ship felt like it was listing to one side and not moving. After what seemed like an eternity (but in fact was only a couple of minutes) it righted itself and started moving again. At one point there was a crash as a toiletries case flew off the shelf in the bathroom – no big deal, though we heard later that there was a lot of breakage in the dining room as china set for breakfast flew off the tables. Twenty minutes later the captain got on the PA system and announced that everything was now fine, but that we had been experiencing 40 MPH winds, and then suddenly a 100 MPH wind had blown up from another direction, forced the ship off course and put out the autopilot, and that they had “temporarily lost control of the ship.” (NOT words anyone ever wants to hear.) The autopilot was back on, we were again on course, and all was well. We should all go back to sleep. Yeah. Amazingly, Debby and I didn’t panic, though we spent the next half hour or so giggling about a variety of apocalyptic scenarios. We heard the next day that some people had panicked, donned their lifejackets, and headed for the muster stations before the captain made the announcement. We also heard that a few morons had gone out to the deck to investigate, one telling us that he was glad he was able to light a cigarette in all that wind! (If this had been an IQ test, he would certainly have flunked.)

While that was the most exciting few minutes of the cruise, the rest was fabulous. We spent 8-10 hours knitting each day. On sea days we had morning and afternoon classes, and every night we had dinner together and then adjourned to one of the lounges for a Stitch ‘n Bitch at Sea, bringing either our own knitting projects or something from one of the classes to knit while we chatted and drank mudslides or mojitos. Most nights we went off to bed to knit “just a few more rows” before turning off the lights. Who would think someone could knit that many hours a day without suffering from achy hands and wrists?

Debbie Stoller is wonderful teacher. While the participants had a wide range of knitting skills, everyone left every class having learned something new. We had sessions on such topics as double knitting, slip-stitch designs, alternative cast-ons, crocheting for knitters, designing your own sweater, and how to fix knitting mistakes. Some of us learned that we had been purling wrong all our lives, holding the yarn wrong for a long-tail cast-on, or twisting stitches inadvertently. Others learned how to crochet for the first time or how to hold the hook in a more efficient manner. Even the accomplished lace knitters learned something about the structure of lace stitches and improved our ability to “read our knitting.”

One of the highlights of the cruise was the “Yarn Tasting” event. Debbie had gotten yarn samples from a wide range of companies, from the big companies to very small producers. We were given lengths of yarn to knit into a sampler, so that we were able not only to look and touch but actually to knit. Not only were there wool and silk, but exotic fibers like bison and yak, wonderful blends of these fibers with merino and cashmere, and some lovely hand-dyed yarns. Many of the companies had also sent her full skeins, which she distributed in such a way that we all came away with several skeins of something we loved. We all expanded our yarn horizons and will unfortunately have to expand our yarn budgets as a result!

We did get a few days of the sunshine and the warmth we were craving, but that was the least of it. We had a nine-day “high” with a wonderful group of knitters from a variety of places and backgrounds, learned a lot about knitting, and discovered what nice, friendly, generous people knitters tend to be.

Finishing the year with Finished Objects

It has been a long time since I have posted a blog entry. Is there material for a New Year's Resolution here?

The last month has been very productive, knitting-wise. I have completed quite a few projects, and while I have entered all the details on my Ravelry site, they didn't quite make it to the blog.

The most ambitious was the Masked Ball in Venice shawl, which I had hoped to finish in time for the High Holidays in the fall, but because I ran out of yarn (twice), that didn't happen. I used yarn that was a slightly heavier gage (really just a tiny bit heavier) than the pattern called for, thinking that it was just a shawl so gauge didn't matter. With all those stitches (about 1200 per row by the end) scrunched up on the needles it was impossible to tell how big it was. Then I bound off and washed it and set it out to block. Oh my goodness -- it was enormous!

Pattern: Masked Ball in Venice by Monika Eckert
Yarn: Jaggerspun Zephyr

This was done as part of a KAL, but I fell far behind. The pattern is gorgeous, and the KAL was fun because in addition to the pattern, sections of the story that inspired it were released from time to time. I really needed a black shawl and had a substantial part of a cone of Zephyr left from another project, thinking it would be enough. Wrong! Unfortunately, the beautiful detail of the pattern will probably not ever be seen, since I will be generally be wearing the black shawl over a black dress. Lesson learned from this project: Gauge does matter, even with shawls. And "a little bit off" can add up to a lot when there are hundreds of stitches to a row.

The two sweaters that were finished this month were both done with Colourmart yarn. The first, a pullover, with cabled neckline and sleeve detail, was done in Extra Fine Merino, which is soft and luscious.

