Monthly Archives: May 2012

Stoking flames

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In this series, Wearability Wednesdays, I revisit a garment that I knit in the past and look at whether, and how, it is worn today.  Today, I am going to go farther back into the past than before.  In the summer of 1998,  I was visiting the States with the girls, and spending some time with my family.  Doug stayed in Potsdam and worked, and then joined us later.  As usual, I devoured the latest Vogue Knitting magazine (Spring/Summer 1998).  Though there were quite a few sweaters that appealed to me, I found myself drawn to a half page article in their book’s section about the release of Minnowknits, Too: 26 Uncommon Knits for Kids Big andSmall, by Jil Eaton.

The article was illustrated with a photo of an adorable little red jacket in a boucle yarn, with an assymetrical front and red buttons.  The pattern was included in the Vogue magazine.  I was sold.  I ordered the yarn and set about making it for Leah, who was three years old.  In fact, I ordered enough yarn to make two of these jackets, one for Leah in red, and one for Emma in white with multicoloured flecks.  At that time, I was not knitting much because of a repetitive stress injury (likely to be the topic of a future post).   I managed the red jacket, but Emma’s never even got cast on.  The yarn is still sitting in a box on my shelf.

I have looked and looked but can’t find any photos of Leah wearing it.  But wear it she did, for quite a few years.  And it was adorable.  I can’t find my notes, but I believe I knit it in the size 24 months, as Leah was small for her age, and the next size up was 4 years.   Eventually, it got folded up and put away.  Two years ago, my older daughter Emma, then 17, found it when we were cleaning out the closets and said “Mom, I bet this would still fit me!”  She was right:

The above photo really shows the colour and texture of the yarn well.  It looks like flames, doesn’t it?  (Thus, the name of the post.)  Here are some photos of Emma wearing it this April on the Apache Trail in Arizona.  It looks great on her, and it is very hard to believe that it is actually a three year old’s jacket.  (Though one would certainly not describe it as “roomy”.)

I particularly like it teamed with the cowboy hat.  Emma is wearing Doug’s Stetson here (a gift from my stepfather, Stuart).  Every hat ever made looks good on Emma, but this Stetson fits surprisingly well with this outfit.

In the photo above, you can see that the assymetrical front opening of the jacket buttons up to the round neckline.  It has an oriental flair to it.  When Leah wore this as a toddler, it was usually buttoned right up.  It has a totally different neckline when Emma wears it now, with the top buttons undone.  It gives the jacket a much different look.

So this wraps up this month’s Wearability Wednesday post.  The little red jacket, designed by Jil Eaton; the only sweater I know that looks equally adorable on a toddler and a teenager.

Trials and tribulations

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This has been a frustrating weekend here at Knitigating Circumstances Headquarters.  We have been trying very hard to post the first installment in RETROspective, a series featuring vintage garments handknitted by my mother and grandmother, and lovingly remodelled and rephotographed by three generations of us knitigating gals.  I have the text all ready to go, but we have hit a technological wall.  Emma is in Germany, which means she has no access to the thousands of photos we took for this series.  Before she left, Doug uploaded all of the photos onto a cloud service so that she could access everything remotely.  Unfortunately, Emma has very poor bandwidth, and way too many photos to sort through, so this solution isn’t working out. Yesterday, Emma and Doug had a two-hour long skype call trying to come up with a fix, and finally called it off.

We are now attempting a second solution, using a semi-professional photo sharing site.  I am doing an initial triage through the photos, narrowing them down to a hundred or so, and then we hope that Emma will be able to access them and apply her magic (oops, I meant skills) to get the right photos into the post.  Our aim is to have a system that is optimized for our purposes, because once Emma is finished in Berlin she will be heading off to university and the future of our partnership depends on our being able to work together remotely.  If any of you readers have any experience with these issues, and can offer us advice, please drop us a note.

In the meantime, knitting progresses.  If you recall, last Sunday I discovered a mistake in my Killybegs cardigan and had to rip the whole thing out and start over. I have made great progress this week and have now got 10″ on the needles.  This is a lot of knitting, since the fronts and back are knit together in one piece.

I have also been busy planning another knit.  Assuming that the wind and cold and rain ever comes to an end here, I thought that I might make a summer sweater.  I had a hard time choosing one, mostly because there are so many lovely patterns available.  I finally decided on Laresca, a very pretty, drapy, summer tee:

Laresca is designed by Corrina Ferguson and is available on the Twist Collective.  If you haven’t checked out the Twist Collective, you really must.  It is a webzine with amazing patterns and really good design and layout.  Laresca is made with a Rowan yarn, Panama, that is a blend of rayon, cotton and linen.  There is a nice lace panel that runs up the side of the top and then around the armholes.

Panama comes in some nice colours and I went to the shop fully intending to make this in red, or perhaps purple or green, and completely surprised myself by buying the yarn in a neutral colour – I would describe it as oyster.  I have finished the swatch and hit the gauge right on first try.

My plan is to knit the two simultaneuosly.  The thick wool and needles of the Killybegs are a little hard on my hands, so I hope to switch back and forth between the two projects.  And if we ever get any summer weather, I may concentrate more on Laresca.  Well, dear reader, that is all for today.  Hopefully we will sort out our trials and tribulations and bring you RETROspective shortly.

