The Scarlet Knitter

Lipstick pullover update

I am calling this one the Lipstick pullover, since this is the name of the Cascade Eco + colorway that I used for this sweater, my first contribution to the current 500 sweaters for girls drive organized by afghans For Afghans, partnering with a very worthwhile organization called Trust In Education.

The strong afternoon sun didn't help me with this photo; to me this shade says "geranium" and not "lipstick", so I will attempt a better photoshoot tomorrow when this baby is finally dry. Since I am determined to use up my small-ish stash of Eco Wool, I already know that the next sweater will be (mostly) purple and designed to fit a child aged 10 to 12. I'll be thinking of my options this weekend as I continue assembling my mitered-crosses blanket. More FO's to show in the next few days and weeks, it's a promise.

Out of the basket

And on to the floor. I have three sweaters -- three! -- on the needles right now, two of them approaching completion. My only other WIP right now is a scarf that is about 30 rows short of done. In other words, this weekend seemed like the right time to ignore the four active projects in rotation and tackle something else altogether:

Twenty mitered-crosses blocks, that had been lingering in their (very pretty) basket for much too long, waiting for me to decide on a layout. It took quite a while, mostly because I had truly used random colorways of Kureyon for the crosses, depending on what I could unearth either in my stash or at the odd yarn shop.

Eventually, this layout is the one I settled on. I used every safety pin in the house to tie the blocks together in the order above, and then started the task of assembling them together. This is my first time trying out Kay Gardiner's 2-needle-blind-off method of assembling blocks, as described in her pattern. I am modifying it slightly, assembling each whole row of four blocks in one long bind-off. I have three rows done by now, with two more to go. The whole thing still gets back in its giant basket at night, but at least it isn't threatening to become the Basket of Shame anymore. I am starting to believe that a blanket will actually emerge out of all this wooly stuff. It might even happen before Spring is over.

 

color changes

Peg left a very perceptive comment to my last post about the Mermaid in progress, to which I didn't reply privately as I usually try to do because this very question has loomed large while I have been knitting this jacket. Do I wear Fuschia?

The problem with Falkenberg kits is just that -- the kits are already assembled for the knitter, who needs to identify which two or three colors she is most drawn to. When I knitted my Ballerina coat, I gave myself permission to substitute a medium grey for the sage green that came with the mostly black kit. Of course, that required settling for a slightly different yarn, a fingering-weight shetland from a different manufacturer since one cannot buy the Falkenberg wool in the US, at least as far as I know.

Originally, I was going to embark on a similar substitution with this project, switching a deep red shetland for the two skeins of fuschia furnished in the Mermaid Kit. I even had the yarn on hand, a lovely shade of Harrisville shetland left over from other projects. But then, right before casting on in December, I took a long, hard look at the Fuschia and I changed my mind. I decided that it was more appealing to me than other fuschias, because it leaned a tiny bit more away from blue and towards red than usual. Obsessive, moi?

Also, I had an idea for a simple shawl that was going to work a whole lot better with the red previously earmarked for Mermaid than with any other yarn on hand -- a project finished by now and just waiting for a photo and blog/Ravelry write-up, but that's another story. And finally, I really love the hand and feel of the Falkenberg shetland. It is truly superior, to my taste, warm, lightweight, not exactly soft but not too crisp either, and a pleasure to handle and to wear.

So I went with the fuschia after all. I figured that it was okay to trust the designer's sense of color now and then. That said, if I had waited until this year to buy the kit, it is quite possible that I would have picked another color combination for myself. I can tell that my tastes have been evolving in recent years. I am less fond of strong contrasts (black and red) and more attracted by heathery, tweedy, in-between colorways. I wouldn't mind a mostly grey Mermaid with black or darker-grey accents and fewer stripes, as this is going to be one busy-busy jacket and those gussets sometimes look a tad clownish while hanging from my long circular needle. Oh, well. This will be the jacket to wear when I am feeling Bohemian rather than Parisian, which, truth be told, happens a lot of the time. It will be the nostalgia jacket, the "remember the days when I could wear all manners of wild colors" jacket. Maybe we could all use one of those.

In a different vein, I started something new this past weekend. New, easy, addictive and for a good cause.

The pattern: Cable Pullover, from Louisa Harding's very nice "Modern Classics" book, had been sitting on my shelves and utterly neglected for the past 5 years.

The yarn, Cascade Eco Plus in the Lipstick Red colorway (much nicer than in the above photo), had been bought at around the same time for another project and then forgotten.

Pulling those two out of thin air and seeing how they were made for each other makes me feel happy and virtuous at the same time: I am a knitter, therefore resourceful and able to come up with good projects all on my own and without indulging in yet more patterns and yarns.

