Ruthless Knitting

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman
Size: 6-9 mo?
Yarn: Craftspun Bluefaced Leicester Aran (100 percent wool); Henry’s Attic Kona Superwash DK (100 percent superwash merino wool)
Yardage: 300-350 yds
Source: Yarns by Design, Neenah, WI; Catnip Yarns 
Needles: US 6 (4.0 mm) 24" circular needles
Gauge: 5.5 sts = 1" in garter stitch
Notes: I have been working a LOT lately, and I had to work last weekend, too, but I also needed to relax, and knitting this little jacket was, for whatever reason, the only thing I wanted to do when I had some time to take a break. Consequently, it knit up very quickly, and the process was fun. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this pattern, the important thing to know is that the whole sweater is knit in one piece, then folded up at the end and seamed across the top of the arms. Pre-folding, the knit piece of fabric looks truly bizarre, like a manta ray or something. As I followed the pattern directions, I was very interested in trying to work out what exactly I was knitting and how the jacket was going to take shape. Once I figured out where the arms were, it wasn’t too hard to understand the construction, though I still can’t quite imagine coming up with the pattern myself. Very clever, that Elizabeth Zimmerman.

I used the version of this pattern that appears in Zimmerman’s Knitting Workshop. The only trouble I had with it was figuring out how much yarn I would need: the pattern calls for 3 oz. of Shetland wool, which helped me not at all. (What weight is Shetland wool? Are we talking DK/sport, like Jamieson’s Shetland?) Luckily, I knew that the pattern was quite forgiving, so I decided to just dive in. I had 100 g (3.5 oz) of aran-weight yarn, which I figured might be on the heavy side, but I did get something approaching gauge with it, so off I went. It quickly became clear that 187 yds was not going to cut it, so I went in search of other yarns to use and came up with this bright blue yarn that I dyed last year. (I consider blue to be a gender-neutral color, by the way.) When I ran out of that, I used some undyed yarn of the same weight, which, thankfully, matched the undyed yarn that I started out with. It was all a bit of an adventure.

Some people churn out Baby Surprise Jacket after Baby Surprise Jacket. I can certainly see the appeal for using up leftovers, and it was the perfect pattern for me in the midst of a stressful time with work. In general, though, I don’t like to knit things more than once, and that much garter stitch would put me to sleep in normal conditions. It will be interesting to see if and when I decide to make another.

Next up, I’ve been working on a little cotton dress for my friend’s baby, who is due next week.

I’m actually knitting it from both ends at once, since my yarn supply is limited, and I want to make sure that I don’t run out. Progress has been fairly swift, so I’m hoping to have another little baby thing to show off early next week. The near-instant satisfaction of baby knitting is right up my alley these days.

I have (almost) finished the baby pants! I just have to put the elastic in the waistband. Aren’t they cute?

It’s good that they’re so very adorable, because they were a major pain to knit. Even though I was only responsible for 1.25 legs (Rebecca knit the entire seat and most of one leg), I have to be honest and say that I loathed the whole process nonetheless. It’s just not a good idea to knit with that many colors at once. I blame Dale of Norway, whose pattern this is. For the record, I did find the whole process more bearable on a single, short-cabled circular needle than on double-pointed needles.

One problem with knitting with five colors is that you have to carry all the other colors along, creating a rather thick and stiff seam at the inner leg. I tried a variety of things to make this seam as bulk-free as possible, but there’s really no way to carry four strands along without ending up with something that looks like this:

Grumperina had an interesting series of posts not too long ago (late March - early April 2008, to be exact) about how you can knit single-color stripes in spirals, thereby avoiding the pesky seam. I find that my mind can only barely comprehend how this technique would work, and I didn’t think I could start it mid-leg, so no dice this time around. Maybe I’ll try it in the future, though.

In any event, the pants came out cute, which I suppose is all that matters. They did bias rather severely in the wash for reasons totally unknown to me. Can you see in this picture how one leg of every stitch is more pronounced than the other?

Strangely, they didn’t look like this before I washed them, nor was there any difference between Rebecca’s stitches and mine — they all biased. I suppose it has something to do with the pants being made up of tubes. And with the way the yarn (Louet Gems Pearl) is plied. It’s not terribly noticeable, though, so I’m just ignoring it.

Meanwhile, I started a little baby jumper for Rebecca’s impending baby, but it wasn’t working out and I had to rip it back. I have another idea I want to try, but I needed to get away from the cotton for a while, so I decided to make a white Baby Surprise Jacket. I’ve never made one before, and the idea of white wool and garter stitch appealed. This is how far I was yesterday:

Though I have stared intently at the diagram, I still have no idea what portion of the jacket this represents. I think it may be part of both sleeves and also the back neck. Or not. We shall see.

