Christmas Catch-up, part 2

You know I couldn't knit a Christmas for one parent, and not the other, right? At the same time I was making a shawl for my mom, I was making a sweater for my dad. I wanted to make him something special this year because over the summer he spent one miserably hot, sweaty week up here in Madison building some bookcases for our house. He worked really hard and didn't charge me a cent (all we paid for was the supplies) and the bookcases are gorgeous, so I wanted to return the favor. During my parents' stay here I was looking through the Summer 06 IK, and he pointed to the Cambridge Jacket and said "Oh, I have a sweater very similar to that from L.L. Bean. It's really wearing out, though." I don't know if he meant to be dropping a hint, but I decided then and there to make it for him. You know how hard it is to find patterns for men's sweaters that don't look completely stupid?

Here's the final result! I think it looks great on him:



The pattern was really well-written, except for one fairly significant detail: it calls for a single-crochet edging around the bottom of the sweater and around the sleeve edges. I learned the hard way that one puny single crochet edging will in no way prevent stockinette stitch from curling. In fact, it makes it worse. Once I discovered this, I tried all kinds of things to remedy the situation. I was feeling a little frantic, because after months of knitting and nearly a mile of yarn (yup!) I wanted this thing to turn out well.

The sweater wasn't quite finished when I wrapped it up. On Christmas Eve, my dad opened a package that contained one almost-finished sweater, one not-yet-installed 28" zipper, and one note of explanation. At that point my most recent fix for the edge was picking up all the stitches at the bottom and knitting a 2" hem, which I turned under and sewed up. When he tried it on, I saw two major problems, the first being that the hem made the stockinette sections flare out unattractively, and the second that the whole thing was a few inches too short. Dang. I ripped out the hem before taking pictures, but trust me, it didn't look good.

Fortunately, I went to Kentucky prepared! I had extra yarn to try yet another solution to the edge problem, and I had bought a longer zipper in case the sweater wasn't long enough.

Problem #1: The sweater's bottom edge.
Solution: I picked up all the stitches around the bottom and did about 3" of 3x2 ribbing to match up with the ribbing that was already going up the sides:



Problem #2: The curling sleeve edges.
Solution: I picked up the stitches around the sleeve edge and did about 3/4" of seed stitch.



Problem #3: The length.
Solution: Making it longer, duh, (the extra 3" of ribbing took care of that) and installing a longer zipper. This was the first time I'd ever sewed a zipper into a sweater. Difficult? No. Tedious? Most definitely!



Pattern: Ann Budd's Cambridge Jacket from Summer 06 Interweave Knits
Yarn: Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Arctic Pool Heather
Modifications: Other than making everything a little longer to accommodate my very tall father, and futzing with the bottom edge (see above), I stuck to the pattern.

Christmas Catch-up, part 1

Aaaaaaah, DSL. We were at my parents' house all week for the holidays, and had a lovely time, but can you imagine uploading pictures on an 8-year-old iMac with a dial-up connection? So that's why I haven't posted in a while.

I can finally reveal what that last Eye-Candy was all about: my mom's Christmas present!

I didn't get any pictures with her, so here's me trying to be like a Rowan model:



Booty shot:



Artfully draped on my folks' new porch rail:



And, lastly, border detail:



Pattern: Estonian Garden by Fibertrends
Yarn: Fine Kid by Anny Blatt. Inexplicably, the color was called "orange." This yarn was no more orange than I am.
Comments: I got the yarn on sale at Off The Beaten Path, a relatively new LYS in Monona, WI. They had a bunch of it, and it was so beautiful, I stood there for 20 minutes trying to decide what I could make with it before I decided on a shawl for my mom. The Fine Kid was a dream to work with: soft, buttery, never split, no knots, and great yardage (280yds per 50g ball). I'm happy to say I've got about 1.5 skeins leftover, which ought to be enough to make a little scarf maybe for me, maybe for a friend who did a little babysitting for me a while back.

The pattern was really quite easy. I'm a pretty experienced knitter, so the only real challenge was the nubs on the border (which you can see on that last picture.) I guess nubs are a traditional feature of Estonian lace, and usually they involve making 5 stitches out of one stitch on the knit side, then purling 5 together on the other side. Can you imagine doing that with mohair? No thanks! I opted to do three instead, and I think it turned out just fine.

