Ruthless Knitting

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.

There are three things in this picture that ought to catch your eye. First, I finished a sock. Isn’t it pretty? You can see the picot hem in the corner of the picture, and it has a garter-stitch short-row heel that I learned how to do from Lucy Neatby. It is an all-round champ of a sock.

Second, I have painted toenails. I got a pedicure on Thursday with my friend Rebecca as part of our ritual preparations for the birth of her second baby later this month. I chose toenail polish to go with the sock. It’s important that you know about Rebecca’s baby because now that I have finished the Secret Design Project (!), the knitting around here will be All Rebecca All the Time for a while. Not only do I have plans to knit a teensy garment for the baby, I also told Rebecca that I would finish all of her unfinished knitting projects, which will entail knitting two sleeves for a sweater and 1.25 legs for a pair of baby pants. She’s due in three weeks, so I have to get moving!

The third thing you should take note of is that the sun is shining and there are flowers in the background. Non-dead flowers. Though it did frost a little last night, it would seem that spring is more or less here to stay. Thank goodness. My mom had a bunch of annuals delivered to me, and I got them planted today. It’s nice to see some bright pinks and purples when I look out the windows.

I didn’t get a chance last week to report on the knitting classes that I took at the Midwest Masters. (I’ve been working a lot.) I came out of the experience glad that I had tried it, but also fairly sure that knitting classes just aren’t for me, for a couple of reasons. First, I learn very easily from books. I don’t think I have ever encountered a stitch in Barbara Walker’s treasuries that I wanted to knit but could not execute. This makes me willing to try pretty much anything, and that attitude has exposed me to a lot of information about knitting already. It seems that these knitterly qualities are more rare than I had realized. In my brioche stitch class, for example, I was the only one in the class who had already made something (a scarf) in brioche stitch. In Lucy Neatby’s class, I had already done several of the things on the agenda on my own at home, and we didn’t get to other techniques that I was more interested in because it took us too long to get through those techniques I’d already been exposed to.

This brings me to the second reason knitting classes may not be for me: I have always had trouble in art/craft classes with getting finished ahead of the pack. When I was in elementary school, the art teacher gave me a hard time for "rushing" through the projects each week, but I was never trying to rush — I just worked fast! In the knitting classes, I found it a little draining to have to wait for everyone to learn something before we could move on to the next thing. In Janet Szabo’s brioche class, we were pretty much able to work at our own pace on the different types of stitches, which was great, but then I ended up feeling that I could have just followed the directions at home, rather than sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a conference room. So, yeah. It was a good experience, the teachers did a great job, the conference was well-run, but I probably won’t do it again next year.

Have any of you had similar experiences? Or taken a class so phenomenal that you’d urge me to try again?

Gather ’round for a tale of knitting gone awry.

It all started more than a year ago, when my good friend Rebecca sent me an e-mail link to a garment at an online shop known for its beautiful knitwear, along with the question, "We could knit this, couldn’t we?" The garment in question was a pullover sweater with very short sleeves, a deep U-neck, and a full skirt. The zoomed-in views available on the website revealed that the bodice was knit side-to-side in stockinette with purled rows every inch or so, while the skirt portion seemed to have been picked up from the bodice and knit straight downward. "Sure," I told Rebecca, "we could totally knit that." But we didn’t — at least, not right away.

The top stayed in the back of my mind for a year or so, until last month I got a cold and wanted to work on something that involved larger yarn, interesting construction, and plain knitting. I pulled out some yarn from Gryphon that had been in my stash for a while and set to work on a knockoff of the top Rebecca had introduced me to.

The bodice portion went quite well, all things considered. I worked a tubular cast-on to create what would be the edge of the right sleeve, made a 1×1 rib edging, increased for a few inches to the full sleeve length and width, and then did a provisional cast on for the front and back stitches on either side of the sleeve. I worked straight for four inches or so, bound off the stitches for the right side of the neck, worked just the front to the far side of the neck, went back and worked the back across to match, cast stitches back on for the left side of the neck, rejoined and knit for another four inches, put all but the left sleeve stitches on holders, made the left sleeve to match the right, and worked a tubular bind-off. (Whew! Did you follow that?) I grafted both sides together and seamed under the arms, made a strip of 1×1 ribbing for the neckline and sewed it in, and sat back to admire my handiwork.

So far, so good. The only problem was that I was clearly going to run out of yarn.

