On my needles: Vagabonde

Last week I started the Vagabonde Wrap Cardigan because I needed something to do with my two skeins of Plymouth Mushishi, a wool-silk blend worsted that is extremely squishy and luxurious.  I knit my original swatch for Mushishi on needles that were way too large for the suggested gauge, but after blocking I fell in love with the loose, drapey fabric.  Ravelry to the rescue!  I found this pattern, which calls for a nicely variegated worsted weight mohair, and cast on.

Up until now the construction has been a very straightforward top-down raglan.  I added darts at the bust (learning, in the process, how do do that on a cardigan (found this article from Knitty extremely helpful) but otherwise made no changes.  Now I have reached the "do-I-really-have-to-finish-this" point (it usually sets in shortly after I separate the sleeves), and am grateful for the design elements on the back of the sweater that might hold my interest enough to carry me through to the coveted Finished Object.

I think that the reason I have so many UFO's at the moment has a lot to do with my confidence level at the pattern-choosing stage of the process.  When I look at the array of projects I've embarked on I see very little variation in terms of texture, construction, shaping, color -- you name it -- and I believe it's out of fear that I have limited myself.  It's gratifying, then, to make choices that are a bit more interesting and daring, and even begin to alter written instructions.  Knitting becomes a cerebral experience as well as a meditative one, and life is that much more satisfying.

Journal Cozy

I love my patchwork Moleskine notebooks so much that I dislike writing in plain ones anymore -- to the point that I will avoid making notes until I have time to decorate a new notebook.  (I know that's ridiculous.)  Then inspiration hit, in the form of an embellished Ann Taylor sweater from the thrift store.  Why not make a journal cozy that I could reuse?

It took a lot of improvisation to get to this design.  Some things I learned:

• Don't try to machine-sew over beads and sequins.  Just don't.
• It might be a good idea to use some stabilizer if you're going to sew satin ribbon to sweater fabric.  If you plan to do this, make sure ahead of time that you have some on hand.  Otherwise, you might have to change your plans.
• Sometimes you end up with a significantly different-looking finished product than you envisioned.
• From my young friend Miss R. -- ‎"Don't be afraid it won't be perfect, the only thing to be afraid of really is that it won't BE."

Instead of binding the edges with pink satin ribbon or hemming them, I had to opted to zig-zag them with pink and purple thread.  Rather than try to get the stitching "just so," which I knew I couldn't do, I went over the stitching several times in different colors for a layered effect.  I like the way it turned out.

To finish, I zig-zagged a double length of grosgrain ribbon into the back my new notebook for place-holders, letting the stitching go a bit wonky once again.

What a fun project!  I will be interested to see how useful this turns out to be.

Vintage lace

What could I make with this?

Ten Things: Three

I am a poet.  At the moment, my poetry is dormant, but I have made a decision to wake it up.  Look for it here. 

I wrote pretty good poetry as an elementary-schooler, pretty typical (read: angsty and obscure) poetry as a middle-schooler, and pretty decent (if somewhat controversial) poetry as a high-school student.  My eleventh grade teacher was a wonderful mentor, and I was published multiple times in the school literary magazine, Pen and Ink -- admittedly I was literary editor my senior year, so there was some serious nepotism going on there.  I spent a summer learning about the ins and outs of life as a poet at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, and I wrote prodigiously in my journals and read constantly.

To start off, here's the last poem I remember writing:

On my needles -- the On-again-off-again Edition

I finally cast on for my Shalom in Ecological Wool on size 10 1/2's last Friday, then promptly lost track of it as I scrambled to finish K's quilt in time for Valentine's Day (which, as you can see by the lack of a corresponding post, I did not do.)  I felt kind of iffy about the extremely loose and stretchy fabric of the garter-stitch collar at the start.  Then I had some trouble with the twisted-rib portion of the yoke, which I knew I had been doing incorrectly in the original and which I wanted to set straight.  Between one thing and another, I decided to frog it.

I have started knitting again on a size 10 needle, and things are looking up.  Meanwhile, I have learned:

1. I was doing the M1 increase all wrong!  You lift the little bar with the right needle and place it knitwise on the left, and then there is no hole after the increase!  Hooray!
2. To do the twisted rib, you twist the knit stitches on the wrong side and the purl stitches on the right side.  Voila!

Even if I don't finish this sweater by the end of February (and I still very well might!), it will have been well worth making for the lessons it is teaching me.

(Just like) starting over

I'm over my lost weekend with the green Lopi yarn and it's time to start rethinking the Shalom sweater.