Pattern: 114-8 Jumper with cables by DROPS design
Yarn: Colourmart 100% Extra Fine Merino 12/30NM Super DK Weight
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony US #7




The yak cardigan was a real labor of love. The designer had offered to customize the pattern for members of the Colourmart group and I jumped at the opportunity, fortunately before she realized that her generous offer would be far too much work if more than a few people responded!

Pattern: Classic A-line Yak Cardigan by Margarete Dolff
Yarn: ColourMart Superyak/Extrafine Merino (50/50) 3/14NM Fingering Weight
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony US #3

The yak/merino yarn is very soft, very light, and very warm. Despite the miles of potentially boring stockinette (on very small needles), it was so delightful to knit that it wasn't a problem. It was perfect for knitting during movies, lectures, and conversations with friends. The ribbed band is knit separately and sewn on because it is a different gauge from the stockinette, and that turned out to be the perfect project for one of my flights down to Florida to visit my mother, even when the return flight had a 4-hour delay.

And speaking of labors of love, I made backpacks for my grandsons for Chanukah, but only after asking them if they thought they would like them and asking them to select which of the adorable patterns from Morehouse Farms they would like. One chose the Owl, and the other the Snake.


They are knit with the yarn doubled for the bottom and top band, and a slip-stitch pattern for the body, so they are quite substantial – especially because they are knit on size US #5 needles, quite a bit smaller than what one would normally use with this yarn. My friend Debby, who had made the Hippo backpack for her granddaughter, realized that nylon straps with buckles instead of knitted straps would be much more practical, and she offered to do the same for mine. The kids seemed to like them, so the project was a success. Now on the needles... two more for the other grandchildren.

A New Year's wish for all you knitters... May all your projects knit to gauge, and may all your UFO's be finished by the end of the coming year!

Can you have too many shawls?

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was not to knit more shawls. I love knitting lace. I love knitting shawls. I love wearing shawls. But how many does one person need? I have a whole shelf of them in one closet. The more delicate and complicated the lace, the more I love it and the less I wear it. Since I live in the northeast, where it is cold most of the year (even in summer, where there is a tendency to over-air-condition public places), I almost always have a shawl with me to throw over the other layers. But I rarely get "dressed up" and the lacier, dressier shawls seem to languish in the closet. But I can't resist the urge to knit more of them!

I also have a hard time resisting a puzzle. So when Kalinumba announced the Wings of Horus KAL, it seemed like a natural. There was even a cone of light blue Zephyr sitting calmly in the stash, perfect for this project. So I succumbed.

But then something terrible happened. Renee of Goddess Knits announced the Anniversary Mystery Shawl 09. Since my previous attempt at one of Renee's shawls ended in a trip to the Frog Pond, this was an opportunity to redeem myself. And... there happened to be some cream-colored Colourmart cashmere available in exactly the right weight. How could I NOT?

Both projects are proceeding nicely. There were some scary moments with Wings of Horus. In order to download each of the weekly clues, we had to solve a riddle involving ancient Egyptian mythology. I solved the first one quickly, but the subsequent riddles were more difficult. Thank goodness for the KAL group on Ravelry! Thanks to Google and some hints provided by more clever and knowledgeable group members, disaster was averted. In fact, there were a few awful hours when I thought that after knitting the first five clues, I wouldn't be able to get the final one! As much fun as it was, I may have to remember those feelings of dread the next time I consider doing something like that. There are just about 20 more rows to finish, but by now there are over 500 stitches in each row, so it may take a while.

And speaking of shawls, I never blogged about the large, lovely, soft alpaca Klabauter shawl from this past winter. That was another KAL by Monika Eckert. (I was seduced into making that one after my experience with Moni's Slow Bee Mystery Shawl, now available as the Icicle Lace Shawl.) It was a fast knit, done in Lavish Superfine Alpaca in a mint green. The yarn is a little heavier weight than most of my lace shawls, but Moni was very clever with the design – she offered edging options at several different points along the way, so there was a lot of flexibility in the size of the finished shawl. It is large enough to snuggle up into, and I expect it to become a staple of my wardrobe in the future.

Unfortunately, it has one problem. The alpaca sheds. I wore it out last night over a black knit top, and by the end of the evening not only did I have little wisps of greenish-white fluff all over my formerly black top, but even the sleeve of my husband's sport jacket was covered. (He had the misfortune of sitting next to me.) I am a little afraid to machine-wash the shawl, but hand-washing didn't remove the loose fibers when I originally blocked it, so I'm not sure where to go from here. Suggestions welcome!

It IS a jacket after all!

