Nothing New November

I'm in the process of moving apartments, and when I started to pack the knitting area I was appalled at the size of my stash, and at the pile of unfinished pieces in my work basket. Whence my new motto: Nothing New in November! No new yarn, no starting new projects!

Here are just a few of the pieces yet to be finished:


Selbu Modern. I have some doubts about this: it's looking very small, and I know that I can stretch it to block, but perhaps not as much as I originally thought. I have to say that I am a fan of colorwork but this has not been super fun to knit, so the thought of ripping it out and adding a pattern repeat to make it the right size is not particularly appealing. So this might be a back-burner project.


Ripping and re-knitting the sleeves of my Shalom cardigan. These just never fit right, and I had been thinking that the whole cardigan was too big to wear when in fact I think it was just the sleeves that were too big. This should be about a two-night project in front of TV, I think; I've already pretty much finished one of the sleeves. I'm also going to thread some elastic into the collar to make it stay tight -- Karabella Aurora 8 is a stretchy, heavy yarn, and the neckline gets pulled way big by the end of a day of wearing it. Re-knitting with it reminds me of what a nice yarn it is, though -- super soft, super bouncy, and not particularly pilly, yet.


Remember this guy? This sweater has been on my needles for more than two years! It's been languishing almost finished because I now hate wrapping my purls the wrong way, as I was doing when I started this. It seems to take twice as long to knit a row this way! One sleeve is about 3 inches from completion, and the other one is still unworked from the armpit join. This project could take me more than just this month to complete. In trying it on to gauge sleeve length, though, I am reminded of how adorable it will be when I finish it!


One new spiral mitt, waiting for thumb ribbing, and then for its partner to be knit. I tried a different design for these and have decided I like the original spiral mitt much better. This pair might be gifted for Christmas.

Then a couple of cheats:


I cast on a few days ago for a featherweight cardigan. I'm counting this as a "nothing new" sweater, though, because I ordered the yarn (Colourmart cashmere 4-ply) more than a year ago. Knitting my mitts and cowl with the gray cashmere made me absolutely burn to work with more cashmere, so I pulled this out of the stash.



This one is really a cheat: This is the ribbing for the left front of a new cardigan design I started only a few days ago. It doesn't really count as "nothing new," if I were being a stickler, but I've got to have something besides sleeves to knit, don't I?

This is only the tip of the iceberg, peeps. Among the other unfinished items I dug out of the knitting cupboard are not one but two baby sweaters awaiting a second arm, the left front and two inches of the back of my birthday BFL sweater, about half of a chevron scarf to match my chevron beret, another patterned-yoke sweater left off about an inch from the armpit division, an adult surprise jacket for my mom, and a cable sweater I've had on the to-finish list since I first learned how to knit five years ago. Oy!

Will it all be finished in November? Definitely not. But will anything new be cast on between now and December 1? Absolutely not!!

You hear that, Jennifer Little? Absolutely not!!

long weekend knitting and Easter bread

It may be April, and the weather may be getting warmer, but it's still winter here Chez Looking Glass -- at least as far as the knitting's concerned. It seems always to be my M.O. to get the knitting bug and finally have time time to make something substantial just as the weather is getting too warm to wear it. Hence my lovely Shalom, which I have been able to wear thrice since knitting it. Now I'm deep into another totally unseasonal and impractical knit -- an Adult Surprise Jacket for my mom in Dream in Color Classy ("Dusky Aurora") and some stripes of leftover black Karabella Aurora 8.


It's been a hoot to knit. Originally, I had thought that the color variation in the Classy would be enough to accentuate the mitered corners and cool construction of this sweater, but you can see that the variegation was just too subtle -- a fact which really is a strong point of this yarn, because, really, who wants really noticeable striping and pooling? So I had to build in some stripes with a contrast color. I'm keeping it subtle with this one -- Paula is a pretty conservative dresser, and I'm planning to keep the striping to a minimum and to finish this short and boxy, like a little jacket.


Next up in the wintry yarn/knitting docket: an order of Jo Sharp DK wool in "Venice" that I got on the cheap in a supersale at Webs. This is probably also going to be a sweater for my mom, with a more conservative projected finishing time of this fall. I'm thinking simple, stockinette body with a cable at the button band and cables on the yoke -- kind of like a variation on the Radcliffe Cardigan. Of which, I realize, I still have two on the needles -- one for my mom and one for me. The one for my mom turned out dishearteningly small, and I just don't have the heart to rip it out and reknit the body bigger. So of course the solution is just to knit something else and let it keep languishing...

