Monthly Archives: December 2011

Capping off the year

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I’ve capped off the year….with a cap.  This morning I finished the Peerie Flooers hat, designed by the extremely talented Kate Davies.  This hat was a departure for me.  While I consider myself to be a pretty good knitter, there are many knitting skills which I have managed to neglect in my decades long knitting odyssey.  One of these is the ability to do stranded knitting, or Fair Isle, in which you make beautiful colour garments while knitting simultaneously with two strands of wool.  One strand is held in the left hand and knit in the continental style and the other is held in the right and knit in the English style.  This is my very first item knitted using this technique, and I admit to appalling speed and awkwardness.  But….I am definitely getting better at it!  Here is a photo of my hands while knitting the hat; notice the strand in each hand.

In an earlier post, I showed the half-finished Peerie Flooers hat modelled by my daughter Leah.   Unfortunately, the finished hat is too big for Leah, in fact, it is almost too big for me!  In retrospect, I should have left off the fourth row of flowers or, even better, have used a 3mm needle instead of a 3.25mm (my gauge was 8 st/inch instead of the called for 8.5).  In these photos I am wearing the hat with a hand knit sweater; this is the Leyfi sweater designed by Romi Hill, which I knit in the fall of 2010.  I have lost weight since knitting it and it is a bit big, but I love it and as you can see, it goes very well with the Peerie Flooers colours.

I finished knitting this morning and then had to weave in all the loose ends of yarn.  Emma took a photo of the hat inside out with all of the loose ends waving in the wind.  Doesn’t it look like a jelly fish?  Weaving in ends has to be done in good light and must be accompanied by good coffee.  It is a nice relaxing way to spend the last morning of the year.

And of course a nosy knitter always wants to see the reverse side of your stranded knitting.  The difficulty with this type of knitting is to keep your tension even while carrying the extra strand of wool across the back; too loose and the garment will look messy and the ends will catch, too tight and the fabric will buckle.  I am rather pleased with this first attempt.

Here is the crown of the hat, which shows off the lovely design.

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

Smouldering

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First, a confession; then, an FO (a Finished Object).  I didn’t knit a single stitch for nearly three weeks. At the beginning of the month, I flew to Boston with Doug and the girls for a conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the linguistics department at MIT.  Doug and I met there 25 years ago when we were both PhD students in linguistics.  Despite packing lots of knitting for the trip, I never even took it out of my suitcase.  I was busy every minute in Boston, and enjoyed it immensely.  When I got back to England, I was both jetlagged and extra busy trying to meet a handful of important deadlines before the holiday break; not only was I tired, but I seemed to have lost my knitting mojo.  I carried my knitting around faithfully and ignored it completely.

On Christmas Eve, well rested and happy, my knitting needles sprang to hand, and in five days I have finished a lovely sweater for Emma.  This is a design by Kim Hargreaves, called Smoulder.  I actually started this sweater back in the summer, while on holiday in Italy.  I knit the back of the sweater in one afternoon in Umbria, and then stuffed it away in a bag where it remained until Christmas eve.  Then, realizing that I had weeks and weeks of work left to finish the Brick pullover for Doug, but wanting to finish one more garment before the year’s end, I pulled out Smoulder and began to knit.

I knit the front of the sweater and a sleeve over the next two days, and then sewed the fronts and backs together and set in the sleeve.  Emma tried on the sweater and decided that the sleeves were too short.  Did I complain?  Did I ignore her and finish it anyway?  No, I slowly and painfully pulled out the seams in the sleeves (in mohair!). Then I ripped out the sleeve cap, added a couple of inches to the sleeve body and reknit the sleeve cap, knit the second sleeve to match, and this morning, sewed it up again.  (And, as you can see from the photo, Emma was right.  The sleeves are quite long, but look perfect and quite proportional for this garment.  Emma’s fashion instincts are always spot on.)

As you can tell from the above account Smoulder is a very quick knit.  It is quite easy to knit in a week, two if you take your time.  However, I really didn’t enjoy knitting this one.  Smoulder is knit with two strands of Kid Silk Haze held together.  The fabric is made  by using two different size needles.  All of the knit rows are knit with a medium sized needle, and the purl rows with a very large needle –  I used US size 15 and 8 for the body of the sweater and 13 and 7 for the edges.  I found this really awkward and unpleasant to hold and knit.  The fabric it makes is lovely and the knitting goes extremely quickly, but it didn’t feel nice to knit.