I had my doubts, many times in the course of this project, that this oddly shaped piece of knitting would ever metamorphose into a wearable garment. While I was always an A math student, plane geometry was a challenge, and involved brute memorization of formulas and proofs rather than any intuitive understanding. (Does anyone do proofs any more? My mathematician friends complain that even college math courses are light on proofs until the upper levels.) Visualization of three dimensional objects was totally beyond me, and even two dimensional objects could be problematic.

To backtrack a bit… In Italy in October 2007 I bought 12 skeins of Filatura di Crosa 127 Print. (Probably not enough, but all they had in the little shop in Tuscany where we stopped on our way back to Florence.) I searched for months for a pattern that would not result in horizontal stripes and eventually came across the Boku Mitered Jacket. After purchasing the pattern, I had my first doubts even before casting on. There was no schematic, and I wasn’t sure about whether I could fudge the size, length, or anything else to accommodate the amount of yarn I had. Eventually I ordered a few more balls of yarn from Webs, and while it wasn’t the same dye lot, it was close enough.

At various points I set it aside to work on other things, partly because I was so uncertain of where this was going. With most patterns, you start with the back, then the front(s), then the sleeves, and it is clear where you are at any time. This pattern, though, begins with the center back and works at an angle… okay while you are still on the back, but then it wanders over to the sides and the front, and you pick up stitches at various points along the way. (With any luck, you will pick up the CORRECT stitches, but it is hard to know for sure.)

Eventually it started coming into place, but I was almost ready to give up when nearing the end, since it didn’t seem to fit properly, but adding additional rows to the edging around the collar made a big difference. I had added some solid Elann Peruvian Highland Wool for the cuffs and the band around the bottom and collar, and I think that finished it off nicely. (In truth, I used the solid black because I was still afraid of running short of the 127 Print, but I might have done that anyway.) In the end I was happy, but it was probably the most stressful knit I have ever had… partly because I wasn’t sure all the effort was going to result an a wearable jacket, and partly because the yarn had such wonderful associations with the trip to Tuscany that I didn’t want it to go to waste.

Hats, Hats, Hats

Earlier this week I looked at my blog and discovered that I hadn't posted since the end of October. I guess it's time for a New Year's (slightly used New Year) resolution to blog more regularly.

It's all Ravelry's fault. In the past several months, the time I would have spent blogging seems to have been gobbled up by Ravelry. Between updating my own projects and looking at other people's projects, it has become a real time sink. But what an amazing one!

This has been a dreadful winter in the Northeast, and as a result I have been on a hat knitting kick. It started with the Meret beret, which was a free pattern offered by Wooly Wormhead as part of a Ravelry KAL. I had just finished it when I suddenly needed a birthday gift for my sister-in-law, so I decided to give it to her and make another one for myself. Only this one I decided to give to a friend as a Chanukah present.

Meret was a well written pattern, and I enjoyed it so much that I bought Wooly Wormhead's book (despite her unfortunate name) Going Straight, a collection of 24 designs using a sideways construction method. The biggest problem was deciding which hat to make first!

The winner was Guimauve, a slouchy beret with an unusual, slightly-pointy shape, though the point is much less pronounced when worn than it is just sitting for a photograph.

Like the other two hats, I made this one from stash yarn – in this case Park Avenue, a now discontinued alpaca-merino blend by Lily Chin. Because the yarn is a heavier gauge than the pattern calls for, I needed only 8 repeats instead of 10. The fit is perfect.I may try the same hat again some time with a variegated yarn as it is shown in WW's pattern photo.

Another ball of Park Avenue was leftover from a sweater and too pretty to abandon, with just enough for a not-too-big hat, so I next tried Trinity. It was a good travel project – extremely portable and not too difficult. It was a little too small – wearable, but too small to be pulled down over both ears. After deciding not to wear it day after day, I decided to extend it by picking up stitches along the bottom and adding a brim. There wasn't quite enough Park Avenue left, so I added some green KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, which blended in perfectly. It is now my favorite hat.

On really cold days, my favorite is Strudel, for which I used Lavish Superfine Alpaca that was leftover from a shawl (a subject for another post). It is another nice warm hat, that fits well and covers the ears. The horizontal cables give it an interesting look, and it stays put even on windy days.

There are still several hat patterns in the WW book that are on my To Do list. Maybe next winter. (If this one ever ends.)

Second Chances

This was a week for second chances – at least knitting-wise.