But all of those projects are temporarily on hold while I knit something for myself.


This is the beginnings of a hybrid circular shrug and shawl-collared vest for me, to wear over this dress at a May wedding:


I'm hoping the vintage-style look of that dramatic shrug shape (with added 3/4 sleeves) will both keep me warm and match the look of the dress. I'm making this out of Knitpicks Gloss held doubled. Definitely not my ideal choice for yarn -- Knitpicks yarns have always disappointed me with their tendency to pill immediately, and this yarn is a little scratchier and cheaper looking than I had hoped (the name "gloss" led me to imagine smooth, glossy yarn and not wooly, acrylic-shiny yarn) but I didn't want to break the bank on something I expect I will only wear a few times at most. I do have an awesome shiny faceted antique button I plan to use for the closing. More on that when I finish -- it has to be done by May 16th, at least!

Other crafty doings of late include baking a pair of perfect loaves of nisu, a Finnish bread my grandmother always made. This sweet, eggy, cardamom-flavored bread is sometimes spelled "nissu" and is more often called "pulla," which I believe is also the Swedish word for coffeebread. I got the itch to make it as Easter approached -- it's not necessarily an Easter bread or even a special-occasion bread, but I only got to eat it on holidays and special occasions when I was a kid, because that's when we tended to see my grandma.


Why, you ask, did I speak of loaves of nisu but only show you a paltry butt end and slice? Uh, because I've already eaten the rest of that loaf and shoved the other in the freezer to avoid further temptation.

I thought I'd share the recipe with you. In my opinion, I've gotten it totally perfected -- my mom attests that it is better than my grandmother's, which is saying a lot. So bake this and feel like a true Finn. Or at least a true Finno-American.

Nisu: Finnish coffee bread
Recipe adapted from Carmel Mackey's family recipe

Ingredients (makes two loaves):

1 cup 2% milk
1/4 pound (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 heaping teaspoon ground cardamom (grinding whole seeds in a coffee or spice mill recommended)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 package rapid-rise yeast
1/8 cup lukewarm water
2 eggs, beaten
3-4 cups flour
1 tablespoon 2% milk and 1 beaten egg to brush tops of loaves
fancy Swedish pearl sugar or fancy casting sugar to sprinkle on loaves


Equipment that might come in handy but is not necessary:

cooking thermometer
stand mixer
pastry brush
bread loaf pans

Scald the milk. I don't really remember what scalding actually involves, but I heated the milk on medium-high until bubbles started to form around the edges. Remove from heat and add butter, sugar, cardamom and salt. Don't stir at all. Just after you add these ingredients, dissolve the yeast in the water and let sit while the milk mixture cools.

When milk mixture cools to between 105 and 115 degrees, scoop 2 cups of the flour into a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer. Make a well in the flour and add eggs, milk mixture and yeast mixture to this. Beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Then begin adding the remaining flour 1/4 cup at a time until dough holds together and doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, but is not too dry. If you are mixing this with the dough hook in your stand mixer, you might find that it's easiest to gauge the dough's consistency by stopping when it is still a little wet and kneading the remaining flour in during the kneading stage. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes.

Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead until smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes. It's okay if you find you have to add some more flour as you knead to keep dough from sticking to your hands. Shape dough into a ball and place in a clean, lightly oiled bowl. Turn dough around a few times in the bowl to grease the top of dough. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Turn dough out onto a clean, oiled surface (no flour) and knead lightly and briefly to release air. Divide in half, and divide each half into three equal balls. Roll each ball into a snake about a foot long. Arrange 3 snakes vertically on the counter. Pinch together at the top and braid (as you would braid hair), stretching snakes ever so slightly as you braid them. Pinch together bottom and turn top and bottom pinched areas under to make braid look neat. Place braid into a lightly oiled bread pan or onto an oiled cookie sheet (making it in a bread pan will make the loaf rise taller, but it has to be a pretty long bread pan, not a little banana bread pan). Repeat with second loaf. Cover loaves with clean dishtowels and let rise until doubled, as long as 4 hours depending on how warm your kitchen is.

When loaves are the right size, heat oven to 375 degrees. Beat together egg and milk for brushing. Brush tops of loaves with this mixture, then sprinkle liberally with sugar. Bake 15-25 minutes, until tops of loaves are lightly browned. Let cool.

Even tastier the second day. Also good toasted and spread with butter when it starts to get a little stale.

FO: Shalom

Here are some more composed pictures of the Shalom cardigan, taken in the sober morning after my wearing it out immediately upon being (almost) dry yesterday. You may notice that the sleeve is a little wrinkled, from my bending my elbow last night at choir rehearsal.


