The Scarlet Knitter

The call of the simple brown shawl

First there was a double graduation.

And now, a family vacation. Which means, time to torture myself by figuring out which knitting projects to bring along. The log cabin blanket is too unwieldy already and would require its own suitcase full of those gigantic skeins of Plymouth Encore. Not a good idea.

The cabled linen project? Naturally! I wouldn't dream of leaving it behind. I'll bring the first sleeve and enough yarn to knit its match. But what if I find myself with lots of free time? What if I knit the second sleeve as fast as I did the first one? Not a likely proposition while on vacation, but one never knows. One doesn't want to find oneself plain out of knitting projects, ever.

So I spent the last few days, whenever a knitting opportunity presented itself, swatching for this or that. I focused on light weight -- a shawl most likely, perhaps in lace. I took out my yarn purchases from Stitches West, tried a few rows of the Stonington shawl with some laceweight Zephyr, then a few rows of the Corner to Corner shawl with a Pygora blend from Toots Le Blanc. Both were, still are, good possibilities. But I have knitted versions of those patterns before and maybe, this being summer and all, I needed to branch out.

Enter Mustaa villaa's modern take on the ruffled shawl, which I have wanted to imitate ever since it appeared on her blog last year. I had been dreaming of a shawl or stole that would look elegant and modern, and that would function as a lighter version of a travel blanket. I liked the idea of something a bit more substantial than lace, a bit more opaque, less likely to catch on the zipper of my travel bag, and so on.

The yarn is another Stitches West find, a merino sock yarn hand-dyed and sold by Miss Babs, whose booth was pure, irresistible eye-candy. My two skeins are more than enough for a big shawl. Swatching for this swiftly turned into beginning the project in earnest; it was so addictive that I had to force myself to put my needles aside so that there will be enough rows left to do once I reach my destination.

As this chocolate brown is especially dark and rich, I am not sure I want to use black as an edging. For now, I am leaning towards a skein of greyish-tan shetland wool I found in my bag of Harrisville orphan skeins. It won't have the same texture as the sock yarn, but it is close enough and I know it will block very nicely.

As Terhi explains in her post and on Ravelry (all subsequent links are Rav links, with my apologies to readers not yet signed up), she followed the instructions for the Wool Peddler's Shawl from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls , simply replacing the deep lace edging with a simple, barely undulating ruffle. Other knitters have made their own versions, like seashoreknits, KayGardiner and KayGardiner again .

I know, I know, garter stitch has vanquished me. I surrender to garter stitch. Stockinette can wait.

Happy summer to all! Posts will resume when I return from vacation.

Progress in blue

I was so eager to click a joyous "Save" after writing my last post on Log Cabin # 3 that I forgot to mention an essential element involved in its creation, i.e. the pattern. It is, all together now, the "How to Log Cabin" pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting .  All knitting books that I bring home start out on my nightstand, for a month or two, before I file them in my knitting bookshelves, but this book is one of the few that have earned a permanent niche by my bedside. You never know when the need to review the basics of striped mitered bedspreads may arise.

Next to the nightstand is a knitting bag containing the skeins I am using for this, log cabin number four. It is actually growing at a good clip:

Since the color combination on this one is more traditional (not the right word, I know, but I can't come up with a better one), I don't have to spend much time making decisions or frogging a few rows that clash with the rest -- something I had to do on occasion with #3.  Nevertheless, I have my doubts about the touches of very dark green that have been included so far. If I wasn't so lazy, I would consider frogging them. The contrast looks too strong to me; I ought to have saved this colorway for a final edging, perhaps. As it is I don't plan to use much more often. The yarn, Plymouth Encore, comes in enough blues, teals, ochres, light greens, to offer enough variety without turning to a much darker, attention-grabbing color.

Last week I did manage a break from log-cabin knitting, long enough to produce this:

The first sleeve of my cabled cardigan, all done. Knitting in the round made it a breeze; I do much better with my tension and I didn't agonize over where to place the sleeve increases and armhole decreases. I know some knitters can't stand the feel of linen yarn, but I love it down to its very roughness. This sleeve took nearly one skein, which means that once I am finished with the cardigan, and I have two more skeins in my stash, which means that I'll be able to explore the virgin territory of facecloth-knitting with the leftovers. Did I mention I love knitting with this yarn?

Log cabin number three

Finally ready for her close-up and blushing with red-purple pride, may I present

Log Cabin Blanket #3, aka Olivia's blanket?

