Ruthless Knitting

Pattern: My own. Available as a PDF here.
Sizes: 20-inch and 23-inch chests; approx. 18-mo. and 24-mo.
Yarn: Rowan Denim; Knit Picks Shine
Yarn Source: Monterey Yarn in Green Bay; Knit Picks
Needles: US sizes 8 and 10.5
Notes: Just about everything one would need to know is in the pattern, so I don’t have much by way of notes. These came out pretty much as I had imagined them. The linen stitch is a nice touch, giving the bodice some texture and interest while remaining simple, so as not to detract from the loveliness of the baby! Both can be knit with two balls of leftover yarn, and both are machine washable and dryable. Enjoy!

Oh my goodness, is it ever gloomy here! It rained all day yesterday, and it is raining again today. I know that April showers are rumored to bring May flowers, but the flowers were coming along just fine until the gloom arrived, and now the blooms on the forsythia bushes are all droopy.

What, I’m supposed to talk about knitting?

I have been obsessively writing out my pattern for Sanguine Gryphon Fiber Arts. All this mental math is good for my brain, which has not been tasked in this particular way for a very long time. I believe I finally cracked it (the pattern, not my brain) last night after making a number of errors and learning the hard way How Not To Write A Pattern. Hint: Don’t try to figure out all of the sizes at the same time. That’s crazy-making!

Here’s a picture of the Undertow yarn that I’m using for the pattern. Pretty, huh?

This is what it looks like knitted up.

If you’re tempted, you can go on over and buy some from Gryphon. I endorse it wholeheartedly.

I’m also working on the second baby tank, but so far it’s unworthy of a picture — just a messy-looking provisional cast-on and a few inches of undistinguished stockinette. Dark purple stockinette, should you care to imagine it.

I continue to pay fealty to the bathmat for a few minutes every day. It’s getting bigger, but it looks about the same. For the sake of variety, here is what it looks like when I’m not working on it (i.e. 23.8 hours a day):

I don’t always prop it up against the plant, of course. It’s just the only place in the house with enough light at the moment to take a decent picture.

Finally, I’ve been developing a design for a summer top using cotton Habu yarn, and after knitting a few large swatches and devoting thought to it on more than one bike ride — I have many of my best ideas while bicycling or jogging outdoors — I’ve come up with what I think will be a workable design. No, you can’t see it, but here is a little peek:

The weather today makes a summer sweater seem like a distant and somewhat absurd goal. I will bake bread instead.

Pattern: Source unknown, though I have a feeling that Grandma made it up as a way of using up leftovers. Huge thanks to Emilee, who pointed out that the lace pattern looked like Hedera, thereby saving me a lot of grief.
Size: 37-inch chest, 22.5 inches from shoulder to bottom hem
Yarn: Various worsted-weight wools in Aran color
Yarn Source: Grandma via Aunt Cathy
Needles: US size 8 and 6
Notes: In early March, I received an unfinished sweater and a large amount of cream-colored yarn in a box from my Aunt Cathy. My grandma had knit the pieces of the sweater but never finished it. There was no pattern, and no one seemed to know why it had been abandoned. (See my post about it here.)

Among the first things I noticed was that the cream yarns used to knit the sweater did not match. Later I concluded that this is probably why Grandma abandoned the sweater: I think she conceived it as a project to use up various stash yarns that looked like they matched but then sewed it up and realized that they weren’t close enough. (I wrote about coming to that conclusion here.) The problem was noticeable only in the sleeves; the front and back seemed to have been knit in the same shade.

I then learned through experimentation that one cannot make up for the fact that yarns don’t match by overdyeing them. Overdyeing just makes them not match in another color, and the problem actually becomes even more noticeable. So I couldn’t just seam the thing together and overdye it to hide the color problem: at a minimum, the sleeves would have to be reknit and a neckline added on for the sweater to be salvaged.

Next, I based the sweater together and tried it on. I didn’t really like the low neckline Grandma had planned. After doing nothing for several weeks, I decided to raise the neckline on the front and back pieces. But I didn’t have enough yarn that was a close match to reknit long sleeves and raise the front and back. Instead, I decided to knit short sleeves and rip back both the front and back partway so that I could alternate between the original cream and a new cream. In extremely good light, you can see a subtle striping effect on these pieces, but it’s virtually invisible most of the time, as is the color contrast between sleeves and body.