A little difficult to catch the color in this light (barn-red-rust-brown-orange is almost as hard to photograph as red, it turns out). This striped-with-window-sash pic comes closest to getting it. Looking at that length laid vertically, the thing looks really cropped and boxy, right? Hard to believe that it gets weighed down enough by its own weight to be pretty much the same length as all my other sweaters.

The yoke is just gorgeous, and the short rows I worked in the back do the trick in hiking up the back of the collar just a bit. I would probably work a few more were I to do it again. I used some vintage buttons I bought a few years ago at antique show; they match quite nicely and I think give the sweater a nice old-fashioned look:


In the end, since following my gauge (5 st./in.) mods of Ishi's mods didn't work perfectly for me, here's what I did. I placed markers, rather than dividing, right after the last garter ridge: right front 43 stitches, sleeve 51 stitches, back 72 stitches, sleeve 51 stitches, left front 43 stitches.

Then I knit to the center of the back (36 stitches in) and marked it, and worked short rows as follows: knit to 10 st. past marker, wrap and turn, p to 10 stitches past marker, wrap and turn. Knit to 15 stitches past marker, knitting into wrap with wrapped stitch when I encounter it, wrap and turn. Purl to 15 stitches past marker, purling into wrap with wrapped stitch when I encounter it. Repeat these steps, each time going 5 more stitches out, until I've gone as far as 25 stitches from the marker on both sides of it. Were I to do it again, I think I'd go to 30 stitches past the marker. I did it this way, rather than working my short rows in from the furthest-out point, because I am not super-great at picking up wrapped stitches and I feel like you can always notice them, so I tried to hide them all right underneath the last garter ridge.

Then I went on with the body, dropping that center-back marker. I increased every other knit row inside both sides of just the sleeve markers, the way I would have for a raglan increase, but only in the sleeves. I did this 3 times, for an increase of 6 stitches inside each sleeve. Then I worked regular raglan increases (increasing on both sides of each marker) every other knit row twice. At that point, I was at an armpit length that seemed more reasonable, so I divided for the sleeves. Since I had increased 2 stitches on each side of the armpits, I only had to cast on 11 stitches under each arm as I separated for the sleeves. Were I to do it again, I think I'd have cast on fewer than that, because this sweater is a little too big, and because those cast-on armpits are kind of noticeable when you're wearing the sweater. I think maybe 5 or 7 would have been more reasonable. I also think the sleeves are a bit too wide, so cutting back the cast-on for the sleeves would not be terrible.

I left the body stitches on a holder after a few rows and worked the sleeves; I think this was a great idea, because it helped me avoid second sleeve syndrome. I worked the sleeves in the round using magic loop, and decreased on each side of the center stitch picked up under the arm at the 4th round, the 21st round, and every 14th round after that. I knit them until they were about 11 inches long, then worked a decrease row, decreasing every 8th stitch, then worked 12 rows of garter and bound off. I wanted my sleeves to be a little boxy and not too close-fitting at the elbow.

For the body, I just worked straight to (what I thought was) the right length, working a slipped-stitch "seam" under each armpit all the way down, then decreased every 10th stitch, worked 12 rows of garter and bound off. A proportion of garter to stockinette of 90% seems perfect for not flaring out or pulling in. After blocking, of course, I realized it was much too long and ripped back about 20 rows of stockinette, then reworked the garter hem.

Shalom!

Shalom turned out quite nicely, I think! I snapped these pictures as I was heading out the door -- they're not very good, but they give a general idea.


Aurora 8 is VERY stretchy -- I ended up having to rip back about 5 inches of the hem after blocking because it grew and grew. Thankfully, the growth seems mainly to be in length, because this is just a tad too big. Perhaps Paula would like it, and I can make myself another. But soft, comfortable, kicky -- I think this will get a lot of wear!

Two FO's and a work in progress

The Shalom Cardigan is finished and blocking at the moment. It turned out well, with only a slight degree of panicking over growing superwash yarn during the blocking process. Modeled photographs are forthcoming.

In the meantime, here is a picture of a long-finished knitting project: the cashmere OX cable scarf I knit my boyfriend for Christmas. Begrudgingly modeled (but not begrudgingly worn) by the man himself.


I'm partial, but I think he bears a slight resemblance to the sexy Severus Snape. This photo was snapped during a walk this Saturday, a truly glorious day that led me to do a little sightseeing in my neighborhood:


Ah, scraggly weeds and the Henry Hudson Bridge. Gotta love NYC.