Now I'm done with the pattern, and I am quite sure I won't make it again...so does anybody want it? You can have it for free, as long as you don't mind it being a little crumpled, the result of my little boy's enthusiastic, curious and prying fingers. Just drop me a line with your name and address and I'll send it to you: m*dtownm*m* [at] gm*il [dot] com. (It's up to you to figure out what those asteriks are...just trying to make it nice and cryptic for those evil spammers seeking email addys on the blogs of perfectly respectable people.) First come, first serve.

Eye-candy Friday: Just a Taste

Finished! Bamboo scarf

This here is the finished version of Eye Candy Friday from a couple of weeks ago. It's for my professor at UW, so it's fitting that today's picture has it so "artfully" (right!) draped over my piano. I wish the colors were better (i.e. in natural light), because they look a little washed out in this photo, but I'm giving it to her tomorrow, and I wanted to make sure I got a picture tonight. This was a quick little project, but very pretty, I think.

Yarn: 1 skein (250 yds!) Southwest Trading Co. 100% Bamboo, in the color "Intensity"
Pattern: Tilted garter-stitch-lace-checkerboard thingy from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns
Gauge: ??
Needles: Size 7 cheapy plastic ones I've had forever
Comments: This yarn is silky soft, much softer than the red stuff I have, which is odd, since they're the exact same fiber content. The lady at the yarn store told me there must be something about the dyeing process in the variegated skeins that makes them so much softer.

I hope she likes it!

Knitting Relic: My First Sock

In a roundabout way, I have my friend Autumn to thank for this little knitting blog. While I learned to knit from my mom as a child - and learned well, I might add - it was Autumn who helped me get back into the fold when she taught me how to knit socks in 2003. Until then, I was focused. Until then I was a one-project knitter. Until then, I had no stash. That's right: none. Until then, the only significant items I had knit were: a sweater for myself in high school that was way too warm, a sweater for a bf in a doomed relationship that met its untimely end in the Suwanee River (the sweater, not the bf), a beautiful gray cabled sweater for my very very tall (6'3"!!) younger brother that I doubt he wears, and a sweater for my now-husband that he never wears (not that I blame him...but that's another blog post). The sweater for my brother took, I think, three years, including whole months when it sat in a bag in the corner of the bedroom, untouched.

I met Autumn at the school of music when she was getting her masters in piano pedagogy and performance, and I, having just completed the same program, was starting on my second masters in collaborative piano. When I first met her, I had a sense we were going to get along. You could call it knitting radar, but we have a lot more in common that has nothing to do with knitting; in any case, it was a friendship that was meant to be. We discovered a mutual love for knitting fairly early on, and right away I was so impressed that she knit socks! The thin yarn, the many pointy needles, knitting in a tube, that mysterious thing called a "gusset"...it all seemed so exotic. We went to Lakeside Fibers and I bought a book and some DPNs and a couple skeins of sock yarn, and I had my first sock lesson that afternoon.

I was surprised at how easy it was. In fact, looking back I'm sure I could have figured it out by myself from a book, but at the time it seemed impossible until she showed me how. So I made a sock:



See the mistake?



Early on in the cuff, I got confused about the direction of the knitting and turned it the wrong way, leaving a little gap. I didn't bother to fix it, obviously, figuring I could sew it up later.

Sadly, the sock has no mate. Yes, I had the second ball of yarn and the greatest intentions of making that second sock, but I got distracted with other sock projects - like a truly awful intarsia sock pattern that was doomed from the start, and a brown pair for Stuart that he only wears when all his other socks are dirty (sigh...I have since learned never to knit for my husband unless he asks for something specific and approves of all design and color details before I cast on...) - and the Second Sock never got made. I hung onto the second ball of yarn for a long time, but recently donated it to someone who will actually use it.

Maybe I'll frog this sock and make it into little socks for Daniel, or maybe I'll just keep it as a small memento of when I got bitten by the Knitting Bug and realized I am capable of so many things. Because since then, I've acquired some patterns, beefed up the stash, and made what used to be an occasional hobby into a bit of a passion, and now blog fodder. I'm sure some of this has to do with the explosion of popularity of knitting in the last few years -- you know, good yarns and much better patterns available (now that the poncho craze is over, thank God), complete with smart marketers who know how to prey on my weak resolve. But I've gained a lot of confidence, enough that I have learned other new techniques on my own, and I've ventured into other uncharted territory, like lace knitting for example. I plan to try designing a sweater for myself someday. And I think I have to give Autumn at least partial credit for this.