At home just about anywhere, whether casually hanging over the banister

or neatly folded in a corner of the couch, waiting for a lazy afternoon to be wrapped over a human body

or, even better, following its calling and turning a bedroom into a cozy and wooly place.

Yes, it is big, way big. I know O's dorm room is awfully unlikely to accommodate a double bed, but she, like me, prefers a blanket with the potential to wrap its owner from top of the head to a couple of inches past the toes. This results in a pretty heavy blanket and I am already puzzled about the best way to make it travel cross-country safely without dealing with an overweight luggage charge.

Meanwhile, the specs: KnitPicks Swish Worsted superwash wool, in the following colorways: Bordeaux, Lava Heather, Clamatis Heather, Indigo Heather,  Lemongrass Heather, Wisteria, Fired Brick. I used so many skeins of each I lost track of the exact count, probably around 7 skeins of each color except the Lemongrass which was used sparingly.

In the past I found that a blanket knitted in Swish tended to stretch in the first wash, so I knitted this one more firmly, with a #7 circular needle, to keep the fabric denser.  Much as I love the look of an i-cord edging, I balked at the task of tackling one on a blanket this size. Instead, I did a one-ridge log on each side, by picking up stitches all along, knitting one row, then binding off. I picked the color of the border solely by elimination, based on how much yarn was left in my knitting bag.

I must say that these various colors grew on me after a while: I wish there had been a greater range to pick from; greens were limited, purples too, there were no pinks to speak of, which is why I added dark browns to the mix. Overall I much prefer having a lot of colors to play with, because it makes the selection for each log easier but also a bit wilder. Still, a monochromatic log cabin would also be intriguing. I'll have to pull all my reds and give it a try sometime. Not now. But one day.

Swatches for Summer

The first college blanket of the season is done. Only a few ends remain to be woven in, then a gentle blocking, and a photo session. Which can only mean one thing:

Yes, blanket #2 has commenced. C loves blues, turquoise, teals, greens, and I found a pretty good selection of just those colors in Plymouth Encore, which is a yarn C likes to wear and to cuddle in, lovely, low-maintenance young woman that she is. I started on Friday evening and so far, I am able to progress at a good clip: two to three logs a day.  The blanket needs to be done by mid-September, a goal that can surely be accomplished without too much stress, and only the boredom of constant, uninterrupted garter stitch.

I do plan a few detours, just because it is almost summer and I haven't knit a sweater for myself (one that wasn't destined to the frog pond, at any rate) in a ridiculously long time. I took a long, hard look at my stash, which contains a rather scattered and random selection of summer yarns.

Rowan Summer Tweed is an old favorite. It comes in beautiful colorways, and the cotton/silk blend is ideal for the Bay Area weather a good half of the year. Some knitters find the blend a bit too rough to handle, but I like it, now that I have discovered it wants to be knitted firmly (I use a #6 needle instead of the recommended #8).

I applied my newfound Fibonacci striping skills to this swatch, rotating three colors through a sequence of 2 numbers (2 and 3-row stripes). This taught me that the eye doesn't register much of a difference between a 2 row-stripe and a 3 row-stripes. Using stripes of 1 and 2 rows each would carry much more visual impact.

I am also not crazy about the mint green in this swatch. It just isn't my kind of green. I own just one skein of it and I am reluctant to buy more of a color that I don't find that easy to combine with others. I might just use it as a small accent and add navy blue to the mix, if I can figure out a way to do this and still keep the effect summer-y.

Diving again into the stash, I unearthed a few skeins of Goddess Yarns Carmen, a mercerized cotton in a light worsted weight that comes in some lovely, saturated colors. A couple of years ago, I bought them impulsively, without a preconceived notion (something I have finally stopped doing, well, most of the time). This is why I find myself with 6 skeins of an eggplant colorway, 2 skeins of olive green and 2 skeins of a tan colorway. I spent a couple of afternoons swatching, adding a deep red (darker than on the photo) to warm things up and create more contrast. But I am still not happy with the results so far. I don't think I would wear something this busy.

Since I have so much more of the eggplant color, I am thinking of a mostly solid, short-sleeve top, with stripes only on the top, or... something. I have combed Ravelry, using tags like "stripes", "striped", "raglan", "top", "tee", and so far I haven't found the perfect inspiration. But it is a good thing to ponder as I knit row after row of mindless garter stitch.

This last swatch is the happy product of two failures. Failure #1: two years ago, at Stitches West, I could not resist the lure of bargain yarns at the Webs booth, and I came home with a pack of Jaeger Trinity, a blend of silk, cotton and rayon that feels very light, almost papery.