Correction.

Silly me. I forgot that a big change in stitch gauge would entail a similarly big change in row gauge. There was no way this puppy was going to reach under my armpits at the bottom of the yoke ribbing. Luckily, I was planning all along to make it a sweater with sleeves, so it's all good. I incorporated a few raglan increases to cut down on the number of stitches cast on under the armpit, and viola: a Shalom-esque sweater rather than a Shalom.

I think it's still cute, though I liked the nice, neat way that the real Shalom's yoke ended just as the body/sleeves divided. Alas. Next time I won't be such a smart-aleck and will just knit something in the right gauge of yarn.

That said, I love, love, love this yarn (Karabella Aurora 8) -- the color and the feel. I worry, though, both that it will grow out of control and that it will become pilly. Those two problems have plagued me as long as I've been hard-headedly knitting things with soft yarn even though everyone says that soft yarn pills and that superwash grows...

four blobs

As schoolwork and other obligations piled up over the last few weeks, all I've been able to think about has been knitting. But spring break is here, baby, and I can finally do all that knitting I've been jonesing for!


Today, officially the first day of break, a package arrived from Webs with two lovely blobs in it: Dream in Color Classy in Dusky Aurora and Chinatown Apple. The Dusky Aurora is destined to be an Adult Surprise Jacket for my mom, with some modifications to make it look a little more like a boxy Chanel jacket than a lab coat. The Chinatown Apple, I don't know. Something for myself, I believe. I'd say a February Lady Sweater, but in fact I already have one of those blobs on the needles:


The periwinkle bed jacket for grandma was so successful that I've started my own in Jo Sharp Classic DK -- the gauge is different from the original though (5.5 stitches per inch), which means that I am using the medium measurements to knit an XXS. That's on hold for a bit, though, for two reasons: the first is that I accidentally pulled out the needle from about 30 stitches and am going to have to steel myself before I look at the damage to the lace pattern; the second is that I have to concentrate on the lace, so I am saving it for mindless TV knitting. (I mean, knitting in front of mindless TV, not mindless knitting in front of the TV.)

But spring break also means fun reading, and the book I checked out of the library -- Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex -- is so interesting that I want to read it all the time. So I've cast on a Shalom Cardigan, which has a yoke that needs concentration, but a totally mindless body. Once the yoke is done, I'll have nothing but stockinette in front of me, and I can read and knit to my heart's content. That will be in exactly 3 rows. The fourth blob:


Of course, this is also not the same gauge as the original (5 stitches per inch instead of 3.25), being knit in Karabella Aurora 8, so I've had to make some modifications. In case you're interested, they are to cast on 101 stitches, have 7 stitches in garter for the button band, and to do the increases as written. At the end of the third increase row, it works out to 253 stitches. Doing the math on Ishi's modifications (Ravelry link), I need to add 7 more stitches somewhere in the last garter ridge for a total of 260 stitches, and I'll be able to do the following:

Right front 43 stitches, sleeve 51 stitches, back 72 stitches, sleeve 51 stitches, left front 43 stitches. I'm going to put all but the back stitches on holders and work 8 rows of stockinette along the back to hike up the collar a bit, then I'll cast on 15 stitches for the underarms and work the body (total of 188 body stitches), then for the arms, pick up 15 stitches along the cast-on edge and 6 more along the side edge of those 8 rows, for a total of 72 arm stitches. Here's hoping it works out! Of course, Aurora 8 has a reputation for stretching, so I am hoping that my worries about this sweater's being too small will be resolved in blocking. I am, this time, using a blocked swatch, having been burned with growing, multi-ply superwash yarn in the past.

By the way, I am pleased as punch with both the Jo Sharp Classic DK and the Karabella Aurora 8. I've knit with the Karabella before, but not the Jo Sharp. Both are hardy, well-made yarns, but totally different from one another. The Aurora 8 is heavy, bouncy, super springy, and absolutely not itchy at all. That's why I'm hoping it will knit up into a nice, close-fitting, stretchy sweater that I can wear even in the summer. It would have been a terrible choice, however, for the February Lady Sweater, whose lace pattern would have gotten all stretched out of shape with that much weight pulling it down. The Jo Sharp yarn is much lighter and more rustic, and wooly enough that I don't think this will work up into a seasonless sweater. However, I have high hopes for its being a perfect, mulitpurpose, super-warm and hard-wearing winter sweater, and I know its lighter weight won't pull the lace out of proportion.

Hooray for spring knitting! Even if it does result in sweaters I can't wear for months!