Ruthless Knitting Archive

Since returning from Vermont, in addition to completing the Nine-to-Five Socks and making the XOXO Baby Socks, I’ve also finished up a couple old projects that have been lying around making me feel guilty.

First, I managed to reseam and weave in all the ends on the turtle sweater (explanatory backstory is here and here), and on Tuesday I returned it to its rightful owner, Gwendolyn. You may recall that the hood opening was too small for her, causing much consternation when her mother tried to dress her in the sweater. I solved this problem by (1) taking the sweater apart; (2) ripping out about 10 rows of the back, increasing a whole bunch of stitches evenly across the back so that it had as many stitches as the hood does at the back, and knitting up the remaining rows; (3) grafting the hood and the back together; and (4) grafting the shoulders together. Now it’s quite stretchy. As you can see, Gwendolyn looks adorable in it (though a tad concerned — I was babysitting her, and this is the look that means, “You are okay, but you are clearly not my mother”).

There are still some things about the sweater that I don’t like, but it’s better than it was. Should you ever wish to knit a copycat sweater, I posted the chart for the chart on my Designs page.

Next up, I finally got around to putting an edging on the hairpin lace afghan that may or may not have been knit by my grandmother. (Original posts about this project — from March, yikes! — are here and here.) To do this, I purchased some turquoise yarn in a similar color to the turquoise in the blanket, double crocheted across the unfinished edge, single crocheted back across, and then picked up a stitch through every crocheted stitch and knit several rows of garter stitch before binding off. The edges look much better now, though still not perfect. I did my best.

The blanket’s edge originally looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

Good enough, I think. I’m sending this off to my brother James today.

Having cleared up every last item of Duty Knitting except for my second Red Herring sock (to be cast on soon), I’ve been plugging away on the second sleeve of Frances and trying to get my Florence pattern written up. Busy as a bee, I am.

Also, Presents!

I got some excellent packages in the mail last week. First, I received two skeins of Undertow from Gryphon in the color “Cramp.” These were my prize for sort of winning her bodice design contest. I say “sort of” because I was the only entrant, and I didn’t exactly follow the rules. Still, a bodice will come of it, and I got some pretty yarn:

Now I just need to figure out to do with these. I haven’t formulated a plan yet. (The cardigan pattern and Undertow yarn are both for sale in Gryphon’s Etsy shop.)

Gryphon also sent a skein of Traveller, one of her hand-dyed sock yarns, for me to use in doing swatches for the bodice. I made a swatch using four different needles, and I had to show you a picture because this yarn is just so pretty. It’s soft and squooshy, too. I highly recommend it.

Then, on Saturday, I got my prize package in the mail from winning Mel’s contest. She sent a skein of Three Waters Farm fingering-weight yarn in the color lilac, as well as a great lavender rosemary goat’s milk soap from the same farm. I was thrilled to get these, both because I love to try local, sustainable products and because they remind me of the Piedmont of North Carolina, where I used to live. Thanks, Mel!

Once upon a time, I knit a sweater with a turtle on it for little baby Gwendolyn.

I used Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, and I made up the intarsia pattern myself. When I finished it, I was a little concerned that the head opening was too small, but given that Gwen wasn’t exactly born yet, and given that I didn’t expect the sweater to fit her until she was about nine months old, I didn’t have any way to figure it out for sure. So I had Leona try it on.

As you can see, it fit Leona perfectly well, and Leona has a biggish head. “Good enough,” I thought.

Seven months later, Gwendolyn is getting bigger all the time, and she’s just about big enough for the sweater. But it doesn’t fit her, because her head is not as squishy as Leona’s. Indeed, the process of being forced to try on the sweater made her quite grumpy, and she didn’t cheer up until her mother had removed the offending garment. Obviously, something must be done.

Gwendolyn’s mom would like me to try to fix the sweater, and I am only too happy to comply, in part because it gives me an opportunity to fix a few things about it that I never liked anyway. Also, it will provide a welcome distraction from my glacial progress on the back of Florence (formerly the Habu top), which looks like this:

Why have I managed to finish so very little of Florence? Well, there is the regular business of life: I have had to attend to work, house cleaning, bike riding, jogging, yoga, grocery shopping, making dinner, lunch with Gwendolyn’s mom, and so on.

Also, I’ve been trying to work up the Buster pattern so I can submit it to the Jimmy Beans Wool contest. I thought the hard work would be over when I got the charting done, but, uh, no. It’s been pretty painful. And just when I thought I was getting somewhere (around Wednesday), I realized that I had to more or less start over. So the Buster pattern and I are not on good terms right now.