New Knitty

I ought not complain much about free patterns online. They are, after all, free, and it's not like I have to like everything that's out there. The new Knitty isn't bad, either. It's possible Daniel might get a little Sheldon of his own in his Christmas stocking, and I'm admiring those monkey socks (like I don't have a zillion sock patterns already...) And this little scarf is cute. But when I look at the hat featured on the "cover", I'm thinking to myself: "Gee whiz, I could probably design something as nice as (or nicer than) that!" Not that I know anyone who's enough of an over-achiever to be in grad school, taking care of a child full-time and trying to design knitwear...

But what's with the stupid novelty items? A knitted book? A knitted sling for a disposable coffee cup? And, perhaps strangest of all, knitted cozies for the blades on ice skates? You've got to be kidding me. Points for originality, I suppose.

Somehow, Ann and Kay (authors of the book and blog Mason-Dixon Knitting) have managed to pull off knitting Things that Aren't Usually Knitted, like hand towels and curtains and bath rugs, and make them really elegant and tasteful instead of pointless and tacky. It's a rare gift, and I think they are the exception rather than the rule. I have yet to knit a hand towel...but thanks to their book, I kind of want to...sometime...

Why am I even writing this silly little post when I don't have anything new to show you? Could it be I'm procrastinating some unpleasant task, like washing diapers? Or doing the dishes? Or fixing lunch? Yeah, it could.

A bit o' eye candy

Because it's Friday, after all.

I've Got Start-itis

Before I get to the knitting part of this post, I wanted to show off this little sock monkey quilt that Daniel recently received from my mom. Cute, no? It and his new Curious George doll (also from my mom) are now the objects he goes to sleep with in his crib as part of our new Sleep Strategy. So far we've been somewhat successful.

Now then. I've got serious Start-itis:


I think this happens to me when I'm not totally convinced I like what I'm knitting. I start something, get a few inches in, turn it over, look at it, frown, wonder if it's worth finishing, maybe frog it (usually not) and then start something else. These are all baby items I've begun in the last couple weeks. It seems there are always more babies to knit for, and a small project ought to be just the thing to break the monotony of two fairly major Christmas items I'm working on right now. (That's right, just two. I'm not nuts and trying to knit for everyone I know.)



This is the pink cardigan I wrote about earlier in my first (and thusfar only) Stash Contaminants entry. I'm finally showing you a picture, though you don't get to see the other sleeve because the seaming on that one is no good and I'm re-doing it. Now that I'm finished with most of the knitting (I just have a little more trim to go), I like it more. I found a bit of cream DK yarn that makes a pretty little stripe on the edge of the sleeve; I also plan to use it on the button-band and around the bottom. I'm still not wild about the yarn, but I like the color better since my mom described it as "rose pink" as opposed to my "fugly mauve." I don't know who this is for yet...I guess I'll just give it to the next baby girl who comes along.



This is a blandy-bland-bland Debbie Bliss raglan sweater in - gasp! - Lion Brand Wool-Ease. I think the color is "denim twist." I'm adapting the pattern to do in the round to avoid bulky seams on baby skin. Yeah, I know. Booooring.



This is a plain little t-shirt from Erika Knight's Simple Knits for Cherished Babies in Baby Zarina. This yarn is dreamy-soft. I'm not usually a fan of variegated yarns, but I like how this has little splashes of color that sometimes pool and sometimes don't. I originally bought the yarn intending to make something for Daniel but I misread the gauge on the label and didn't buy enough initially. It knits up at 26 st = 4" and this kid is growing so fast I'd never finish something in his size with those tiny stitches before he's too big for it anyway. The pattern is basically a short-sleeved t-shirt with a little eyelet collar you put a ribbon through and tie a little bow. I am not comfortable with tying little bows around a baby's neck, so I'll change the collar, and I may make the sleeves longer, too. This is superwash merino wool, and certainly fine enough for summer, but I have more yarn than I need, so I might as well do longer sleeves.