Pattern: Dress is my own pattern; Peep is Bluebird by Berrocco.
Size: Dress is 22" at the chest, sized to fit an 18-month-old.
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Hand Dyes (50 percent wool, 50 percent alpaca; 100 yds per 100 g skein), petal and chocolate 
Yardage: About 280 yds
Source: Jimmy Beans Wool  
Needles: US 9-10.5 (5.5-6.5mm) double-pointed and circular needles
Gauge: 16 stitches = 4" in Stockinette stitch
Notes: For a project that I made up as I went along, I think this dress turned out very cute. I won the Blue Sky Alpacas yarn that I used to make it from Jimmy Beans Wool in their design contest, but until a few weeks ago I was unable to figure out what to do with it. I had three skeins of brown and one of pink, which were packaged together in a kit to make knee socks. I’m not really a knee socks kind of gal, but there was too much yarn to make just an accessory and too little for an adult garment. Earlier this month, I got to thinking of baby dresses, and I came up with this design for a sweet and simple yoked dress with short sleeves.

The dress was knit from the top down. The construction is pretty simple: I just figured out how many stitches I wanted at the armhole divide (equal to the desired body circumference at the chest plus both sleeves at their full width), decided how wide the head opening ought to be, and worked out how many increase rounds I needed to do, beginning with a round of K2, m1 and moving to K3, m1, then K4, m1, and so forth. I added one additional round of brown between each subsequent pink stripe to give the stripes a graduated effect. To make the skirt widen gradually, I added two stitches at each side seam every fourth or fifth round, and I also changed to larger needles twice as I worked my way down.

The Peep was a last-minute impulse knit — I saw Grace’s cute birds over at Kathryn Ivy yesterday and thought I’d whip up one of my own in the leftover pink yarn to give to the dress’s recipient, who I saw later in the day. This was a very quick and fairly simple pattern, though I ran into some trouble with the finishing directions. I was having a heck of a time getting it to look right until I realized that I had misunderstood which part of the little pink blob I had knit was supposed to be the head. The toddler who I turned it over to seemed to like it, if her carrying it around and waving it up and down is any indication.

Pattern: My own
Size: 34" bust, 42" at bottom hem, 18" total length, 7.5" sleeves
Yarn: Habu Wool Roving A-81 1/6 (100 percent undyed wool; 186 yds per oz)
Yardage: About 2,000 yards, held double
Sources: KPixie; Purl Soho 
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) and US 6 (4.00 mm) Knit Picks Harmony circular needles
Gauge: 26 sts and 40 rows = 4″ in stockinette
Notes: The buttons came first on this project, and the pattern followed. This direction of development is fitting for the first finished sweater in the new Button Collection. My father created these glass buttons for me as a Christmas gift, and I came up with the design in the hope of showcasing them properly. I was going for a garment with a plain, clean look to it, vaguely Japanese-influenced, but not boring. I think I hit the mark.

The Kinari cardigan was knit from the top down and hemmed along the button bands and collar at the finishing stage. I did run into a few problems en route. The most significant one was the result of a combination of yarn trouble and planning miscalculations. I initially bought 8.5 ounces of Habu Wool Roving from KPixie, but once I cast on I realized it wouldn’t be enough. I found what seemed to be the same yarn for sale on Purl’s website, so I snapped it up. Unfortunately, it was not the same thickness. I wonder if what I got (which, oddly, lacked any label) was actually Wool Roving A-80 1/3 rather than Wool Roving A-81 1/6. The latter is supposed to be exactly twice as thick as the former, which seems to fit the case, as one strand of the yarn that Purl sent ended up being a perfect substitute for two strands of the yarn from KPixie.

I didn’t figure this out for a good long while, and in the meantime I knit the patterned portion of the body using a strand of each of the two different yarns without going up a needle size, which made a rather stiff fabric. I also continued to increase at the same rate from the armpits to the bottom hem. The outcome was, sadly, both too wide and too stiff. I had made a triangle sweater. I cut it the edging off and tried again with a single strand of the heavier yarn and slightly larger needles, and this attempt worked out much better.

In addition, I had a small problem with the collar, in that I didn’t intend for it to look like it does. What I had sketched was a true boatneck, but I cast on too few stitches for the neckline and then compounded the problem by decreasing rather than increasing stitches on the neckline hem, which made the collar stand up rather than lie down flat. The good news is that I like it just the way it is, so I am considering it a happy accident rather than evidence of how much I have to learn about collars.