Last winter I made the wonderful Oblique sweater by Veronique Avery. It me took about 5 months to knit it, and in the end it was too big. When a member of one of the on-line knitting groups offered to buy it from me, I decided to sell it to her, and immediately bought yarn for another one. It was the same yarn – even the same color, though the dye lot for the second one was a little grayer. I was surprised at how much faster it was to knit the second time! The lace patterns were far less intimidating, and after the first few rows I barely had to look at the instructions for each section. Here is the finished product:
















Pattern: Oblique, by Véronik Avery, Knitty, Fall 2007
Yarn: Ella Rae Classic Wool, approx. 9 skeins (1900 yds)
Needles: KnitPicks Options US #8
Modifications: Omitted waist shaping; shortened cuffs

I have already worn it twice and expect it to be my standard grab-it-whenever-cold sweater for this winter.

My other Second Chance was the Alix Shawl. I had made one for my mother over a year ago, using some colorful sock yarn that seemed a little too colorful for socks. She seemed to like the shawl, but it mysteriously disappeared shortly after I gave it to her. I decided to make her another one, since she is always cold, even in Florida, and wanted to use either sock yarn or a washable wool, and found a nice superwash merino in variegated blues. It was good that it was a totally different colorway from the first shawl, since as I was about to finish it, the original one turned up in one of her dresser drawers!












Pattern: Alix's Prayer Shawl
Size: 64" x 30"
Yarn: Fibranatura Baby Merino (superwash), 4 skeins
Modifications: Crocheted bind-off

As with the Oblique sweater, the shawl was much easier the second time. The pattern for each row seemed very easy to memorize. I'm not sure whether it was easier because I had done the same pattern before, or because of all the more complicated lace knitting I have done in the interim. Either way, it certainly shows that experience pays off.

One more object (though this was not a re-do) finished recently is the Syncopation Mitered Bag:

Pattern: Syncopation Miterd Bag by Sheera Designs
Yarn: Cascade 220 (a little more than one skein) andMadil Yarns Rebus (1.5 skeins)
Needles: US #6
Modifications: None
New skill learned: I-cord

This pattern had the potential to be a nightmare, but it has such clear diagrams that even somebody "geometrically challenged" was able to do it. Once I started to pin labels on each completed section to identify the number of the section, it became much easier.

This pattern may have a Second Chance in its future.

I can't believe it's over

The end of summer always comes as a surprise and a disappointment. Since I love the two months of summer and hate the six months of winter so much, the end of August is always a depressing time. We still operate on an academic year calendar, and while the start of the new school term always brought with it the promise of a fresh start, for a retiree it just means the onset of cold, gray misery.

But enough whining (or whinging, as the Aussies would say).

August was wonderful. We had a delightful vacation cruising in the British Isles (where in fact it was cold, gray, and rainy everywhere we went). And I got an amazing number of UFO's finished.

My "cousin" Michael's wife had twin daughters in July. (The relationship is more complicated than that, but the details are irrelevant and boring.) My major objective for the cruise was to finish these for my visit shortly after our return:

The variegated yarn is Bella Colour, a cotton and acrylic blend from Plymouth Yarn. The pattern is the Toddler Jumper that I got from Discontinued Brand Name Yarn when I bought the yarn in the pink and gray the first time to make a dress for my granddaughter. I bought the blue for the second dress (before I knew the baby would be twins) and had almost enough of the pink left over for another one, but not quite. Fortunately I found the solid gray (Caron Country, a washable wool/acrylic blend) which coordinated color and texture-wise at the local A.C. Moore just before we left. They came out quite nice, don't you think? The babies' mother was delighted with them, which is always nice when you give a hand-knitted gift (and happens far too infrequently).

I couldn't go to visit without a gift for the twins' two-year-old brother, so the few days between our return home and the trip to Miami I went on a knitting blitz and finished the Childhood cardigan just in the nick of time. The yarn was Mission Falls 1824 cotton, which has a very nice feel to it and is supposedly washable (though I would always recommend handwashing for hand knits). The mom was equally delighted with this! One interesting thing about this pattern is that it calls for snaps instead of buttons (though it is shown with fake buttons sown on). I didn't have time to buy buttons, and my wonderful friend Clare had the perfect snaps. I think I like it just as much without buttons, unless you happened to have particularly interesting ones. And it was nice not having to bother with buttonholes.

My other major project for the trip was the Revontuli (Northern Lights) shawl. (Yes, I know the pattern is in Finnish, but the designer fortunately translated it into English.) My mother lives in Florida but is always cold, so I wanted to make her something both colorful and warm. When I saw this pattern on Ravelry I knew it would be perfect in Kauni wool yarn, which comes in a rainbow colorway with very long repeats. It was, unfortunately, less soft than I would have liked, but once knit and washed, it was acceptable. I wasn't sure if my mother would like the colors, but she seemed to be very happy with it. (And she doesn't fake happiness very well.) I had two skeins of yarn and still have about 1/3 of the total left. Until it got really big, it was a good travel project, because the pattern was very easy to keep in mind with only an occasional glimpse at the pattern at the beginning of each row.

