Lazy Summer Knittin'...

... loungin' in the sun. It has been ungodly hot in New York City, but not hot enough to keep me from plugging away at knitting ventures. Today was juuuust cool enough to open the windows and turn off the a/c, but man, wool is hot on one's lap. I've been making myself knit a row or two on each project, and it's surprising how much progress can be made that way.

Here we have a lovely pile of summer knitting, a mix of new, old, and very old projects. You probably don't even remember this fair isle project, which languished on the needles for probably 8 months until I could suck it up and do some irrirating intarsia rows:


Then there's the chevron scarf, which chugs along, a few rows at a time, getting quite long and lovely:


Then there's the yoke of my mom's Radcliffe Cardigan; at a gauge of 4.125 stitches per inch, this has been pleasantly quick-knitting; that gauge certainly beats the 7 and 8 stitches per inch I've been working on with other projects!


Reynolds Candide has been interesting to work with: it already seems a little fuzzy, certainly rustic, but it also seems like it will hold up quite well. But it's a little tough on the wrists, I have to say -- no bounce at all.


So there it is, in all its sunset glory. Latin class is over; vacation is coming up pretty soon, and I don't know how much wool I'll be able to stand on the beach. We'll see.

ahh... summer reading and knitting

The papers are all officially finished, graded, and taken care of! And I've dutifully started in on the reward yarn! (actually, to be totally honest, I may have started in on the reward yarn before I finished that last paper...) I'm happilly knitting away, while listening to The Age of Innocence on CD -- the first installment in the summer Comps-prep reading.


Though a chevron scarf is in the offing, I decided to start with a La Parisienne beret first, so that I could just knit until the yarn was through for the scarf. The two have very similar chevron designs. It's been a bit of a humbling experience for me, since I always think I know a better way to do something; I started out by using my go-to increase instead of the kf&b increase the pattern specified, because I thought it would look nicer. It is true that this kind of increase creates a clean, etched-looking line of stitches that matches very nicely the line created by the double decreases. However, all of that knitting into the row below was basically creating a line of EZ-style fake seams of slipped stitches that were much less vertically stretchy than the increases, and I had to rip out and start over again, following the directions as written.

It's also been a lesson in color theory. I chose these two colors because they looked good together in the skeins; they are pretty much the same value. Knitted up, the fact that they are the same value makes for a somewhat bright color combination, just on the edge of what I'd call garish, and not at all what I was expecting:

I think I like it though (and if not I'll gift it). The yarn I'm using -- Claudia handpainted and Koigu (the Gems sportweight was too big) -- doesn't stand up particularly well to frogging, which leads me to suspect that the finished product will not be very hard-wearing. I'm hoping that a scarf and a hat are not particularly hard-worn items.

The next knitting project in the hopper is to pop this baby on the swift:


That's one of a bag of Reynolds Candide, which I am going to use to knit my mom a Radcliffe Cardigan. It will be fun to follow my own directions like any other knitter, and see where they could be clearer. Candide is totally not the yarn I'd choose for my own sweater -- it's pretty darn scratchy -- but it promises to be very hard-wearing, and my mom is not bothered by itch. It is disappointing when your lovely hand-knit item starts to pill and stretch, as in fact happened to my own prototype Radcliffe (Swish DK? Not such a great yarn for adult sweaters). I am hoping that this Candide one lasts longer.

Hurray! Here's to summer knitting, finally here!

Saturday Classics

It's a beautiful, partly sunny Saturday morning, and I've been spending it working on some classics:

Currant scones

Button bands on fair-isle yoke sweater (have to be ripped out because too short)

EZ's baby surprise jacket, for when the button band frustration becomes too extreme. This is my first time working with this pattern, and it's been fun -- although knitting what is basically a big rectangle could be boring, my interest has definitely been piqued by trying to figure out what part of the jacket I am knitting at any particular moment. Plus, this is a nice use for some variegated Aurora 8 I bought on sale at School Products a while ago -- I think that this was actually a botched dye lot, but I liked the subtle differences in color.

Here's the recipe for the scones that I adapted from one in Gourmet Magazine:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick (8 Tbs) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 Tbs baking powder
1/2 cup dried currants or raisins
1 and 1/4 cups 2% milk

Preheat oven to 425. Cut butter into tablespoon-sized slices. Put flour, butter, sugar, salt and baking soda in your food processor and process until it resembles coarse crumbs. If you don't have a food processor, you could use a pastry cutter or your fingers. Dump in milk and raisins and process until smooth (or until your processor starts having difficulty with it). Lightly dust a countertop with flour and turn out dough onto it. If it's not totally mixed, knead in whatever crumbs are at the bottom of the processor bowl. Knead dough very lightly, adding flour if necessary, just until the dough holds together and does not stick to countertop (the less handling of the dough, the better). Pat dough into a rectangle about 9x12 inches big. Use a knife dipped in flour to cut dough into triangle shapes. Place triangles on baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Yoke-tastic!

Sweeeeeeet!