Now, I knew when I started this top that I didn’t have enough yarn, but I sort of hoped that I miraculously would have enough, somehow. The yarn I used has 280 yards per skein, and I had two skeins. Last time I used the yarn, I was amazed how far 280 yards would go, so I crossed my fingers that it would do the trick. But the bodice itself used up about two-thirds of the yarn, so there was simply no way I would be able to knit the skirt-like portion with what remained.

I could have ripped the whole thing out at this point, and maybe I should have. But I knew that if I did, I would never reknit the top, and it would probably be a very long time before I reused the yarn. Also, I had a cold, and I didn’t want to have to think too hard about anything. So I just pressed on, and when I ran out of orange yarn after about four inches, I changed to some blue yarn of the same type.

When I ran out of blue yarn at about eight inches, the skirt part still wasn’t long enough, but I had a plan, so I changed to yellow yarn of the same type and continued. Finally, when I was almost out of yellow yarn, I worked a few rows of ribbing and bound off.

At this point, the top looked like something a clown might wear. Individually, the orange, blue, and yellow yarns were lovely, but together, they were frightful. I had a plan, though: I had already decided to dye the whole thing black. So that is what I did. Then I blocked it, dried it, and tried it on. 

The result was rather disappointing. So disappointing, in fact, that I wasn’t able to bring myself to look at the top again or write about it for a few days, and then I drafted this post and avoided taking pictures of myself in the top for ten days, leaving me unable to complete the post. Then I took the pictures and left the draft post unfinished for another week or so. Clearly, I just haven’t been ready to think about it.

After all that stalling, here, at last, are the pictures. They are not terribly good pictures, but they are as good as they’re going to get.

The sad truth is that the skirt is too wide, resulting in more gathering than I would like. That would not be so bad, except the way that the neckline pulls in and the bust pushes out makes the front of the skirt ride quite a bit higher than the back of the skirt, and I don’t like the result. It would almost make a cute maternity top, except that even if that had been my intention, the height discrepancy between the front and the back would be a problem.

What I need to do, I suppose, is rip the skirt back and reknit it with smaller needles. (I don’t think I need fewer stitches, I just need to stick with size 9 needles instead of increasing up to size 11). What I’m not so sure about is the high front / low back issue — I could use short rows to remedy that, but I dread the very idea of having to work out the math. Perhaps short rows won’t be necessary if the skirt itself is not so dang voluminous. I don’t know. What do you think?

At the moment, the project has been sitting in my sweater chest, and I’m pretty content to leave it there.

I had a cold earlier this week, and I wanted to work on something fairly simple, so I pulled some orange yarn from Gryphon out of storage and started making a top that ought to be good for the transition to spring, should the transition to spring ever arrive.

The project is certainly keeping me entertained. Can you figure out how I knit what I have so far?

I’ve used a bit more than half of my yarn already, so it’s an open question how much length I’m going to be able to eke out of what remains. It should be fun figuring it out.

I have (finally!) finished all the knitting on the Kinari cardigan, and this morning I figured out how I want to do the button closures. I extend my deep appreciation to Ysolda, who has posted a very good tutorial with photos on how to make sewn button loops. I modified her instructions to make this hybrid creation.

Now all I have to do is sew down most of the hem, add the six button loops, sew on the buttons, sew down the rest of the hem, and block. The end is near!

The Kinari cardigan continues to require a great deal of patience. As you can see here, I have finished a sleeve, and lo, it is glorious.

But the part of the picture that’s in shadow isn’t going so well. I did finish knitting the body. It took a week to do the edging: because the yarn I used for that part was somewhat thicker than what I had been using for the body but the needles were the same size, it hurt my wrists to do more than a couple of rows at a time. It really wasn’t any fun. And then when I tried the sweater on, it became clear that the edging really hadn’t worked out. I had put too many increases in, so the bottom was proportionately much wider than it had been in my sketch, and since the fabric was thick, it was also rather stiff, with the result that it more or less stood straight out from my body. Wearing it, I looked like a very fashionable pyramid.

To cheer myself up and restore my flagging confidence, I knit the sleeve. Having learned my lessons from the body, I got the edging right this time. Then I cut off the bottom 4.25" on the body and started over with skinnier yarn and larger needles. The knitting is much more enjoyable now, and it seems to be going a bit more quickly. I’m hopeful.

I’ve been slowed down some by a Secret Design Project that’s going to keep me semi-occupied for the next several weeks. I can’t tell you what I’m working on, but I can give you a hint. Here it is:

Anyone who can figure out what I’m up to from that picture gets a prize.