I actually did some more knitting in August, but that's enough for one post. More coming... along with some photos from the trip.

Slow Bee finished on time (more or less)

I love this shawl!!! It is a beautiful design, large enough to wrap up in (even for zaftig person), in a wonderful color, shimmering with little silver beads.
Pattern: Slow-Bee Mystery Shawl by Monika Eckert
Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18, teal
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony #US3
Beads: Silver-lined crystal beads (8/0) - approx. 75 gm from Emelia Beadelia
Modifications: Used Version 2; omitted beads in last two rows before the end

The shawl was a delight to knit. I blew up the charts a bit to make them easier to see, but they were well done. I used an itty bitty crochet hook to add the beads, and it wasn't difficult but it really slowed things down on rows that had a lot of beads. By the end of the shawl, there were over 800 stitches per row, so even the simplest rows took a lot of time. No matter, though – it was fun watching the pattern evolve, and the icy-greenish-blue color along with the shimmery silver beads were perfect for summer knitting.

Mystery KAL organizers always emphasize that it isn't important to keep up with the schedule of clue releases, but it does impose a kind of internal deadline. There were a couple of weeks that I didn't quite make it for one reason or another, but did manage to catch up during the next week. I really wanted to finish it in time to take it on our summer vacation, and just managed to do it with a day or two to spare.

Blocking a shawl this large was something of a challenge. Thank goodness for interlocking foam pads! I didn't much like having to get down on my hands and knees to lay it out, and probably didn't do an optimum job as a result, but the shawl is lovely in spite of a mediocre blocking job. At one point I accidentally stepped on an edge of the shawl, complete with little glass beads... I won't be doing that again any time soon!

Welcome, Mother Earth

Today I am happy to introduce Mother Earth, a.k.a. Spring Shawl Surprise:
Pattern: Mother Earth by Lul (Lene Unmack Larson)
Yarn: ColourMart Cashmere 3/28NM Heavy Lace Weight, approx. 300 gm
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony US#5
Size: 24" x 96" blocked

The yarn is heavier than recommended, so I was concerned that it would be too large, but it is absolutely perfect. Like other Colourmart cashmere, it metamorphosed into something soft and warm and scrumptious after the Tough Love treatment (wash in very hot water with Dawn, subject to the dryer on low for about 15 minutes before blocking). One of the true pleasures of knitting lace is the very last step... seeing it change from an amorphous blob to a beautiful objet d'art. That effect is magnified when the yarn is Colourmart cashmere, which doesn't look or feel like anything special on the cone, but becomes transformed once the spinning oil is washed out and it is fluffed up in the dryer.

According to Lul, her main thought about the design was "to bring out circles and curves (which I pretty soon realized isn’t easy in lace knitting). Circles to represent how almost everything in life is repeating itself again and again, the changing of the seasons, being born –growing up-getting old-dying and a new human born again, sunrise-daytime-sun set and night. It all moves in circles and we are all just part of a bigger event 'Life' , let it be human or nature. Curves to represent the curves of a woman –the main image of the stole being a rather modernistic shape of a pregnant woman. She is standing on the bigger circle that represents the Earth, with the tree of life in the center to remind us that we are all part of the world and we all live important lifes. We may look differently, but we are all the same –man or woman."

Note on photo: Because of the length of the shawl, it was difficult to get a good photo of the whole thing. I finally took a series of shots and let Photoshop do its magic with photomerge. Despite the odd perspective and lighting effects, the shawl really is rectangular and a uniform color.

Trouble is waiting...

Where, o where, is Ma Bell? We have been without phone service for two days, and the Verizon Trouble Report Status page says only that "Trouble is waiting to be dispatched to a technician." Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. I can only imagine a knitter, impatiently tapping her foot as she knits, waiting to be dispatched. This cartoon from A Good Yarn portrays it pretty well.

In the "olden days," the phone line almost never went dead. One the rare occasions that it did, the phone company repaired it the same day. Yet this is the third time in the last three or four months we have lost our phone service, and each time it took two days before it was repaired. (Once we were away, and it was out for over two weeks.) At least this time they didn't insist that we wait at home for their repairman to show up.