Then, yesterday, after Yarn Harlot wrote about Mystery Stole 3, I totally got sucked in to the idea of making a mystery stole. I was particularly excited about using up a skein of laceweight yarn that I bought last winter with no particular project in mind. So I signed up, only to learn that I needed a lot more laceweight yarn than I actually had. I decided to just cast on for the swatch for the project, figuring I’d sort out some kind of plan as I went along. Luckily, by the time I finished the swatch, I had come to my senses: I don’t have the yarn for a stole right now. I don’t want to make a stole right now. And I have lots of other things I would rather do. I resigned from the Mystery Stole group this morning.

(Let me add that this outcome is one of many reasons that I love to swatch. When I’m really jonesing to start something new, nine times out of ten all I have to do is knit a swatch for the new project in order to realize it will in fact be no more exciting than my current project. Then I wash the swatch, put it away, and get back to whatever I was supposed to be doing.)

Which was what, again? Oh yes, Florence. Well, instead of doing that, I took apart the baby sweater. Now it looks like this:

It is time to formulate a plan. Here is what I’ve been thinking:

(1) One thing I didn’t like about the sweater to begin with is how thick the seams are. They are probably an okay thickness for an adult garment, but they don’t work for a baby sweater. The thick seams on the sides and for the armholes were unavoidable (because I couldn’t have knit the turtle in the round), though I can perhaps improve them a bit by doing the seaming with a lighter-weight yarn. But there was no reason to seam the shoulders or hood, so this time, I’d like to graft them. This should have the bonus effect of making them stretchier, which should help the sweater fit better over Gwendolyn’s noggin.

(2) I seem to remember that the back of the hood has more stitches than the back of the neck was designed to have. I tried to solve this problem by increasing in the last few rows of the back of the sweater so that I had a one-to-one ratio of hood stitches to back neck stitches. This is why the back of the neck looks kind of wavy in the picture below.

I don’t think that increasing those stitches was a bad idea, but it didn’t help much, because then I bound them all off and ended up with an inflexible back neck anyway. I’d like to rip out a few inches of the back and reknit it so that it gradually increases in width to accommodate the hood stitches.

That brings me to (3). If I make the back bigger but leave the shoulders the same size, and if I graft the hood on, and if I graft the shoulders, do you think that will give the head opening enough ease and flexibility? Or do I need to do all of those things and make the shoulders narrower, leaving more head space? If I do that, I’ll have to rip out the whole hood, because the hood is knit onto the front, and I can’t adjust the shoulder size on the front without also ripping out the hood. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but if I can avoid it, I will.

What do you think? Other ideas?

I’m glad that several of you picked up on the bit of drama in those diary entries. Rather than worry with Florence about whether her potential husband would turn out to be the kind of guy who gambled away the family silver, you wondered with me, “What kind of woman compares her boyfriend to another man? Who is this Bob fellow? A brother? A cousin? Not bloody likely.”

To spare you the pain of further fruitless wondering, I will transcribe for you a few more diary entries, beginning (as one should) at the very beginning. In between, I will show you pictures of my current knitting, which is giving me grief.

March 15, Bob started to work for Swan in Pittsburgh.

March 28, Bob left for Pittsburgh. Was to go to Cambridge Monday Mar. 29, 1926.

July 3 + 4, went to Buffalo + Niagra + Canada. Bob, Annie, Frances, and I were at Bobs home in Buffalo. met Bob’s mother + liked her real well. she is real nice rather girlish + is nice looking. looks like Bob.

The first few entries are rather understated, but they reveal more than it might seem at first. She started the journal when Bob took a job in Pittsburgh, which is a good 45 miles from tiny Enon Valley. He left later that month, and then (maybe) she didn’t see him again until the Fourth of July holiday, when she and Bob and some friends(?) traveled to Buffalo together and visited Bob’s mom. While the presence of the mysterious Annie and Frances on this journey is somewhat troubling, raising doubts about whether Bob was truly Florence’s boyfriend, the third entry at least suggests that Florence has her sights set on Bob. She is scoping out the future mother-in-law, and she is pleased with what she sees.

Then there is a gap of several pages and several months, and Bob drops out of the picture for a while. Perhaps they had a fight? Or is it just that his new job kept him away from Enon Valley and Florence?

Let’s segue from the pain that Florence may or may not have been feeling between July and October of 1926 to the pain that I felt a few hours ago when I realized that I accidentally cast on 10 too few stitches for the front of my Habu top.

This is how far I’d managed to get: 8 inches on size 5 needles. It took me a week. Well, okay, five days. But that’s not counting the weeks I spent figuring out what to make with the yarn, swatching, deciding it wouldn’t work, and starting over again. I had just finished the waist shaping and planned the increases up to the underarm shaping. I was pleased with myself.