Frogging was a disaster.  Apparently Lopi is pretty apt to give in and fall apart when you tug on it with any force, and it clings to itself fiercely, so reclaiming the wool I used was not an option.  I might have enough left to finish a 3/4-sleeved sweater with, but there's no way to be sure, and I really want this sweater to work.  Off to the LYS, where I purchased 2 enormous skeins of Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool, then home to wind the yarn into balls and crunch the numbers.

 

478 is a lot of yards to wind.  It took at least an hour before I was ready to start swatching.  The yarn called for #10 needles but the pattern called for #10 1/2, which is what I used.  

 

Before blocking, my swatch gave 4 stitches to the inch, and the same was true after blocking.  Using Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage system from Knitting Without Tears and my favorite yoked sweater (not a cardigan, so I added 4 stitches for the button band), I calculated that I would need:

• 88 stitches for the neck
• 186 stitches for the chest
• 60 stitches for the arm circumference at the underarm
• 15 stitches at the bottom of the underarm (to be cast on after placing live arm stitches on waste yarn)
• 45 stitches for the arm to be placed on waste yarn and picked up when working the arms.

That was the easy part.

 

The number crunching got ugly after that.  I had to ask for help from an expert (thank you, D) and consider several courses of action before deciding that I would work the pattern as follows:

• Cast on 88 stitches
• Follow rows 1-7
• Complete row 8 as given; 142 stitches
• Follow rows 9-19
• Row 20: k5, m1, k2; (m1, k4) until 7 stitches remain; m1, k2, m1, k5; 170 stitches
• follow rows 121-131
• Row 32: k5; (m1, k4, m1, k3) until 11 stitches remain; (m1, k2) twice; m1; k5; 217 stitches
• Follow rows 33-44
• Row 45: k20, place 45 sts on waste yarn, k87, place 45 sts on waste yarn, k20; 127 stitches
• Row 46: k5, p to first armhole, cast on 15 stitches, p to second armhole, cast on 20 stitches, p 15, k5
• work in stockinette stitch with garter stitch border until desired length; knit 9 rows of garter stitch; bind off all stitches (note -- no waist shaping!)

I have not yet decided how I am going to work the arms -- I have seen several designs that I like and I want to try on the body before I make a final decision about that.  Also I want to get this yarn on my needles and get to work!

On my needles

My February Challenge Sweater is coming along nicely.  I have finished the yoke and bound off for the sleeves, and am ready to begin the body.  I also found some buttons in my button box that I think will work nicely.  From here on it should be smooth sailing.

Things I have learned so far:

1. I love, love, love the look of garter stitch.  I'm looking forward to starting the Sonnet sweater from Knitty.com (well, ok, I already started it, but it's on hiatus till I finish a couple of other WIP's) which has rows and rows of garter stitch. 
2. Do buttonholes neatly.  The first time.  I am not going to want to go back and fix sloppy ones later, and it may not be worth it.  I plan on keeping my sweater buttoned most of the time.
3. Maybe I should not watch tv or listen to podcasts or music when I'm working on a pattern stitch, even a simple one as appears here.  I had to rip out the first tier of the yoke at least three times because of mass confusion in the second or third row, and it was only when I began working in complete silence that I got control of the thing.
4. I can weave in ends invisibly and firmly.  It's not hard to do that, but I need to take my time to do it right, which I never want to do when I'm frantic to get a finished sweater on my body.  I heard someone on a Knit Picks podcast suggest that weaving in ends as you go might be a good idea, and I wholeheartedly agree.
5. I am learning quite a bit about top-down construction and how miraculous and versatile this sort of design can be.  I rather think I'm going to prefer it from here on in.

All in all, not bad for a week's work.  What's on your needles?

February challenge: Shalom cardigan

On the first of the month I began working on the Shalom Cardigan in Lopi Wool, having finished all of the interesting parts of the Tea Leaves Cardigan for a while -- I have miles of boring stockinette stitch to finish there.  And, while I am still devoted to Tea Leaves, I got to thinking how I love working in bulky yarn, and what fun the Shalom pattern is to knit, and could I?  Maybe?  If I really pushed myself, could I get the Shalom sweater finished by the end of February?  I think maybe I could.

 

It's going to take some discipline, particularly since I want to follow Soulemama's lead and add sleeves to the finished garment (where would I be without her creative guidance?), but I think it's doable.  Look for updates here as I work hard to create an actual finished garment -- we process knitters have to do that occasionally -- and feel free to add your own comments and suggestions along the way.  Won't this be fun?