Grandma did most of the work for me on the sleeves. I followed her long-sleeve design and used the same number of stitches at the widest point. The only decision I had to make was how big around to make the sleeves at the bottom edge and how long I wanted them to be from the underarm. Figuring this out took a little trial and error, but it worked out in the end.

It was an interesting journey trying to complete this project, and I’m quite pleased with where I ended up. It’s a special thing to have the finished sweater to wear, and I like to think of it as a collaboration of sorts with my Grandma, who I never had a chance to sit and knit with.

Other posts about the Thelma sweater are here and here.

Though no one has exactly been clamoring for an update (”Ruth, how did the Rowan Denim tank do in the wash? Ruth, Ruth, tell us more about your grandma’s sweater!), I will pretend that you have, because it suits me.

So, first things first, the linen-stitch baby tank survived the wash beautifully. It is cute as can be. Also, kinda small. I am checking with a friend of mine who has an eighteen-month-old daughter to find out whether she thinks it will fit her. If not, I will give it to another friend who has an almost-six-month-old baby, who will grow into it soon enough. For the mega-twins, I will make another tank with the Knit Picks Shine and then, I think, do the Monica pattern from Knitty for the other top. I have a strong aversion to knitting things three times. Twice is a stretch, really.

Oh, and I do still intend to write up the pattern for this and offer it as a free PDF eventually. I just need to figure out the ideal sizing and then knit the other top to test out my directions and refine a few of the techniques.

I have been neglecting the Tedium Bathmat for a few days, but in my defense, I haven’t had much knitting time at home. We’ve gone out the last two nights, once for a panel discussion on the Holocaust and once for an Iranian movie, and the bathmat does not make good travel knitting. In good news (?), Mass Ave. Knit Shop still has the yarn and has promised to send me three more skeins to slog through. I will press on and see this sucker through to the end.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my grandma’s sweater, which I think I will call Thelma, after her. I finished reknitting the back to a crewneck level, and I also knit a short sleeve. Both are now blocking, as you can see:

The sleeve went very quickly, but I had trouble figuring out how many stitches I needed around my upper arm, and I cast on way too many. I ended up cutting off the ribbing I had knit and reknitting new ribbing downward, which I had to do three times to get it right. Part of the problem is that my grandma’s 1 x 1 ribbing is immaculate, whereas mine looks like regular old saggy crookedy 1 x 1 ribbing. After entertaining and then rejecting the possibility that she was somehow invisibly twisting her stitches, I went down two needle sizes and got something that is passable. My conclusion is that the yarn she used when she cast on is a little fluffier than the yarn I’m using to finish the sweater, so it fills in the 1 x 1 ribbing better. Just a theory, but I can’t think of any other explanation (besides the fact that she was vastly more skilled than I am, which I acknowledge).

I hope to whip out the other sleeve, rip and reknit about three inches of the front, and get the sweater put together soon, though I’m a bit frightened of what will happen when it comes time to figure out a nice-looking collar. Stay tuned.

Over the weekend, I finished up the little linen-stitch top I designed for my nieces. As you can see (though the picture is a little blurry — sorry!), it’s quite cute.

Because I had only 1 2/3 balls of yarn to use for this, I did a provisional cast-on just below the armholes and then knit both tops upward (back and forth) and the bottom downward (in the round). This worked marvelously, though I’m still no expert at that provisional cast-on business.

I have to wash and dry it yet, which will determine the final size. (Denim yarn shrinks lengthwise the first time you wash it.) I’m not sure it will be big enough for the twins. I was aiming for about an eighteen month size, and I came in a little under, with a twenty-inch chest. (That’s an eighteen month size with one inch of ease. I think two inches would be preferable.) Unfortunately, when I asked my mother-in-law what size the girls are wearing these days, she said that they’re in twenty-four-month clothes. They are twelve months old. Did I mention that these are mega-babies?

So I’m not sure what I will do just yet. Should I mail it to my sister-in-law and ask her to check whether it fits? I don’t want to make two tops that don’t fit, certainly. I could make the second one bigger, because I have more yarn to use for it — two full balls of Knit Picks Shine. Or I could just give this one away to a smaller baby. I am undecided.