Knitting in lieu of tranquilizers

The more we travel, the more stressful it seems to be. I used to get nervous a day or two before a trip. Now it is more like three or four days, and the anxiety is even more intense. When the actual day arrives, it reaches a peak as we wait for the ride to the airport, then sit and wait the obligatory two or three hours for the flight. I have found recently that a combination of knitting and listening to music can help pass the time and is sufficiently distracting to lower the stress level. The same is true during the 3 or 5 or 12 hours of flight time.

This time we had a 12 hour flight to visit our son and grandchildren. I was only gone for 5 days but planned my knitting very carefully. I managed to finish the various pieces of the Scallop Edge Pullover from a recent issue of Knit Simple, worked on the Luscious Lace Scarf from Pixie's Paraphernalia, and fiddled with a ball of Louisa Harding's Kimono Angora until it found a pattern it liked.

The Scallop Edge Pullover is an easy knit, though I made a few changes to the pattern. The back was excruciatingly boring (plain stockinette), but the detail in the front made it much more interesting.

Pattern: Scallop Edge Pullover by Lauren L., Knit Simple (Spr.-Sum. 2008)
Yarn: Lily Chin Chelsea (cotton, merino, acrylic blend) - 8 balls
Needles: Knit Picks Harmony US #4

Modifications:
GAUGE – larger gauge than pattern calls for. I miscalculated the number of stitches to cast on, and then decided to make it an “A” shape, wider at the hips, partly out of laziness (since I didn’t want to frog) and partly because that style is usually flattering. I probably should have ripped it out and started again.
HEM – Simple crocheted edging, because I was afraid the picot hem would be too bulky. That was a mistake. After I did the picot edging around the neck I realized that it would have been fine. Sleeve hem – ditto, but used garter edge.
LENGTH – added several inches. The pattern was much too short.

When all that stockinette got to be too much, I switched to lace. The Luscious Lace Scarf was easy enough to knit with only an occasional glance at the pattern at the beginning of every few rows. The fine cashmere yarn was soft and stretchy and felt lovely in the hand. I am still debating how many more pattern repeats to do. Maybe I will just keep it as an UFO for our summer vacation.

The other project for this trip was to find a satisfactory scarf pattern for the Kimono Angora. It is nice and soft but the colors are really strange. I bought it on sale and thought I liked the colors, then vacillated between love and hate. After trying several different patterns I gave up and just did a simple stockinette rectangle, adding a drop stitch across the row at random intervals, sometimes using single yarnovers and sometimes doubles. This was also good airplane knitting, because there was no pattern to juggle, but the occasional drop stitch rows kept it interesting, along with watching the effect of the color changes.

A lot of knitting was done in those five days. Because of the impossibility of sleeping in the tortured position those airline seats force you into, I alternated knitting (while watching movies or listening to music) with reading. And thanks to jet lag, there was also a lot of knitting time at night once we were there. And thanks to all that knitting, I was much calmer during all that time, and I have a completed sweater and two 75%-finished scarves to show for it – instead of just high blood pressure and palpitations.

Finally, a Cabled Tee

One of the first patterns that caught my eye when I started knitting sweaters again (after a 20+ year hiatus) was the Cabled Tee. Many members of the Ample Knitters group had made this sweater, and the pattern was even written for larger sizes without having to do advanced mathematics to adapt it, but I hadn't done cables for a long time and was a bit intimidated. Plus, I was having so much luxuriating with wool, alpaca, and cashmere, that cotton seemed a little boring. This yarn was a closeout at Web's, and it seemed like a good compromise.

Pattern: Cabled Tee by Maureen Taylor & Patricia Brunner
Yarn: Lily Chin Chelsea (30% merino wool, 35% cotton, 35% acrylic) – 8 skeins
Size: 1X
Needles: Knitpicks Harmony US #5
Modifications: Ribbing in the Twisted Rib pattern used in the Oblique cardigan

I love the way this pattern was written. Directions were given for a variety of sizes at three different gauges, so it wasn't necessary to recalculate anything. O that there were more patterns like this one!

This week I met a friend for a shopping expedition. She wanted to go to the anniversary sale at the Wooly Lamb, a lovely yarn shop in Pennington – not so far for her, but too much of a trip for me under normal circumstances. The staff was very friendly and they had by far the best selection of gorgeous yarns I have ever seen in a real live LYS. The only reason I managed to walk out empty-handed was their sale discount policy: On entering the store, everyone was asked to pick a little slip of paper out of a basket and would get the discount written on the slip. Mine was a 15% discount, and my friend's was a 25% discount. Another friend, who met us there, got a 35% discount! I simply couldn't bring myself to buy anything with my measly 15% off when other people could buy the same items for a lot less. A gorgeous alpaca-silk yarn for a sweater for me would have been over $200 at list price but with S's discount, I might have splurged... after all, my birthday is coming in another 5 months! The truth is that I didn't need it anyway, given the size of my stash, so maybe they were doing me a favor.