When I swatched with it, I had to go down to a #2 needle to get a somewhat homogeneous fabric. This didn't make for a happy knitting experience, not because of the small needle size, but because the yarn felt stringy, unpleasant to handle. And that's saying a lot coming from someone who enjoys the roughness of linen.

I also checked Ravelry boards for feedback on the yarn. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who had been lured by the siren song of discontinued Trinity offered at bargain prices, only to be frustrated by the tendency to stretch and the lack of body of the yarn.

That's when I remembered failure #2: a too-big tunic knitted a few years ago in Tahki Cotton Classic. Not long ago, I managed to shorten it, but I still didn't like the big sleeves, the allover big style. I swatched some of the frogged mercerized cotton along with Trinity, and presto! The blend is an absolute pleasure to knit. Besides, it has a nice firm hold and looks good in a number of stitch patterns. For this combo, I plan a short-sleeved, polo type of garment, with seed stitch details at the sleeves and collar, a la Kim Hargreaves. After so many flops lately in the non-blanket department, I badly need a hit. This one seems like a pretty good bet from where I stand.

Bearing arms

It was too hot to handle wool last week. Besides, I needed a break from all that garter stitch, so I turned my attention to a blue crumpled mess at the bottom of the knitting basket. It was the body of last Spring's big UFO, a blue cardigan knitted in Euroflax linen and last photographed here . In the intervening year, some (unblogged) frogging and re-knitting had occurred, and all that remained for me to do was to finish the two fronts and assemble them via a 3-needle bind-off.

When I was done with this, I decided to bravely check on fit instead of simply forging ahead and casting on for the sleeves. This meant laundering and machine-drying the body, an easy, usually rewarding step that transforms the linen from rought to silky and could change the gauge a bit... or not.

When I held my breath and tried on the body, there were some good news and some bad news. Good news: the length is just right this time, and the width, while roomy, isn't bad. Shoulder width is just the way I wanted it. I plan to add only the narrowest of edgings and button bands, in garter stitch.

Bad news: the armhole is long. Not awfully long but, hmmm, long-ish.

 

Disclosure: once upon a time, precisely when I stopped blogging about this particular project, the armhole was even longer. I eventually came to my senses, and frogged and reknitted it to what I thought would be the right measurements. In spite of the long rest I took from working on this, I don't have it in me to frog to the armholes and knit the sides yet again. For one thing, figuring out the decreases within the four-stitch cable motif was a headache. For another, figuring out the rate of decrease at the V-neck at the same time was, if not a headache, a definite challenge. It made me understand like never before the absolute beauty of steeking. If I was knitting this cardigan in wool, I could make the body without those particular worries, focusing instead on creating an evenly cabled fabric, and then cutting out a V neck, front opening and armholes at the right place. Seen from here, it seems ideal. But I can't imagine steeking something as slippery as linen (although no doubt some reckless knitter has done it already).

Maybe I am being over-dramatic. When I place the body of the blue cardi on top of my Krystyna cardigan, on which I based this project, the discrepancy at the armscye is visible, but not outrageously so.

So, I find myself in a quandary, yet again. Not my favorite place to be -- much too familiar. Do I start on the sleeves and hope for the best? Do I turn this into a vest? And if so, what do I do with the remaining skeins of Neptune blue Euroflax?

Meanwhile the weather is back to Bay-Area-normal, with just the right amount of breeze and cool evening air to withstand an almost-done worsted weight wool blanket on my lap. This one at least should achieve FO status very soon.

The view from Mother's Day

My sister-in-law knows me too well.

Next year, O. and C. will be away at college at this time of year, so today is probably the last Mother's Day that I will be spending in their company, at least for a while. 

So we started the day with a memorable hike in the Berkeley hills.

 

followed with a lazy hour or two spent on a couch, listening to podcasts and adding a few garter stitches ridges to the never-ending log cabin blanket.  And now we are off to a fancy dinner out, the four of us. There is much sweetness in "bittersweet" after all.

One log at a time

Another day, another blanket, another row or two of garter stitch; now that high school graduation is imminent, it has become painfully clear that two members of this household will actually leave for college at the end of the summer. Therefore, college blankets will need to be finished sooner rather than later. The fact that one blanket hasn't even been cast on for is of little comfort right now, but I can only build them one garter-stitch log at a time, after all. Besides, C's academic year starts three weeks later than O's, so I will enjoy a tiny reprieve, and not only blanket-wise.