Pride goes before the fall. I can’t shave 10 stitches off the size and still hope it will fit how I want it to, so all that knitting just became a giant swatch. Since I have lots of pink Habu, I will bind it off, wash and dry it to confirm that I have the gauge I think I do, and start anew. Sigh.

In October 1926, it seems that Florence started anew, too.

Met Ralph F. on Oct. 26 1926. Went with him steady until Sunday Jan 9, we had a spat. He spent Xmas 1926 with us. We attended several dances + several shows at Youngstown, Beaver Falls, + Palestine. While I was going with him, enjoyed his company real well. But never considered him anything more than a friend.

Florence obviously wrote this entry in retrospect, after she was no longer seeing Ralph. She seems to have decided to make her little book into a dating diary of sorts. Is it just me, or does she sound like she was trying to put a positive spin on her disappointment with old Ralph, who — let’s face it — was no Bob?

In just such a way, I am putting a positive spin on the Big Pink Failure by refocusing my attention on Mom’s birthday socks. After agreeing with me that it would be too much to ask me to rip out and reknit that first, perfect (but too small) herringbone sock, Mom mailed me two yarns she had in her stash and asked me to make her socks with one of them. They are both lovely: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Charcoal and Schaefer Anne in a blue-gray color.

(Let’s take a moment to admire Mom’s cleverness: how better to use up the stash yarn than to suggest that your daughter make your birthday socks with your own yarn?)

Mom suggested either Monkey socks or Oriel from Sensational Knitted Socks as possible patterns, and being someone who would rather knit something new than knit the same pattern twice, I decided to do swatches for Oriel. The Schaefer obscured the pattern too much, but the Lorna’s Laces looked great, so I am off and running.

I got a whole pattern repeat (28 rows) done last night, but I think I messed up the last row, causing me much consternation this morning. I had to set it aside because I was irritated with it. Later, I guess I’ll tink the final row and do it over.

So, to bring this episode to a close, my knitting has made me feel a bit in the doldrums with Florence, but I’m hopeful that things will look up: after she gave up on that dud Ralph, Florence met Bill and wrote the two entries included in my last post. I’m sure that I’ll soon nickname the sock (I like the sound of “Slim”) and start to “enjoy [its] company more every night.” Or, just to keep that from sounding so dirty, let’s say “every day.”

More of Florence’s adventures to come, should you want to hear them, and more of mine whether you ask for them or not.

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.

Spring has sprung here in Green Bay, and I couldn’t be more pleased about it. Usually, our neighbors’ bulbs start to come up long before ours do, so when I noticed sprouts in their yards during my run yesterday, I figured that I’d still have to wait a while for anything to happen in ours. This time of year, I like to walk around the house about once a day, peering at the ground for signs of new life. I had done this the day before and found nothing, but look what was there to greet me yesterday:

They are little, but they still count.

Since the weather has taken a turn for the better and I’ve had the doors open for two days, I feel rejuvenated. I’m no longer plagued by restless late-winter dissatisfaction. I am positively bouncy. This has given me a much more patient and positive attitude toward my knitting. I have nearly finished the brioche scarf, though it seems ridiculously heavy in the now-springy weather. What possible use could I ever have for such a garment? Memories of the deep-winter temperatures fade pretty quickly from my mind, apparently.

I have also wrapped up the first half of the long-neglected Clementine Shawlette and started the second half. I even pulled out my oldest unfinished object — a cotton bathmat a la Mason-Dixon Knitting that I set aside about a year ago because I was bored with it and it hurt my wrists — and began working on it for about ten minutes every morning. I’m looking forward to finishing all three of these projects and starting a new (lightweight) sweater, but for now I am content. Thank goodness for spring.

Meanwhile, I ordered some Zephyr Wool-Silk from Sarah’s Yarns in the hope that it will work for the sleeves of the Interlacements sweater I recently described, and I couldn’t be happier with my shopping experience. Sarah’s prices on luxury yarns are unbeatable, she offers tons of shipping options, and she packed and mailed off the yarn immediately. I ordered on March 22 (in the afternoon, I think), and the yarn arrived on the 26th via the regular old U.S. Postal Service. And there was a weekend in there, people! The yarn was very nicely labeled and securely packaged to prevent its getting wet or destroyed, and Sarah included a whole bunch of color cards which will no doubt induce me to be a return customer. Sarah’s website is also excellent, with clear close-up photographs of flat and draped swatches for all the yarns. I highly recommend her shop.

As for the Zephyr — wow, is it ever nice. I swatched the laceweight held double, and it is light, bouncy, and soft as can be. It seems to be just what I was looking for.