Cabling on the Edge

In the many years I have knit sweaters with cables, I never knit (or even thought of knitting) a cable right at the edge. But the beautiful and original pattern by Anna Dalvi for the Mystic Light Shawl KAL includes a cable along the short edges of the triangular shawl. The cable provides for nice firm edges, as well as complementing the design, which also includes a cable down the center.

It was quite daunting to do a cable right at the edge at the beginning of the Knit-Along. Upon the advice of my sister, who managed to start this shawl before I did, I learned how to do the cables without a needle using this tutorial by Wendy Johnson. What a revelation that was! Once you get the hang of it, it is far easier than looking for the cable needle, juggling it around, knitting the cable, and putting it down again (hopefully in a place where it won't get lost before the next cable). It felt awkward at the beginning or the end of a row, but after a few tries it seemed perfectly natural.

Here is the finished shawl and a detailed view of the cables:











Pattern: Mystic Light by Anna Dalvi
Yarn: 2 skeins Fleece Artist Merino Sock 2/6 (764 yards)
Needles: US #7
Size: 34" x 68"

Another interesting aspect of this pattern is that it calls for fingering weight yarn, so it went much faster than most lace. The yarn (amazingly enough, I used the yarn suggested by the designer) is nice and soft, with good drape, and it should offer a little more warmth than lace-weight fabrics.

My very next project after completing this shawl is the Cabled Tee, a short-sleeve sweater with a cable down the front that branches up along the neck. Even after looking at the picture, it didn't occur to me that the cable along the v-neck was right at the edge. (Surely there was a stitch or two border beyond the cable???) In fact, the cable is right at the edge, just like the shawl. It really isn't any harder than a standard cable, though it can be tricky to move those stitches around without dropping the end stitch in the process.

What's next? A break from cables, though I'm sure there will be more in the not-too-distant future. Yesterday was the Cast-on for the Slow Bee Mystery Shawl, and here is the first half of the first clue. The recommended color is "something really cold, like white or natural yarn, icy blue or very dark violet or dark blue" with seed beads. After considering both Teal and Ice Blue Zephyr, both with silver-lined crystal beads, I finally decided on the teal, though both remind me of this photo that I took in Antarctica:

When a Gauge Swatch Isn't Enough

I swatched. I washed the swatch. I measured. I knit – to gauge, I thought. In the 5 months it took to finish this sweater I never thought to try it on, and the dimensions of the pieces seemed to match the schematic. Over the weekend I finished the collar and button band, sewed the pieces together with only two crises (putting the button band on the wrong side of one the fronts, and then sewing the sleeve to the wrong side). This morning I tried it on. Yikes! It could be a tent!














Pattern: Oblique, by Véronik Avery, Knitty, Fall 2007
Yarn: Ella Rae Classic Wool, approx. 9 skeins (1900 yds)
Needles: Denise US #8
Modifications: Omitted waist shaping; shortened cuffs

Things I like about this pattern:

• The design, with its diagonal focus
• The combination of lace patterns, including the twisted rib
  
• The use of lace patterns with worsted weight yarn
• Well-written pattern which was easy to follow, even after putting it down for weeks at a time

The only problem is that it is way too big. I should probably have made a size smaller, but past experience had led me to believe that sweaters can't be too big. I am looking for a solution that does not involve frogging the whole sweater and starting from scratch... as much as I enjoyed knitting it, once was enough. Controlled shrinking???

Drops Jacket Drops off the Needles

Sometimes the yarn is absolutely right for a project, even if it isn't the yarn recommended by the pattern. That was the case with the Kathmandu Aran Tweed I bought for myself after using it for the Cobblestone sweater for R. I had thought about making another Cobblestone sweater for myself and then came upon the Drops Jacket. Here it is:




















Pattern: Drops Jacket from Garnstudio.com
Yarn: Queensland Kathmandu Aran Tweed (Sea Green) – approx. 1400 yds
Size: XXXL
Modifications: Buttons omitted (forgot to put in buttonholes); Collar simplified

It was quite distressing to realize that I zipped through the second front without putting in the buttonholes. (The instructions said to do it the same way as the other front, but in reverse, and with buttonholes.) But then a quick look through the Drops Jackets on Ravelry showed that I wasn't the only one, and it looked fine with a shawl pin as a closure, or even with nothing at all. The collar modification was more intentional: The collar as shown with the original pattern seemed bulky, especially given the heavy yarn, so I made it smaller and simpler. I wasn't sure how it was going to come out, but in the end it was perfect.