I am particularly pleased with the aptness of the button closures, which gave me a bit of a panic when the time came to make them and I realized that I simply had no idea what I was doing and no sewing or embroidery experience to draw on. As I mentioned in my last post, I owe the basic technique to Ysolda, who uses it to beautiful effect in her Coraline sweater (about to be released for sale; link goes to Ravelry), and who provides a great tutorial on her website for free. I modified the technique so that rather than making half-moon button closures, I made lollipop-shaped closures by partially sewing the two sides together at the attachment point. Though the closures were quite twisty when they came off the needles, they settled down when blocked, so that the sweater can now be worn entirely buttoned, entirely unbuttoned, or partially buttoned.

I am thankful, too, to Lorna’s Laces for making a red sock yarn that doesn’t bleed a bit, even in hot water. I tested it. Without Lorna’s, you’d be looking at a sweater with white button closures. I’m glad that you’re not.

In the end, this sweater came out uncannily close to my sketch. When David told me in response to this observation that I seem to be getting better at knitting things exactly how I want them, I said that may be true, but I also got lucky. Whatever the reason, I am proud of how well this design highlights the buttons, how simple it looks, and how striking it is.

Now I just have to find something to wear with it. It’s still far too cold here for elbow-length sleeves and skirts.

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Other posts about the Kinari cardigan:

• In which I begin
• In which I announce my plans and show off the buttons
• In which I wax eloquent about the uncertainties of knitwear design
• In which I have to reknit the body
• In which I make progress but am still not finished
• In which I show off a button closure

I got the Tokyo pattern written up over the weekend, so I offer it to you for your knitting pleasure.

You can do a direct PDF download (2.4 MB) via this link or visit the Designs page at your leisure and follow the link there.

Or, if you’re a Ravelry user, you can download the pattern and add it to your library here. I find it both exciting and somewhat alarming that more than fifty Ravelers have downloaded the pattern since I posted it after lunch today. Yowza!

Since I have one skein of Tokyo and a fair amount of Zephyr left over from this project that I’m unlikely to use, I’m going to give it away. If you’d like my cast-off Tokyo and Jaggerspun Zephyr, of which there is quite a lot but not necessarily enough to make a Tokyo top, leave a comment saying why. I’ll draw a name on Wednesday to determine the lucky winner.

Pattern: Bird in Hand by Kate Gilbert
Size: 7" in diameter and 10" long
Yarn: Jaeger Matchmaker Merino DK (100 percent merino wool; 130 yds per 50 g skein), shades 865 and 790
Yardage: About 160 yds turquoise and 90 yds beige
Source: Monterey Yarn, Green Bay, WI
Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Knit Picks classic circular and double-pointed needles
Gauge: 28 sts and 36 rows = 4″ in pattern
Notes: This pattern has become quite popular among the knit bloggers this winter, and for good reason. It’s easy to follow and quite cleverly put together, and the finished mittens are cute and (I hope) warm. The pattern can be purchased directly from Kate Gilbert as a PDF file for $5.95, and it’s worth every penny. 

The only modification I made was to knit the mittens in DK-weight rather than worsted-weight yarn. I did this for two reasons. First, I noticed that some bloggers were finding the finished mittens to be a bit too long in the fingers and thumb, and since these are a gift for a dear friend with tiny hands, I wanted to ensure that they would be small enough without having to resort to modifying the chart. Also, the thought of knitting worsted weight yarn on size 1 or 2 needles made me squirm. I did a project once with worsted yarn and tiny needles, and I found it thoroughly unpleasant. I am quite willing to trade off a bit of warmth for more enjoyable knitting.

Though many people have omitted or modified the braids, I didn’t mind them much. The cuff portion of the mitten is pretty time-consuming compared to the colorwork portions — I found that it took me about 20 minutes to do a braid, and there are three on each mitten — but the braids look nice, and I was glad to learn the technique, which is different than the one I had previously used to create two-color braid.

I had a little trouble with the thumbs, particularly with the birds. It’s hard to get the tension just right on such a small number of stitches so that the birds don’t come out funny looking. Also, my approach to embroidery is to make it up as I go along — perhaps a detriment in this particular situation. Still, I think the little fellows are acceptable, if not smashing.

I came up with one innovation in the process of blocking the mittens that makes me feel clever: I cut out cardboard into a mitten shape and used it to block the wet mittens over. This evened out all the lumpy bits (particularly in the thumbs) and made the mittens look more professional than they otherwise would have. Of course, if you look closely at the pictures, one mitten appears to be a little bigger than the other. That’s because it is. But I think it’s the case because I blocked one a month ago and the other yesterday, rather than because I actually knit one larger than the other. Over time, the more recently blocked mitten ought to settle out at the same size as the smaller one. And if it doesn’t, well, close enough.