One step forward, two steps back

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This week I cast on for Killybegs, a wintery cardigan knit in thick, warm tweedy Donegal Aran Tweed.  The sweater, designed by Carol Feller, has great shaping details.  It uses a honeycomb cable pattern in an interesting configuration to do the shaping.  The waist is created, not by paired sets of decreases and increases, but by using the honeycomb cable to draw the fabric in.  Here is a photo:

The cardigan is knit in one piece bottom-up, and uses an I-cord cast on.  Casting on over 160 stitches using the cumbersome (but very pretty) I-cord cast-on takes a long time.  In the photo below, you can see the edge it creates, which is very finished and won’t roll.

The honeycomb cables arise in columns before branching out.  I finished three of these cable repeats over the week, producing about 4 inches of fabric; considering that the fronts and back are knit in one piece, this is a fair bit of knitting.  Pretty, huh?

Wait.  Look again.  Look closer.  Can you see something wrong?  No?  Maybe this will help.

On the left is my Killybegs.  On the right  is the swatch that I knit of the honeycomb cable pattern.  I have knit three pattern repeats; can you tell that the first two repeats are too small?  The third is the correct size, as you can see by comparing to the swatch.  For some inexplicable reason, I seem to have been incapable of reading the pattern, incapable of counting, and incapable of seeing what was right before my eyes.  For a whole week.  What did I do?  Rip!  This morning I frogged the whole thing and started over.  How frustrating!

And on another note, Emma and I have been working hard on our upcoming series highlighting vintage knits made by my mother and grandmother.  We had hoped to unveil the first segment today, but have had to deal with two obstacles.  First, there is a lot of work involved and we fell short of time.  Second, Emma has absconded to Berlin, where she will remain for a summer filled with adventure and fun.  As this blog is a very collaborative effort, Emma and I will have to learn to deal with communicating remotely.   But never fear, compared to following a pattern (ahem), it will be a piece of cake.

A flash of purple

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Today I have an FO to show you (that is knitspeak for Finished Object).  These photos are of my younger daughter Leah wearing her Flash of Purple sweater.  This is a customized version of Wendy Bernard’s pattern for the Backwards Cabled Pullover from her book, Custom Knits.   I am really pleased with this sweater, which fits wonderfully and really suits Leah.

The best thing about this sweater is that it was a truly collaborative project right from the start. Leah and I spent hours discussing just what kind of sweater she wanted and talking about all of the design features it should have.  When Leah saw the Madelinetosh Pashmina yarn in this colour, Flashdance, she was sold instantly.  Having narrowed down the yarn, we spent hours trolling Ravelry for just the right pattern.  We couldn’t find one that was exactly what we were looking for, but Wendy’s pattern was very close, so we ran with it and modified it as we went.

The main modification I made was to turn the sweater back-to-front (the original has a high neckline and plunging back),  but I also heavily customized the sizing.  The pashmina has a tighter gauge than that specified in the pattern.  The standard way around this type of gauge issue is to knit a larger size (say to knit a size 40 to obtain a size 36).  To do this properly, one must employ math.  Dear reader, math is your friend; it is part of a good knitter’s arsenal of tools.  Do not be afraid of math but wade into it willingly and your sweaters will thank you for it.

Fair warning – the next two paragraphs will be slightly technical; one is allowed to skip them and just look at the photos.  For this pullover, I had two conflicting pressures on the sizing.  On the one hand, I was using a thinner yarn, so I needed to have more stitches on the needles (to knit a larger size than required).  On the other, we were after a clingy sweater, a 50s sweater girl kind of look.  This means that I needed to build in a lot of negative ease.  For the uninitiated, ease refers to the fit of your garment.  Say that you have a chest measurement of 36″.  If your sweater has a chest measurement of 36″, then that sweater is said to have zero ease.  If the sweater measures 38″ you have two inches of positive ease and if it measures 34″ you have two inches of negative ease.  In order to knit a garment that you are happy with, you have to understand ease, and also know what kind of fit you are aiming for.  You also need to know your yarn and your stitch pattern, so that you know how stretchy they are, and how much they will give after washing.  This is why it is so important to knit a reasonable sized swatch and to wash it before knitting a garment.

For this sweater, the thinner yarn meant I needed to knit a larger size, but the negative ease meant that I needed to knit a smaller size.  I ended up doing a completely customized sizing, deciding that in order to get an extra small, I needed to knit something between a small and medium.  So, I redid all of the figures, and made sure that Leah tried it on every 2″ or so, just to make sure.  This method requires both math and a lot of trial and error.  I reported in an earlier post that I had originally made the arm opening too shallow and had to rip out quite a few inches and redo part of the yoke.  I also knit 3 sleeves for this pullover.  The first sleeve was too tight on Leah, so I ripped it out and knit it again, making fewer decreases (I decreased at rounds 10, 20, 30, and 40 and then knit to 6″ before knitting the cuffs).  The finished garment has 4.5″ of negative ease.

I would highly recommend this pattern, and indeed the whole book.  I have previously knit one of the other sweaters from this book, Ingenue, and it is a lovely sweater that gets worn all of the time.  Wendy’s whole approach to knitting is to encourage people to customize their knits, and I really like that.  She has a brand new book out by the way, Custom Knits Accessories; I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet but I would bet that it’s great.

Would I recommend Madelintosh yarn again?  Perhaps this will answer the question best:

Emma and I went into London yesterday, and spent some time in Loop, a wonderful yarn shop in Islington in the Camden Passage.  I had just finished knitting Leah’s sweater and went to Loop armed with a list of seven sweaters that I was considering making for myself and their yarn requirements.  Emma saw the above Madelinetosh DK in Venetian and fell in love. It is hard to capture the richness of the colour which is a very deep red with black undertones.  I bought a sweater’s worth which is destined for Emma.  And the seven sweaters for me?  Maybe next time.