As for the good cause, it is the one closest to my heart -- the cause of Afghan schoolgirls who, besides getting a new school, will be given new handmade pullovers or cardigans in time for winter. You can read all about it here . No firm deadline yet, but once I read about this new drive I just could not wait to find the right project and cast on. You'll note that I chose a pattern written for women: I decided to follow the instructions for the smallest size, which should fit a 12-14 year old fine; I will extend the body and arm length by a good inch or two to make the sweater a bit longer-lasting and more versatile.

 

Black mermaid

Here's a little something I haven't blogged about yet. For years I lusted after a Falkenberg Mermaid of my own. Finally, a few years ago, I treated myself to a kit; and then I waited, and waited some more, for the right moment to cast on a zillion stitches in black shetland fingering yarn. On a size 2 needle.

Until finally, there we were, New Year's Eve, 2012. The date felt ominous in a good way (what with surviving the Mayan promise of the end of world and all that.) So I cast on that evening, and I have been going on since then. It's an on-and-off romance, Mermaid and I. I made good progress before my trip to France, and then I decided not to bring it along with me and to focus on smaller travel projects instead. But since my return, we have been getting along swimmingly.

This is my second time knitting a Hanne Falkenberg pattern, and again I am enjoying her very ingenious shaping techniques -- all short rows, very precisely laid out for the knitter in detailed instructions. And boy, are those instructions plentiful. In fact, I suspect that is what intimidates some knitters: not the instructions themselves, but the crammed, visually dense format in which they are presented. My original plan was to retype the instructions in Word with lots of spaces and bold fonts and italics and all that jazz. Instead, I jumped in armed with a couple of post-it flags. So far, so good.

I also found an excellent Hanne Falkenberg group on Ravelry with a plethora of great tips, including some for those brave souls who may want to make size adjustments to the pattern. As for me, I am mostly a blind follower here, except for the initial i-cord which I replaced by a provisional cast-on (that pale pink vertical line on the left), as I couldn't imagine picking up over 100 stitches from a long length of black i-cord -- never mind doing it "neatly." At the very end, I'll unzip the provisional yarn and do an easy i-cord bind-off instead. Thank you fellow Ravelers for coming up with this appealing shortcut.

What it looks like on the reverse side: pretty, no?

A price tag on stash yarn

In case I had any wild notions that my stash was worth its weight in gold, a visit to good old Target and its Easter-theme aisles promptly dissipated them.

 

But if you are finding yourself with more pastel yarns than you'll know what to do with, rejoice in the season and the small window of opportunity to use them up beyond just casting-on. As for me -- I'll pass. I don't think a wreath of grey, black and red would spread much good cheer in any season.

Labyrinth scarf, lost and found

Stitches West took place just a week ago, and like most years, I was able to make the pilgrimage to Santa Clara, a short hour South of my home, in order to catch up with good friends, inspect the goods at the giant market and take classes from outstanding instructors.

During my three days there I took just two classes, one with Lily Chin on knitting -- and designing -- on the bias, and one with Chris Bylsma called "Stashology 101". In recent years, that is how I have built my schedule at Stitches West, mixing technique and "just play." Keeping the course-load on the light side also gave me plenty of time to just sit and knit out in the hotel patio and watch the non-stop parade of lace shawls and vests and ponchos and scarves, which is a huge part of the fun and uniqueness of Stitches.

Unfortunately, my knitting in public took a sad turn as I managed to misplace one of my projects at some point. Was it in the hotel restaurant on Thursday? On my way to class on Friday morning? I haven't figured it out yet, but all I know is this. The WIP in question was a scarf based on a vintage pattern from Vogue Knitting, worked out in a gorgeous shade of pale blue, solid Koigu. I had started the scarf last Spring and only worked on it sporadically, but the end was getting closer and three whole skeins had already been consumed  into at least 3 feet of 2/2 ribbing on my favorite #4 Addi lace needle.

After various failed excursions to every Lost-and-Found department I could think of, I gave up the search and drove home, where a quick communion with the stash revealed four skeins of more Koigu solid yarn, this time in a pretty pale pink colorway. Was the universe telling me that I had plenty of yarn at home already and didn't need to look for more? In this case, the universe would be right. I even found another needle just like the one I had lost. Sometimes, all you need is stash.

 

a Lina for Luna

Sweet little blog of mine, I have been away too long. I have missed you probably more than you have missed me. I went away to Paris to check how things were there, and I found, among other things, some really nice yarns that I had not met before. The small yarn shop in my mother's neighborhood has been stocking mostly Lang yarns, and every year I make a new discovery or two. This year I fell under the spell of Lang Yak, which is actually a 50/50 blend of yak and merino, worsted weight, soft and wonderfully warm.

It was cold in Paris, not the Siberian cold I had encountered last winter, but cold enough that a hat was a welcome accessory. My niece Luna was short of hats, so I made her one.