Knitters are often divided into two groups – process knitters and product knitters.  I think my experience with this sweater emphasizes for me once again that I am primarily a process knitter.  I enjoy the rhythm of knitting, the feel of the needles in my hands, the wool in my fingers.   I don’t get that when using gigantic needles, and especially when alternating every row between two different sized needles.

However, one can’t deny that this sweater looks great on Emma.  The fit is good, even without any shaping.  I made it exactly to pattern (only increasing the needle sizes to get guage).  This is the extra small size, and took exactly 4 skeins of Kid Silk Haze (I had about 7 meters left.)  Thus, the sweater is not only fast and pretty, but also quite economical.  Since I bought this Kid Silk at an end-of-the-year bag sale at John Lewis last year, the entire sweater costs about £12 (and I have 6 skeins of wool remaining for another project).

Trendiness

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Ravelry (for those not in the know, Ravelry is sort of like Facebook for knitters) has a new feature, which shows the “hot patterns” at any one moment.  It is subtitled “Designs that Ravellers are looking at today”.  It is a very good way to track trends that hit the knitting world, and when one is bored, it is an incredible time sink, as you can chart the progress of a particular pattern up and down the popularity ratings.  This list does not show which patterns are being knit the most, but rather which garner the most hits on Ravelry, and the list is constantly updating to reflect new viewing patterns.

As a scientist, I find I am fascinated by seeing how networking on these large social sites can influence which patterns get seen the most.  It is like charting the activation patterns in neural networks (my day job seeping into my knitting world).  One of the trends I am finding particularly interesting at the moment is the rise (and rise) of the cowl.  I just checked the top 100 “hot patterns” on Ravelry this moment, and 12 of them were cowls.  They didn’t have this feature last year, but I am fairly certain that if we were to go back to a year ago, this wouldn’t be true.  (In fact, I think a year ago, we would see socks.  And more socks.  More on this below.)  I cannot claim to be immune to this trend, having just knit a cowl for the first time in my 40 year knitting career. (And a very nice one too.  In fact, I am wearing it now as I type.)  So, can we tease apart some of the reasons behind the exploding popularity of the cowl?

1. Christmas is fast approaching, and knitters are desperate to fit in one last hand knitted gift, particularly for the hard  to please (teenaged daughters, anyone?)  While some cowls are incredibly intricate and time consuming, some of the most popular cowls use very chunky yarn on very big needles, and qualify as speedy knits.

2. Cowls are everywhere.  This is not a case of familiarity breeding contempt.  Fashion tends to work by saturating the market with one particular trend, until the anti-trend can be dusted off and emerge (like the ever flowing tide changes between high waisted and low waisted trousers; and on that note, I for one am cheering to be able to finally find high waisted trousers in the shops).  Cowls are not only prominent on knitting sites, but are on all of the runways and in all of the shops.  You cannot escape the cowl this year.

3. One of the truisms of hand knitted sweaters these days is that you can buy a machine made sweater in a shop for considerably less than most hand made sweaters cost to make.  The sweater that may cost 30£ in the shop can easily use 60£ (or more) worth of wool.  The cowls which seem to be ubiquitous in the shops this year are one of the few examples of the opposite: to most knitters store-bought cowls seem outrageously over-priced.  They are almost always made with little artistry, and boring patterns and use a poor quality of yarn.  Not only can you make a far nicer cowl than you could find in a shop, but you can do it with cashmere, or double Malabrigo, or a fabulous hand dye, for the same price!

4. There are no fit issues involved with a cowl.  It is hard to gift a perfectly fitting sweater; fit is tricky and demands careful measuring.  A cowl is sure to fit everyone.

5. Many knitters (who shall remain nameless) have knit too many socks.  The cowl is a good break in the sock knitting routine.  (I have made this one up entirely, but rather imagine it might be true.)

6. Are there any other mothers out there who always imagine long scarves being caught in bus doors, car windows, revolving doors etc?  The type who fret continually about some threat or another?  The kind for whom Isadora Duncan is a cautionary tale?  For all of us who fall into this slightly obsessive category (who shall again remain nameless): I have never heard of someone being decapitated by a cowl.

That Old Blue Standard

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With this post, I introduce an occasional series called Wearability Wednesdays, in which I look in detail at some item I have knit in the past, and explore how wearable it has turned out to be.  Do I wear it frequently?  If so, why?  How do I style it?  Do I dress it up or down?  Does it wash well?  How has it held up to time, changing styles, etc?   If it doesn’t get worn much, why not?  Is it a fit issue, or just the wrong style for the right person?