In other news, the end was in sight on the Tedium Bathmat, but then it skittered away. I only have one more stripe to do before I run out of yarn. However, it is now clear that the bathmat won’t be large enough. It’s about your average bathmat size, but the bathmat it is meant to replace is extra-wide. The only thing I like about the original bathmat is its dimensions, so I feel that I have to come pretty close to replicating them for the new bathmat to be of any use. I sent an emergency e-mail to the Mass. Ave. Knit Shop in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I bought the yarn, but I haven’t heard back from them yet regarding whether they have more of it. Anyone have a few skeins of Ironstone Flake Cotton they’re willing to part with? It’s not the easiest yarn to find.

Finally, I returned to working on my grandma’s unfinished sweater (backstory is here and here) last night. It took me a while to decide what I wanted to do with the sweater after I basted it together and determined that I wouldn’t like it if I finished it the way she had intended and that I didn’t have enough yarn to reknit the sleeves anyway. Ultimately, I chose to rip it out down to the beginning of the armhole shaping and reknit the top of both the front and the back as a crewneck instead of a wide boatneck. Later, I will make short sleeves to fit into the raglan armholes. I think I will like it and be able to wear it that way — perhaps even when I go to New York next month for her memorial service. That would be nice.

Pattern: February Baby Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac (officially called “Baby Sweater on Two Needles; Practically Seamless,” p. 28)
Size: One size given in pattern. Measures about 9.5 inches wide, 9.5 inches long, with sleeves about 6.5 inches long from the shoulder.
Yarn: Kumo’socki sock yarn from Yarntails (80 percent wool, 20 percent nylon); 430 yds. per 4 oz. skein
Yardage: Just over half a skein — perhaps 230 yards?
Yarn Source: Circle of Yarns in Klamath Falls, OR
Needles: US size 5 bamboo straights
Gauge: About 5.5 stitches per inch? A little smaller than EZ’s target size, I think.
Notes: I enjoyed making this little sweater. Some people find Elizabeth Zimmerman’s approach to pattern writing to be frustrating, because she leaves a lot out and trusts the knitter to adjust, adapt, and fill in the gaps as need be. I like this about her patterns, because I find the knitting of them to be an adventure. I read through the whole pattern in advance, but I don’t really work too hard to visualize what she’s describing, so in fact I don’t actually usually understand what the next step will be until I get to it. This staves off boredom and makes Zimmerman’s patterns enjoyable for me.

That said, they do occasionally lack specificity where specificity would be helpful. I found two aspects of this particular pattern confusing. First, the directions don’t mention buttonholes until after you’ve completed the yoke; at that point, you’re supposed to put in buttonholes every eighth garter ridge or so. Are there not supposed to be buttons on the yoke? I checked, and in the picture at the beginning of the chapter, there are two buttons on the yoke of the sweater. Other Internet versions of the sweater have yoke buttons, too. Was I supposed to have read ahead and figured out that I needed to start the buttonholes long before EZ mentioned them? Probably. I could have gone back and made afterthought buttonholes, but I decided that the yoke will probably not need to be buttoned, anyway. I’m leaving it the way it is.

Second, I had some trouble where I was supposed to cast on stitches at the underarm. The directions say: “At 4.5 inches, work 25 sts., then work back-and-forth on the next 28 sts (plus 7 sts cast on at each end of them; 42 sts in all) for about 4 inches for sleeve, ending with 1 inch of garter-stitch. Repeat for second sleeve. Place remaining 92 sts on needle, knitting up 4 x 7 sts at the cast-on sleeve-sts, and continue with pattern and border for 5 inches, or to desired length.”

Okay, let’s walk through this. I work the 25 stitches that constitute one side of the front, and then I’m supposed to cast on 7 stitches on each side of the 28 stitches for the sleeve. I think. There’s no actual verb at this point in the directions, as the 14 cast-on stitches just sort of appear in a parenthetical portion of the sentence. Since EZ doesn’t specify what cast-on I’m to use, I decide to use the handy backward loop cast-on, which is one of her favorites. So I knit 25, cast on 7, knit 28, cast on 7, and turn. Then I work back across sleeve number 1.

Here’s the problem: where I cast on the first 7 stitches, the sleeve is attached to the body, as the 25th stitch for the front and the first cast-on stitch are connected by my running strand of yarn. On the other side of the sleeve, where I cast on 7 and turn, the sleeve is not connected to the next stitch, because I stopped and turned before I got to it. From the pattern, I couldn’t tell whether I was meant to have broken the yarn before casting on 7 stitches or what. Maybe I was supposed to knit across the first 28 sleeve stitches, cast on 7, turn, knit back, and cast on 7. EZ doesn’t say, so I’m mystified.