For the pattern, I went with Lina, a free pattern that I had found on Ravelry a while back. I modified it by knitting about 30 rounds in twisted rib before starting on the cable pattern, because I am fond of double-layering over the ears. (Note: on my own head, I go for a wider fold and the top of the hat fits more closely).Because of this modification, I used a bit more than one skein.

I used a #6 circular for a really firm fabric and more textured ribs and cables, and I eliminated one cable repeat (12 rows) entirely. The lovely yarn got even softer after I soaked the finished hat but the texture remained beautifully defined. What a nifty little pattern!

Did Luna like Lina? She did, she really did.  One might say they were meant to go together.

December socks and January mittens

 

Happy new year! Mine is starting with knitting starts and stops, about which I shall blog very soon, but not today. Time is short and so is the above-pictured set of FO's, all destined for the current afghans For Afghans drive which will wrap up later this month. The mittens were once again the perfect opportunity to destash some odd skeins of worsted weight wool; the variegated dark green/red is the very last of an impulse buy that was wrong, wrong, wrong in so many ways. I almost felt like uncorking a bottle of champagne when I used up the very last few yards for the 4th mitten's thumb. High contrast variegated yarns and I have finally concluded our misguided love affair. As a knitter I embrace my new maturity. By making cozy mittens, I bid farewell to this wool with no bitterness and the satisfaction that it all turned out for the best. Personally, I find that the busy-ness of the colors which was frustrating when I attempted a sweater works rather well on a small surface. It makes the wool appear even warmer than it actually is, no?

The socks were the result of an interesting experiment: I had about two thirds of a (big) skein of Miss Babs sock yarn left; not enough for a full pair. Then I unearthed a skein of brown laceweight alpaca, and not only was my yardage problem solved, but the resulting socks (knitted on a #2 circular) are softer, warmer, cozier all around. Something to remember for all those not quite complete skeins of sock yarn, not to mention the unloved lace yarn from back when my eyes were sharper and my lace-knitting ambitions, higher.

And so this is Christmas

A toast to all of us!

My Christmas sweater...

... isn't ready, by a long shot. The poor thing has had a rocky start in life.

It all began with my continuous effort to turn the best of my stash into honest-to-goodness knitwear. This Rowan Scottish Tweed DK (discontinued a while ago, it goes without saying) was bought a few years ago, bit impulsively, on the basis of its red perfection. The photo above doesn't do it justice. Picture a true red with just a drop of dark blue, enough to make it a deep, rich scarlet. I knew I wanted to make it into a sweater. The shop only had six skeins left, so I took them all home along with a couple of skeins in a dark grey colorway, with no particular plan in mind. (Note to self: not a good idea).

This past fall, I finally decided that it was time to put this yarn to the test. I found a compatible tweed wool in a light grey that could play very nicely with the other two. At last a  sweater could be made, if I could figure out a decent way to combine all three colors. I wanted to avoid stripes at least on the torso, so it soon dawned on me that I should knit the body first, in red, and see where my measly 6 skeins took me.

Top-down knitting to the rescue! This technique is really the knitter's friend when one is unsure of how much yarn a project will take. I decided to knit myself a top-down pullover with set-in sleeves. Fortunately for me, Ann Budd's new, excellent book on the subject had just come out, a very worthwhile investment that I recommend highly. It explains every type of top-down sweater in details, give the reader a number of nice finishing touches to contemplate, and includes a few patterns, all very attractive and eminently wearable, in addition to Ann Budd's unique formulas for sweaters in every gauge and size.

The only catch is that the charts cover only a broad variety of gauges, while my swatch gauge inevitably falls somewhere in between two size-categories. I made my own calculations and adjustments and cast on. I knitted the back to the armscye, then picked up stitches at the shoulder and knitted the front to the same point, then started knitting in rounds.

The benefit of this construction, as any knitter knows, is that one can try the sweater in progress to see if it fits properly. The major drawback is that if, by chance, the fit is then discovered to be wrong, one has a lot of frogging to do. In my case, the top halves of both back and front.

My initial cast-on took place around December 1st. On December 8th, I decided that the sweater was going to be much too wide. I frogged and started again with fewer stitches on the needle.

On December 15, a full week later, nagging thoughts compelled me to try the sweater again. Still too roomy. I wasn't crazy about the V-neck I had opted for, anyway. A new frog-fest was in order.

I am now on my third try, more or less cruising along, and just an inch or so from the bottom ribbing, with an improved fit and a round neck opening which will become a (grey)  turtleneck collar. With about one and a half skeins of red wool to go, I find myself at a cross in the road. Do I finish the body ribbing in red? Or do I switch to grey stripes for the ribbing? The sleeves will most likely be knit in the lighter grey with a long ribbed section using the darker grey. Any idea of what would make more sense or be more flattering? I am ready to entertain all suggestions, other than "just make it a vest." I need sleeves on this thing. It is going to look a bit sporty, a bit homey, but I am fine with that.

Suggestions, advice and Rav links most welcome, dear readers.