This week, I will look at the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, designed by Eunny Jang for the Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits.  I knit it in March 2008, using the recommended yarn, Felted Tweed by Rowan.  I finished knitting it just in time for a trip  to Arizona to visit my mom and stepdad.  Below are two photos of me wearing it at the Grand Canyon, just after I finished it.  (Unfortunately, I have good photos of the cardigan and good photos of the Grand Canyon, but not a good photo of me in the cardigan with a great vista in the background.)

Those photos were taken almost four years ago.  In the intervening years, this has been my go-to cardigan.  It is warm and cozy, but not bulky, it is stylish in an understated way, it looks great with jeans or with a dress, the colour is really basic and matches many things in my wardrobe, it isn’t fussy, and the fit is good.  I have probably worn it a hundred times.

Here are some photos of it taken six weeks ago.  We were visiting Clivedon, a majestic manor in Buckinghamshire, England, once the home of Waldorf and Nancy Astor and now a National Trust property known for its beautiful gardens.  Clivedon is a short drive from my home and a lovely place to wander on a pretty fall day.  Here is a photo of me leaning against a wall to the back of the house.

Now, to put the place in perspective, the following is a photo which pulls back so you can appreciate the sweep of garden behind me.  This is a shot of the famous parterre, a geometric garden of carved hedges and flower beds.

And here, you can see the view in front of me, of Clivedon Manor itself.  It’s also a nice shot of the Tangled Yoke cardigan.  This photo actually points out one of the few things I would have changed about the cardigan; I feel like the neck line should have been either an inch wider or an inch narrower.  When I wear it with a T-shirt, as I often do, I don’t like the look of the small circle of T-shirt that peeks through at the neck. I think it would be more elegant if the cardigan neckline covered the T-shirt neckline.

While this is a niggling complaint, I do have a more substantive complaint, which is that the front of the cardigan has stretched out.  This happened very soon after knitting, and hasn’t been corrected by reblocking.  I wish that I had reinforced the front edges of the cardigan with ribbon before I ever wore it; I think this might have prevented this stretching, or at least kept it in line.  In the below photo, you can clearly see how the fronts of the sweater are very stretched out compared to the back.  Because of this, I rarely wear the cardigan unbuttoned.

Here you can see some of the nice features of the pattern.  The ribbing isn’t the standard K2P2 rib, and looks softer, the decreases at the sides of the long rib section look pretty and architectural, and the fake seam that is created on the sides by having a purl stitch running up, gives the cardigan a bit of structure.

This photo really shows off the sweater at its best: comfortable but classy and pretty.

And below, another close up shot of the fake seam (this time on the sleeve and underarm) which shows how well the Felted Tweed has held up.  This is after a dozen washes and lots of wear, but you can see that the yarn still looks great; no pilling, and the stitch definition is still good.

This is a great shot, both of the cardigan and of me.  It demonstrates once again that Emma is a wizard with the camera; she always makes me look good.

A few more photos, while I am at it:

To conclude my first Wearability Wednesday post, the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, designed by Eunny Jang, is a definite winner.  It is a wardrobe staple that fits beautifully and wears well.

We interrupt this programme

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We interrupt this programme for a special news bulletin.

I interrupted the Peerie Flooers hat to start knitting the Brick pullover.  And then I interrupted the Brick to knit a cowl.  Why?  Because I slavishly follow trends and everyone is knitting and/or wearing a cowl?  Because it is bound to get cold anyday now?  Because Christmas is fast approaching?  Or maybe just because Malabrigo yarn is so cozy I couldn’t resist?

Two years ago I bought a sweater’s worth of Malabrigo in this luscious variegated green.  After I bought it, I came to a realization.  I love the way variegated yarn looks on the skein, but I am not a big fan of sweaters knit with them.  So, the wool has been packed away in a bag waiting for a project.  This cowl is knit with two strands held together, and is knit in seed stitch.  Both of these tend to mitigate the pooling effect of the yarn.

A note for my North American viewers:  Yes, I do know how to spell.  Despite being North American, I live in England now, and write for a living.  My brain doesn’t like switching back and forth between British and American spelling conventions.  So I have reluctantly conformed (except for the ‘z’ in realization).