I pressed on. After completing the first sleeve, I was supposed to “repeat for second sleeve.” I decided that first I needed to work my way over to the second sleeve, since I had already worked half of the front and I therefore ultimately needed to finish working the entire row. I joined new yarn, worked across the back to sleeve number 2, and repeated what I did the first time, including casting on stitches that were (perhaps wrongly) connected to the body on one side.

With the sleeve finished, I turned to EZ’s next direction. “Place remaining 92 sts on needle, knitting up 4 x 7 sts at the cast-on sleeve-sts.” Fair enough, but I figured I’d better go ahead and knit across the other side of the front first. So I rejoined the yarn and knit the other side of the front, completing the row I’d begun just before I knit the first sleeve. This put me on the wrong side. Was I supposed to knit back across now, working the front, back, and front and picking up and knitting the cast-on underarm stitches from the wrong side? That seemed an odd way to go about things, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to interpret the pattern, so that is what I did. It was extremely unpleasant, and I’m pretty sure it’s not what I was supposed to do, but it worked out okay. I decided to just ignore the short bars of yarn where I had my little cast-on attachment issue, and that was okay, too, but again clearly not what was intended.

Why am I bothering to explain all this? I looked at every February Baby Sweater over at Zimmermania and investigated the first few pages of hits I got on Google for “February baby sweater Zimmerman,” and no one else has mentioned having either of these problems, though the 4 x 7 business has caused some confusion. Seriously, I am the only one? I’m not usually all on my own on these things.

Perhaps the other February Baby Sweater knitters did a better job than I of figuring out the exact meaning of the pattern. Or perhaps they have concealed their shame in silence. I choose to put it all out there in service of the truth. Make of it what you will.

In any case, I did like the pattern a lot, despite the little blips along the way. The only intentional modification I made was to add two stitches to each sleeve (so I actually cast on 8 stitches on either side, but picked back up 7) that I could use for seaming. That tip is mentioned on many other blogs, and it’s a good one.

I also really enjoyed working with the yarn, especially following the Sea Silk that I used for the Clementine Shawlette. This Kumo’Socki is not an especially distinguished yarn, just a basic wool sock yarn of the sort many people find scratchy. But I love basic wool, so this was right up my alley. The colors, also, are just wonderful. The tones remind me of Noro yarn, as if the base color of the yarn is not a bleached-out white but rather a more natural beige-y brown, so that all the colors are a bit muted by this base, if that makes sense. The yarn is predominantly a greyish purple but regularly bursts into a short length of a brighter color — most notably red, but also sometimes yellow, sometimes mint green, sometimes pink, sometimes blue. This made it delightful to knit with, especially as the light changed at different times of the day. (It also means that the sweater ought to match all possible baby outfits.) I don’t normally like variegated yarns in lace patterns, but this one seems to work.

Now that I have written at least four times as many words as there are in the February Baby Sweater pattern, I believe my work here is done.

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Edited to add: Ah, but it’s not! I see this old post is still useful to some people, so I thought I’d go ahead and post my “If I had it to do again, this is what I’d do” tutorial for the sleeves. Here goes –

1. At 4.5″, break the yarn (or, if you have two balls, leave this ball dangling but follow the next instructions with a second ball of yarn) and slip 25 stitches to waste yarn or a holder.
2. Join new yarn and cast on 8 stitches, work the next 28 sleeve stitches, and cast on 8 more stitches. 44 sts.
3. Before you turn to knit back across the sleeve, move 42 stitches for the back onto waste yarn or a holder, 28 stitches for the second sleeve onto a second holder or piece of waste yarn, and 25 stitches for the other front onto a third holder or piece of waste yarn.
4. Return your attention to the needle with the sleeve stitches on it. Knit the entire sleeve and bind off as directed by EZ.
5. Now take the holder with your other sleeve stitches and repeat #2 and #4 above. You should have two sleeves and all the body stitches on waste yarn.
6. Go back to the beginning of the right side row on which you started the sleeve, join yarn again (or, if you didn’t cut the yarn, use the original ball that you were using before you joined the new ball for the sleeve), and work your way across, picking up 14 stitches from the cast-on edges of each sleeve — and skipping the two stitches in the center of the bottom of the sleeve, which you’ll use to seam — as you go.