Finally, as a potential solution to any future design dilemmas involving my attempts to counterbalance secrecy against the need to share and get input, I’ve joined Emilee and Beth in creating a private “design workshop,” which we will no doubt expand to include others in the future. I’m excited to see how that will work out.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been in an odd knitting mood, not really devoted to anything that I’m working on while simultaneously convinced that it’s not really a good idea to start something new. There are too many loose ends in my knitting life, so I want to tidy them up — except, you know, that I don’t really feel like it.

One reason I’m having this problem is that I have a few design ideas that are giving me grief. I think these are good ideas, and thus maybe I’ll want to submit them one day for publication, and therefore I shouldn’t blog about them. But that makes all the failure rather harder to put up with. The yarns are picked, the original swatches are triumphs, and then I hit a snag. I swatch and swatch until I get to the slightly bored and despairing part of the process and then I leave the projects to languish for a while.

It occurs to me that this whole deal would be easier if I could let go of the idea of publishing these not-even-in-existence-yet sweaters and just focus on creating them first. If they come out well, I can always post the patterns here for general consumption. The miniscule amounts of money I might theoretically be paid at some distant point in the future are not sufficient recompense for all the pressure I’m putting on myself to be secretive, to knit something perfect, and to do it without outside imput.

So allow me to present to you a few ideas that I’m working on.

The William Morris cardigan

Remember when I was all fired up about William Morris? (No? See this entry.) Well, I have an image in my head of a lightweight cardigan with a panel of Morris-inspired Fair Isle in the upper center of the back, plain fronts with wide Fair Isle button bands, and three-quarter sleeves that end in sewn-on Fair Isle Cuffs. This is how far I am toward its realization:

I like this panel a lot, though the design requires some tweaking. The next task is to figure out how to inset it into a plain piece of knitting created at an entirely different gauge. This step is giving me some trouble. I am not out of ideas yet, but I’m temporarily out of patience, so this has been lolling about in my drawer for a while.

The fatigue sweater

I’ve also decided that I want to create a sweater with the type of styling that I found described on the Internet as a “fatigue sweater,” or what L.L. Bean calls a “Commando Henley” (tee-hee):

My idea is to do something a bit different — I’ll lose the fabric patches, change the ribbing to a more subtle vertical pattern, make the collar shallower and wider, and add waist shaping for a more feminine look. I’m also considering doing a slightly different male version of the sweater. Here is what I have so far:

I really like both of these swatches. The Mountain Colors wool is just fantastic, with a wheaty color that I have been craving (it’s better than the picture), a really soft hand, and great stitch definition. I only bought one ball, though, and I’m not sure I’m willing to spring for enough for a whole sweater. The New England Highland yarn is much more of a crunchy traditional wool, but the color is amazing, as are all the colors in this line and its companion two-ply, New England Shetland. It would do nicely for a male version of the sweater.

I got stuck at the next step: working out the neckline. I was unable to find any patterns with the kind of neckline I wanted, so I’ve been inventing it. This is version 2.0, and there are still some hurdles to jump (aside from knitting the other side, doing the shoulder shaping on the side I have finished, and blocking it).

The biggest problem is that I’m just not sure how to finish off the edge of the neckline. If I have the slipped-stitch, buttoned portion in the middle, an angled portion up to the shoulder, and a straight portion across the back of the neck, how do I tie all those parts together without making the whole thing look too busy or bulky? The traditional fatigue sweater usually has a collar at that point, but I don’t think it will work in this design. Also, I suspect that the whole collar needs to be stockinette (with the slipped stitch edging to keep it from rolling) rather than patterned, because the patterning makes it look busy. I suppose I need to start again here. I am already fatigued.

Since I’ve reached an impasse on both of these projects, I started some other things. I have half of a brioche scarf done in black alpaca and various shades of Mountain Colors sock yarn. It’s pretty, but I had trouble getting a decent picture.

I also have a small pile of swatches — my refuge when all else seems too boring or too difficult and I won’t give myself permission to start something new.

The good news about these swatches is that they’ve done their job: they have inspired ideas for two sweaters to be made from stash yarn. I am now planning to combine the Interlacements Tokyo with some Zephyr Wool-Silk in Basil, which I ordered yesterday from Sarah’s Yarns, to create a baseball shirt-styled sweater — something very light and soft, with raglan seams, hems at the edges, and three-quarter sleeves. I think the sleeves should be solid and the body variegated.

The Golden Siam swatch is making me think of a longish tunic with a boatneck, slightly flared sleeves (possibly three-quarter), and thick brown and blue horizontal stripes. I am not sure yet if that will be a flattering and elegant garment, as I hope, or a garment that will make me look wide and lumpy.

Additional exploration is required. Stay tuned.