The body of my fair isle yoke sweater is finished, and it is perfect! I decided it block it before knitting button bands, collar, and sleeves, because I wanted to be sure I didn't need to make some modifications to the sizing -- it was starting to look suspiciously boxy and I had visions of "steeking" the two fronts or of picking up my button bands 4 or 5 stitches in from the edges -- but this was perhaps the first time in my knitting career that blocking worked like magic to fix all those flaws I was nervous about! I wet-blocked it and pulled it quite tight in the vertical direction, fixing length issues while pulling in the width, and it actually worked! It's hard to see the individual stitches, but blocking also puffed them up so that it's a little less obvious that this is the last of the pieces I began knitting (and therefore continued knitting) with inadvertently twisted purl rows.

Blocking, you rock my world.

Now on to the rest of the sweater! Seeing this beautiful result has definitely lit a fire under me to get the arms done -- but I think I'll make the button bands first -- might as well make the torso fit exactly right before I bother customizing the arm lengths!

A plague of frogs.

It's a little known fact that the natural spawning season for frogs of the superwash merino variety is mid-January.

You may recall the original sweater for which I ordered five lovely skeins of Knit Picks Swish in lemongrass, and one in delft blue, the ill-fated car intarsia sweater. After that project failed miserably for a number of reasons, I frogged it and decided on a top-down raglan sweater with stripes. But, as is perhaps visible in this photo, the act of altering my usual top-down sweater pattern for a worsted weight yarn resulted in a sweater with skinny arms and a body that is easily big enough for a four-year old (in fact, I held it up to my own torso and it looks like it would fit me).


So that, too, has been frogged, in favor of a baby-sized version of the popular Cobblestone Pullover. Of course, being a creature of habit, I had to knit it top-down, and being cheap, I had to cast on for it without actually buying the pattern, a fact which resulted in my not knitting the roll neck of the original sweater. It's okay, though, because I think I will just finish it up with a knit-on i-cord at the neck, which will approximate the same look (I hope).

I really should start thinking ahead before casting things on...

tales of hubris punished and patience rewarded

Here is what is on the docket for this weekend:

Hali Meidhad and Seinte Margarete, a few Canterbury Tales, a meditation on the Passion by Nicholas Love, and some NPR knitting.

You may notice that there is a totally new work in progress there on the trusty natural light windowsill. It's true -- I have become an incorrigible starter.

But in this case, there is a tiny bit of an excuse. I made a shocking discovery earlier this week after looking closer at the car intarsia sweater I was making. The process of switching from flat knitting to in-the round knitting I had done in order to do the intarsia part flat had made a significant difference in the shape of the stitches I was making -- and not just a difference in gauge. Witness exhibit A:

In the top half you can see my even in-the round stitches. In the bottom half are a bunch of squiggly, twisted flat stitches. It was at this point that I began to question the arrogance of my claim to be an expert knitter and precocious autodidact. I began to suspect that something was wrong. I flipped open a knitting basics book that had been mouldering on my shelf and made the shocking discovery that for five years I have been purling wrong -- bringing the working yarn around the needles in the opposite direction from the normal one, twisting all my stitches as I did so. It felt akin to being friends with someone for a number of years, only to discover that you have been calling him the wrong name that whole time. So I chucked the offending sweater into a corner for a while in a clear case of killing the messenger, and set myself to knitting a new sweater and purling the right way. Exhibit B:


I have two other excuses. The first is the discovery that another friend is pregnant, thus clearly necessitating a brand new baby sweater. This one is another crack at the top-down baby sheep sweater like the one I made for Andrew. This time I am keeping better track of the process so I can write it up and post the pattern. The yarn is Knitpicks Swish DK, but the blue and green yarns arrived quite a bit more neon than I had wanted -- as is often the case with Knitpicks yarn. So, having been emboldened by my Bristow experience, I popped the two skeins in a bath of water with half a packet of grape kool-aid, and fixed it! I think that the result is quite nice. The mottling of the dye gives the blue yarn a nice homemade look, as opposed to the mediocre acrylic baby boy sweater color it was before, and the green is a more subtle and organic hue too. I'm working out the sheep charts right now: I'm thinking garter stitch for some texture detail.

The second reason to start a new project is a newfound desire to perfect some patterns and post them, because...

My Ravelry invitation finally came!


Ravelry is great! Definitely not a replacement for blogging, and I do rankle at the restrictive nature of the program as it exists now (not sure how to add new patterns, can't register myself as a designer, can only use books already on the site in my library, etc), but it has been fun and exciting to snoop around, and I love the "favorites" feature and the feature that lets me look at what other people are doing with the yarns and patterns I have chosen. If you're on Ravelry too, my ID is lookingglass.

Works in Progress

Now that the top-down Arwen has been shipped off to its recipient, here's what's been cooking Chez Looking Glass in the last few weeks.

First things first, I have been doing a LOT of reading, of medieval lit, criticism of medieval lit, and more medieval lit. Three classes in medieval English literature, plus picking up a colleague's Canterbury Tales class while he's out sick, has led to a veritable onslaught of Middle English. I suppose it won't be long until I am blogging like this guy.