With the arrival of spring, this sweater (jacket?) is perfect for those days when it is colder outside than it looks. We've had lots of those lately.

A Close Call

Spring has finally come! Here is the ornamental plum tree in our front yard. It always blooms at the beginning of April and was a little late this year, when we were about to despair that winter was going to hang on forever.













One of the ironies of the arrival of spring after a too-long winter is that I am finishing up several items that we won't use until the weather turns cold again.

There is nothing like knitting to get your heartrate up, when it looks like you might not make a deadline or, even worse, you might run out of yarn. Yesterday I was about to start the edging of the Hemlock Ring Throw and realized that there wouldn't be enough yarn to complete the edging, so the last repeat of the Feather and Fan section was frogged before starting the edging. Half-way around, the remaining ball of yarn started looking very small. Too small. Miniscule. The remaining circumference was looking very, very large. What to do??? Knit faster! It was hard to take the suspense, and I could feel myself breathing harder, my pulse rate up, and the tension was still mounting as I started the last of the eight sections. What would happen if I missed by a yard? A foot? Would I ever find another skein of yarn in the same dye lot? Finally it was over...

The photo shows how much yarn was left at the end, barely enough to thread through a tapestry needle to weave in, maybe 2 inches. And that was after cheating a bit on a few of the loops in the last section. Whew! The edging takes a lot more yarn than one would think! It is now blocking and I think we will get a lot of use out of it next winter. I may even consider making another one as a gift.
Pattern: Hemlock Ring Blanket by Jared Flood, a.k.a. Brooklyntweed
Yarn: Cascade Ecological Wool, 2 skeins (956 yards less 2 inches) Color #8063
Needles: Denise #10
Size: approx. 48" diameter (blocked)

Travel knitting: a scarf, a shawl, and a hat (or 3)

Planning knitting for a trip can be a challenge. It can't be big and bulky (like an afghan or most sweaters); it has to be interesting enough to keep you from getting bored, and it can't be so complicated that it is hard to concentrate in adverse conditions like airplanes and noisy airports.

For our recent trip to South America I settled on the Kiri Shawl plus a scarf and a hat. The Kiri was a good choice pattern-wise, though my color choice – black – was probably not the wisest choice for the dim lighting of airplanes and hotel rooms. I really need a black shawl, which is why I decided on this yarn for this pattern, and the Kiri seemed like a good straight-forward design for something in a dark color, where a lot of detail would be lost. The yarn was lace-weight Zephyr, doubled. (I wound a ball off the cone, then wound yarn from the ball together with yarn from the cone. At home, I probably would have just knit with the ball and the cone without bothering to wind them together.)

Sometimes the yarn just doesn't want to be knitted into a particular pattern. I had a few balls of Filatura di Crosa 127 Print that I thought of using for a scarf in a feather-and-fan pattern, but it just wasn't working. There was lots of time on a 12-hour flight to experiment, sleep not being an option, so there was much frogging and re-knitting before I settled on a simple rectangle with yarnovers every eight rows. With the yarn that was left I was able to make two hats, the Floppy Brim Hat me and a simple ribbed cap for R. (His hat is photo-less since it is temporarily MIA.)

The other project for this trip was the North Star Tam from Arctic Lace. In the absence of quiviut yarn, I used some Yubina Laceweight Cashmere, doubled. There was a little problem with gauge, and being away from home I didn't have a wide variety of needles or other resources, so I just plugged away and then made some modifications at the end. The shape of the resulting hat isn't really a tam, but it is soft and warm and covers the ears. There was still time (and yarn) to do the scarf, but I got through two pattern repeats before deciding that I didn't love it enough to knit all those stitches in such fine yarn, so the scarf is now a permanent UFO and will eventually be frogged.

Other knitters like to work on socks while travelling, but I always seem to be at the complicated part (the heel), where I have to pay close attention to the instructions. Somehow it take more effort planning the knitting for a trip than the wardrobe. What I learned this time is that one project isn't enough... If it doesn't work out, it would be terrible to be stranded on an airplane/ship/tour with nothing to knit!

Last week I had to make an emergency trip to Florida. The flight was 3 hours each way, plus the requisite 2 hours in the airport for the departing and returning flights, so even if I had no other time to knit, there would be a solid 10 hours of knitting. There was some Colourmart cashmere in my stash left over from the oh-so-aggravating Sprinkle Lace Cardigan, and I chose the Falling Water Scarf as a gift for a friend. It is a beautiful but simple lace pattern, and it worked well in the cashmere. It was almost finished by the time I got home. This pattern is definitely a keeper... in the right yarn it would work for either a woman or a man.