Blanket #1 has grown quite a bit since I last blogged about it. At this point, it takes over two hours of fast knitting to build a log (9 ridges of garter stitch), which eats up nearly a whole skein of worsted weight wool.

I had some issues with the colors at first but now they have grown on me; I only wish the range of colors of this yarn, KnitPicks Swish Worsted, was more expansive. (Note: despite appearances, there is no shadowing effect here. The colors are by and large uniform in value, but I wasn't able to compensate for the brightness in part of the room.)

As large as the blanket now is, O. has asked for it to be longer, so I am shooting for at least two more logs on each side, and maybe a wider stripe in red for a final frame effect. Or purple. I clearly have a few days before I come to that decision.

Chaser

Actually, I have no idea what a chaser is, but the word appeals to me right now. The wooly Rambling Rows afghan project helped to chase away my knitting blues, right down to the last three days of obsessive i-cord edging.

I finished it an hour ago, photographed it right away, in its unblocked but nicely-shaped condition.

After pondering edgings in my last post, I completely forgot to photograph the i-cord in close-up, not that there is anything special or different about my brand of i-cord. I followed the suggestion that Kelly Petkun made in a recent Knitpicks podcast (or at least one I listened to recently), about knitting the first outward stitch of the cord through the back loop to keep it neater. Good idea.

I also experimented with new-to-me i-cord tools, using a thin metal dp needle to pick up blanket stitches and a size 7 wood dp needle to do the actual knitting, since I was using a worsted-weight wool. Using a needle that much thinner really helped to speed things up. I am glad I had knitted every edge stitch of the garter stitch blocks, otherwise, I imagine that getting a firm enough edge to pick up stitches from would have been problematic.

I am pleased that I was able to stick strictly to stash yarns and yet come up with a color combination that made sense. Although I have a large stash, it isn't a very coherent one. I accumulated a lot of it when I was knitting for children and dolls, so a vast majority of my stash consists in orphan skeins, and combining colors and even weights is a necessity.  But recently, I have learned to enjoy that step as a designing challenge -- a much better frame of mind when I do cast on.

This was knitted with 3 shades of Cascade Eco Wool, which comes in a great selection of natural colorways; some discontinued Debbie Bliss Merino dk wool, double-stranded, and a fingering-weight tweedy alpaca, also doubled.

Although the earthy tones are a pretty good match for my too-beige house, the blanket will soon make its way to Afghanistan where I hope it can keep a little child cozy and warm.

Closure

The bulk of the knitting of my Rambling Rows blanket is done.  Making those 55 assorted squares and rectangles proved addictive; I could never stop at just one, and so I made faster progress than on my other repetitive garter stitch project, the log cabin blanket.  Now I need to add on a border. Still deciding on the color between these two possibilities:

The rust brown offers more of a contrast to every yarn used in the blanket, but it is very red while the earthy browns in the blanket tend to have a bit of grey-ish brown in them. The basic brown will blend in better, but may not offer enough of a contrast when it borders the darkest brown squares in the blanket. All this obessive questioning is allowing me to take a break from the actual task of knitting the border, which will probably take the form of i-cord. Not my favorite knitting activity -- but worth the effort, I feel.  Based on my exhaustive study of Rambling Rows blankets on Ravelry, I can confidently say that a thin but visible border works very nicely with this pattern (although I have also spotted two other lovely options: a wide garter stitch border and a multi-row, multi-color crochet one).

The semi-mindless connected blocks have been the perfect project while I pondered my disappointment with knits that need to fit the human body more closely than afghans or shawls. I tossed and turned, thought and thought (and read your comments) and I am pretty sure I will frog the cabled jacket, and re-knit it to my actual size this time. All the neat tricks I learned in class with Lily Chin will be put to good use, and I will re-draft the armholes and focus on fit, fit and fit.

But first, a goodbye.
 

Goodbye, twice-frogged shoulders and collar.

Goodbye, lovely V-cabled pattern at the bottom edges

 

and on the sleeves, growing organically from the wrist ribbing (color more accurate on this last photo). You made me happy even if our affair turned sour. We'll meet again soon, when the time is right.

For Kay

Mason Dixon Knitting was the very first knitting blog I stumbled upon; in fact, probably the first blog, period. Ann and Kay's wit, talent, creativity, kindness have touched me and many, many others.  Their books live by my bedside. A day with a new MDK  post is a great day. Except today.

I just found out that Kay has lost her husband, Peter. Kay, my heart and thoughts are with you and your family today and always.