The fair isle yoke sweater continues to progress, having been divided for the sleeves. At a gauge of about ten rows an inch, however, it is moving along mighty slowly. To stave off boredom I have cast on for a number of other projects as well:

My Halloween costume: yes, this is the beginning of a Gryffindor vest. I'm knitting it in Ella Rae Classic Wool, which is certainly on the scratchy side but still very pleasant to work with and a steal at something like $4.50 a 200+ meter skein.

A pseudo-secret project. In Knitpicks Swish DK, which has been good in an economizing way. It has stood up to some ripping-out, which bodes well for its wearability, I think.

Another sweater for baby Andrew, also in Swish, in one of their lovely new heather colors. Question about this one for you loyal readers, though, if you can eyeball from the arm buds and neck size what the finished sweater's size will be: is the car just too small? It is proportional to the buttons I used for the wheels, but in proportion to the rest of the sweater it seems absurdly tiny. That could be hip, I guess, but it would depend on proper motif placement. Should I rip it out and make the car bigger, and give it intarsia instead of button wheels? Should I rip it way back and place the small car higher? Should I say, "this is a sweater for a one-year-old who will spill mashed peas on it the minute he puts it on, so stop your neurotic questioning and finish it"?

No knitting content, but one hell of a tan.

I've been in Florida for the last week on vacation, finding it very hard to squeeze in any knitting with the gloriously hot weather.

Also, in a clear case of hubris punished, the super-secret knitting project I've been congratulating myself about had to be ripped back... way back... because of an egregious (and simple) mathematics error. It's clearly my fault for being too full of self-congratulatory arrogance too soon, and doubly my fault for not working harder during seventh-grade algebra. It happens to all of us, I guess...

What am I going to do about this?

Nothin'.

Arwen's body is one pattern repeat from completion, and I am not frogging back three inches. Hopefully nobody will be staring so hard at my sister's upper pelvic region that they notice this little cabling error.

Meanwhile, I have discovered an awesome blog: TECHknitting, which has great clear illustrations of a lot of different techniques. Go check it out!

Froggy Jamboree

After weeks of knitting on my Arwen, I realized that it was just too big. So this:


became this:

Ensuring a proper fit seemed to necessitate knitting the sweater from the top down, but I wasn't sure how to make the hood work out from the top down. And then I hit on the perfect solution: the figure-8 cast-on for toe-up socks. And, aside from a few twisted stitches, I think that it worked out really well. Here's the hood progress so far:
I'm on the decrease section of the hood now, and when it reaches the right length and circumference for the collar, I'll just start the raglan increases for the top-down sweater.

Things I Have Learned

• That gauge swatching with ruthless honesty is really important.
• That wet blocking is miraculous enough to stretch a sweater from size 33" to size 37".
• That stretching wool like this in blocking gives it a weird drape and no bounce.
• That none of these things matter when you have knit your first adult-size sweater, and you are just blissfully happy to wear your handiwork to school.

I discovered after seaming up my Bristow that what looked like it was going to be too small really was too small. As in, the size a twelve-year-old might wear. I also discovered the source of the problem: although my gauge swatch seemed to be knit at a tension of 4.5 stitches per inch, the finished sweater turned out to be knit at 5.5 stitches per inch. In retrospect, this was probably the case with the gauge swatch too, I just didn't want to admit it. So that meant that what was supposed to be 18" across the back turned out to be a little less than 16" across the back.

I resigned myself to ripping it out, but decided first to block it and see how big I could make it with stretching. The answer: it is now actually a little too big. I am going home tonight to re-block it and stretch it a little less -- which would be a good thing, because stretched as it is across the upper back right now, it's actually looking a little threadbare, and I'd like those stitches to plump back up and fill in the gaps. This is, admittedly, both a mean way to treat your fiber and a poor solution to the problem, but I don't really care. It's still significantly nicer than anything I have knit before, and I kind of like the fact that it isn't just perfect.

Oh, and another thing I learned: don't let your student photograph you outside in -20 F windchill, unless you want to look like a walrus with a weird hairdo:



Specifics:

Pattern: Bristow, from Knitty, size S (and then super-small with the blocking debacle)
Debbie Bliss Merino DK, color 202, overdyed with orange Kool-Aid
Size 4 and 7 Knitpicks options needles
Project started February 8, 2007
Project completed March 3, 2007

frogged.

So I have made the discovery that a cuff 3/4 the width of the hand is ridiculously small. Back to the drawing board...

The Mitt Hits the Fan

So a little backstory: the whole mitten-knitting thing began during Christmas break when I decided to make Selbu mittens from Folk Mittens. I got this beautiful aubergine color of Aurora 8, looked up a slightly more ornate and less star-shaped star pattern with the same footprint to switch out the one from the book for, and began.

I worked hard to make the stitches all even, and thought that it was looking nice:


The problem? Well, you can be the judge: