A smidgeon of knitting. It has a ring to it. Perhaps like an unkindness of ravens? A murmuration of starlings? A bevy of beauties? An absence of waiters? A prey of lawyers? Perhaps not. But when I think of this month, I definitely come up with a smidgeon of knitting. The rest of the knitting world seems to be on fire this month, but I am moving at a snail’s pace.
I have managed to finish the sleeves on Emma’s Venetian Audrey. The sleeves are endless tubes of ribbing knit on DPNs. I hate knitting sleeves. I especially hate knitting sleeves in the round. And I especially, especially hate knitting the second sleeve. These sleeves also seem extra long, but before she left Emma said “Make sure you make the sleeves long enough. The sleeves on your Audrey are inches too short on me.” Here is a shot showing the pieces of Emma’s Audrey on top of my finished Audrey.
It looks impossibly skinny but you have to remember that mine has been blocked and washed and worn countless times and the ribs have relaxed. Notice, Emma, the sleeves are really long. Promise. We had a hard time getting the colours to look right with the lighting today. Here is a better shot:
Why is there a bowl of chili peppers in my knitting shot? Because they are pretty, that’s why! See?
While I am busy writing this post, Doug is in the kitchen whipping up a batch of Thai green curry paste, using these lovely chillies. We will have butternut squash and eggplant curry for dinner (following this recipe more or less; try it – it’s great). We are using the last of the lime leaves and curry leaves and black peppercorns that Doug brought back from his last trip to Malaysia. Luckily, he is going again this week and can refill our larder.
In addition to the endless sleeve knitting, I have also managed a bit of scarf knitting on my February scarf.
This is fun to knit and the Quince & Co Osprey is perfect, soft and wooly. It is going to make a lovely scarf. Hopefully, I willl manage to finish it while there is still cold weather to wear it in.
The scarf may have to compete for my affections, however. Look what I just received in the mail:
Yes, dear readers, this is a great, giant bowl filled with Shelter yarn from Brooklyn Tweed. (A meringue of Shelter? A cauldron of Shelter? A shedload of Shelter?) Fourteen fabulous skeins of Shelter in the colour ‘fossil’. I have never used Shelter before, but have finally been coerced into buying it, by the unbelievably beautiful designs that Jared and his team of great designers keep turning out.
What do I plan to knit with this? The Exeter Jacket, designed by Michelle Wang for Brooklyn Tweed Spring Thaw:
copyright Jared Flood/Brooklyn Tweed
This is a completely gorgeous double-breasted cabled jacket, but you cannot appreciate it until you see the back:
copyright Jared Flood/ Brooklyn Tweed
Be still my heart! As you can see, I will have to get a move on and turn my smidgeon into a banquet of knitting.
Last week, the Guardian newspaper online published a photo journal from the 2013 London men’s fashion week. As I looked through the photos, I thought that I found the perfect outfit for Doug:
The above look, from J. W. Anderson’s “Mathematics of Love” collection is described by the Guardian as “an exercise in gender bending”.
“Look, Doug,” I said. “Can’t you see yourself in this?”
Leah strenuously objected.
“Ok,” I said. “Here is one much more appropriate for your Dad. “What do you think?”
Unfortunately, neither Doug nor Leah were overly enthused by this number, by Agi and Sam, either.
“Here, give me that laptop,” says Doug, who then looks through the fashion collection. “This one,” he says. “This is the one that I want”, pointing to an outfit by Sibling:
Two what? Why, two knitting projects of course. Lately, I have been a fairly monogamous knitter – knitting away on one project until it’s done and then starting another. Except for August when I was on holiday and working simultaneously on two cardigans (Killybegs and Ravi), I was pretty much monogamous all last year. Well, the fact of the matter is that being faithful to a single knitting project is no fun. It’s also not a productive way to knit (I know this seems counter-intuitive but stick with me.)
Sometimes I knit all by myself in a quiet spot with no interruptions and good lighting. I can spend that time doing things that take a fair bit of attention – doing intricate colourwork, picking up stitches, knitting lace or finishing work. Sometimes, I knit while holding a conversation, or watching a movie, or standing in line, or reading a book (yes, I can knit while reading a book). Sometimes, I knit in very poorly lit places where I have to rely on my fingers and not my eyes to know what I’m doing. Obviously, if I have two (or more) projects on the go, then I can tailor the project I pick up to the environment I’m knitting in.
But it doesn’t stop there. Often, I want to grab a project to knit on the run, but the project I’m working on is big and awkward and bulky. Some projects are more inherently mobile than others. Also, sometimes I feel like knitting lace on tiny needles and sometimes I feel like knitting miles of stockinette. Then again, sometimes a girl needs just the right project to knit in the snow!
Yes, It’s snowing like mad in England today! School is cancelled, work is cancelled, I’ve done the grocery shopping, I have knitting to hand, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (By the way, these photos were taken early in the day when it hadn’t been snowing for long. Right now it is a winter wonderland outside and shows no sign of stopping.)
I have been working on Emma’s Venetian Audrey pullover, but for all the reasons above, I needed another project. Audrey is knit in DK weight yarn and has a lot of shaping details to pay attention to; furthermore I am now working on the sleeves which means endlessly knitting round and round (in rib) on DPNs. I wanted a second project that was psychologically quite different. Because of the cold and the snow, I wanted to knit something warm and cozy. And because I have had very long days at work the past two weeks, I needed some mindless knitting. What I settled on in this:
This is the February scarf, designed by Beth Weaver for Quince & Co Osprey. It is a giant scarf that you can wrap around your neck multiple times. It is knit in Quince & Co. Osprey, which is unbelievably lofty and squishy. Osprey is a chameleon – it looks completely ordinary in the skein, but when it’s knit up it transforms into something lovely and soft and airy.
I must be completely honest however and admit that part of the reason why I picked this particular project is penny-pinching. With Emma at university and Leah about to start, I really have to watch my budget. And it just so happens that I had 5 skeins of Osprey in Winesap, a nice solid red, just sitting in a box in my study. I bought it a few years ago with the idea of making a pullover, which I then decided I didn’t like. I have looked and looked over the past year for another sweater to make with it, but all the sweaters that I like take at least 6 skeins. (I should point out that the February scarf calls for 6 skeins as well, but, hey, it’s a scarf.) It’s pretty in red, as you can see, but really must be felt to be appreciated:
The best part is that it adheres to Kelly’s creative accounting formula: The yarn is already in my stash; therefore, I can knit this for free.
It has finally gotten cold in England. There may even be snow on the way. What does your friendly knitting mom do on a freezing cold afternoon? Why, make her daughter stand in the cold in a T-shirt modelling a knitted sleeve. To add insult to injury, the sleeve is for her sister’s sweater. Here is Leah, shivering but being a good sport modelling the sleeve for the Venetian Audrey sweater:
You might recall that Audrey is designed by Kim Hargreaves to be knit flat. I decided to re-write the pattern to (1) knit it in the round, and (2) re-size it for an XS as the pattern directions had too much ease. I described my reasoning behind both of these in this post. It was fairly easy to re-write the sweater body. The written pattern calls for 96 stitches to be cast on for a size small. I cast on twice this number, or 192, joined in the round, and knit in K2P2 rib (starting with K1, P2, K2, and ending with a K1; this keeps a K2 rib up the center sides). I already said that the pattern had too much ease, so why did I start with so many stitches? Well, despite the fact that Emma is very thin, she is also quite curvy and has hips. I also hate sweaters that are too clingy on the hips. For Emma’s figure, I want the sweater to be fairly loose on the hips and then to pull in quite dramatically for her waist. (I used to be shaped exactly the same about 30 years ago!)
Bear with me now as we delve into technical detail. The pattern calls for 4 sets of double decreases, each decrease being made about 4″ in from the side seams. When knit in the round, this means 8 stitches decreased on each decrease row for a total of 32 stitches decreased. I made 7 sets of decreases for a total of 56 stitches decreased, to 136 stitches (68 each side). The pattern calls for 74 stitches at the waist for an XS and 80 for a S. So, I have now decreased from a size S at the hips, to 6 stitches less (per side) than the XS. The bust increases are single, rather than double, increases so each increase row adds 4 stitches when knitting in the round. As the shaping disrupts the K2P2 pattern, and the aim is to end up with the pattern intact, you must make sure that after your increases are complete you have K2P2 all the way around. I made 6 sets of increases, to end up with 160 stitches (80 each side).
OK, that takes care of the body, but what to do with the sleeves? I want to knit them in the round, but this means I need to make some decisions about how to incorporate the increases into the pattern. In the original pattern, increases are made at the edges, and then the sleeves are sewn together. My first issue is how many stitches to cast on. The pattern calls for 56. I know I need less; for the body I was knitting at a ratio of about 8:9 for the size XS (thus, I had roughly 8 stitches on the needle for every 9 stitches in the XS). Looking at the pattern, however, I think that the sleeves are designed too wide in proportion to the rest of the sweater. First, this is because there is no difference in the pattern between the size S sleeve and the size XS. Second, you can see it in the photo from Rowan 35, where the pattern is published:
I think that these sleeves look really baggy, so I want to cut back on the number of stitches even more than my 8:9 ratio. The pattern calls for 56 stitches to be cast on, and I cast on 43. Why an odd number? Well, I decided to have a purl stitch running up the center sleeve, and to increase on either side of this stitch, incorporating increases into the K2P2 ribbing pattern. The increases look like this:
I think it looks kind of interesting, and though I don’t have a good photo to compare with (since my Audrey is knit in black yarn and thus hard to show these kind of details) it looks a lot less messy than the seam on mine. Here is a close-up:
I increased 8 times, at 2″ intervals for a total of 59 stitches. My goal was to knit it 2″ longer than the sleeves on my Audrey pullover because Emma has longer arms. I thought I had done that, but as you can tell from the photos, once it is on it stretches horizontally and this makes it shorter. This sleeve is not yet long enough for Leah so I have to make it longer still to fit Emma. I won’t make any more increases, however, as I would have to add 4 more sets of increases to keep the rib in pattern.
It took me an entire week to make this sleeve (egads!), mostly because I kept second guessing myself and measuring and remeasuring and contemplating. Now that I have it all figured out, I hope to turn out the second sleeve fairly quickly.
This holiday I over-ate.
I drank too much. I gained some weight.
The bread! The cheese! The wine! The cake!
Have left me with a stomach ache!
I did not walk. I did not run.
But I got lots of knitting done.
I cannot make it up the stairs.
I cannot zip up my new flares.
I’ll have to stay here on the couch.
I’m stuck in this god-awful slouch.
For I have knit too much, you see.
Knit purl knit purl… it’s time for tea.
Things are very quiet chez Knitigating Circumstances. Emma is probably not quiet, but she is not quiet elsewhere, as she has flown back to university. Leah is back in school and mired in work. Doug has a horrible virus and can hardly get out of bed. As a result of this, I had a very productive weekend for knitting (which, by definition, is very unproductive for everything else).
I have been working away on Emma’s sweater, the Venetian Audrey, but took the time out to finish a lovely little project for Leah. As reported on these pages, I recently experienced problems with moths. This led me to rotate all of my yarn through the freezer and into plastic storage boxes. This led me to discover various skeins of yarn I had forgotten all about. A case in point is this lovely 100% merino wool yarn called Hacho by Mirasol. I had three skeins of this in a vibrant mix of greens and purples.
I bought these years ago for some project which was not to be, and they have sat since then in a bag on a shelf in my closet. I tend not to buy too many variegated yarns anymore because I have discovered that, although they look gorgeous in the skein, I rarely like the way they look in a garment. As chance would have it, the very week I found this yarn was also the week in which I happened upon the lovely pattern Flecktone, by Susan Moskwa. These are fingerless mitts with a dropped stitch pattern that just begs for a beautiful variegated yarn. As soon as I saw the pattern my mind jumped first to this wool, and second to how well they would suit Leah.
Since I was busy knitting Emma a cowl for her Christmas stocking, I decided (two days before Christmas) that I would knit these for Leah’s stocking. That plan didn’t quite work out as I ran out of time. I had one mitt done by Christmas morning, but then the next day I had the Audrey Eureka Moment, described in my last post, and concentrated on getting as much of the Audrey pullover knit as I could before Emma left. On the weekend, however, with a very quiet house, and no compelling need to rush ahead on the sweater knitting, I was able to finish the mitts. They are the absolutely perfect mix of yarn and pattern, fun to knit, lovely to wear!
The yarn is intended to be knit at a much looser gauge. The ball band calls for a 4mm needle and suggests a gauge of 22 stitches to 4″. The Flecktone pattern calls for a gauge of 30 stitches. I actually think that the Hacho yarn would not look good at a 22 gauge, and works great at this tighter tension. I used DPNs in 2.5mm (that’s a US 1.5) and I think that gave me around 28-9 stitches. (I didn’t make a proper swatch. I started knitting with a 2.75mm, and tried it on after a few inches; it was clearly too big so I frogged and started again with the smaller needle.) Worked in the slipped stitch pattern the fabric is beautiful and dense and warm. I haven’t weighed my skeins but I used less than half of the second, so the three skeins is plenty for two pairs of mitts. I might have to knit a pair for myself some day.
The pattern itself is great. It is very well thought out and well written. I should also point out that the pattern is available for free. Susan Moskwa is an editor as well as a designer, and it shows: check out her website. (I see she also has a degree in linguistics; why am I not surprised?) These were a joy to knit. I love the finished project. What can I say? A good project makes me smile.
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Rowan patterns run big. Rowan produces beautiful knitting pattern books with high production values – thick, glossy paper, full page photos, interesting backgrounds, beautiful colours. They have a stable of fabulous designers who consistently turn out lovely garments. They have a sense of colour, and of colour playfulness, that can’t be beat. The patterns all use Rowan yarn (of course) which I love and use frequently. I buy every issue and collect them; I pour over them again and again. I have knit many of their designs.
That said, there are some things that drive me crazy about Rowan. They are not big on charting; though they seem to be getting better at this, there are quite a few patterns which I wanted to knit and decided not to, simply because there were no charts provided. A lot of their patterns seem unnecessarily fiddly, and the construction unnecessarily complicated. I recommend reading the entire pattern, and then think each step through carefully; don’t be afraid to rework the construction method. Remember that a good knitter can think of a pattern as a recipe. It won’t kill the brownies to add a little rum and go light on the sugar; and you might come up with something delicious. This same philosophy should apply to your knitting.
The most serious problem with Rowan patterns, however, is the vast amount of positive ease they write into every garment. I tried knitting a Rowan sweater for Doug a few years ago. It had about 10″ of ease written in. I know that men like to have room in their sweaters, but that is ridiculous. I purposely knit down a size, and then ripped out and knit down a further size, and finally gave up all together with a partially finished garment that was huge.
Why am I writing this rant about too much ease in Rowan patterns? Well, the answer lies in Emma’s sweater dilemma. Regular readers of this blog will recall that I have been trying for quite a long time to find the perfect sweater pattern to knit for Emma. We picked out the yarn ages ago (Madelinetosh Tosh DK in Venetian) but have not been able to settle on a pattern. I wrote a post here, where I talked about a number of the pattern options being considered. I was anxious to settle on a pattern before Emma arrived home for the holidays. She was only home for 12 days, and I thought that if I had a pattern picked out and swatched in advance, I could just about finish it in 12 days (if I really pushed it). But Emma and I could not find THE pattern, the one that screamed “I was made to be knit in Tosh DK Venetian for Emma!”
Every day, I would throw out pattern ideas to Emma, and each one would be rejected. On Boxing Day, I suddenly, for no reason that I can recall, said to Emma “We should just knit another Audrey.” And we both stared at each other, knowing instantly that Audrey was IT – the absolutely perfect sweater, both for this yarn and for Emma. Audrey was designed by Kim Hargreaves for Rowan 35. I knit one for myself in the fall of 2009 in black in Rowan Calmer, a cotton blend. I wrote a post last January about how versatile Audrey is; in the post, Emma, Leah and I all model my Audrey sweater. My point was that even though we each have different shapes and styles, the sweater suited each of us. Because the entire sweater is knit in 2×2 ribbing, it has amazing give and is very stretchy – thus, Emma can look good in my sweater. However, as soon as I said it, I could imagine how much better Emma would look in an Audrey that had actually been knit for her, in her size, designed for her shape. And a quick swatch of the Tosh DK in 2×2 rib showed up its fabulousness in every way. Lush. This yarn is lush.
Looking over the pattern again, I struggled to find any reason why it should be knit in pieces and seamed. Now, the fact is that unlike many thousands of rather vociferous knitters, I actually enjoy knitting in pieces, and seaming. I think that in many sweaters (dare I say most sweaters?) the shoulders and sleeves look infinitely better if the sweater has been seamed. I know that it is all the rave to knit in one piece, usually top down, and I can see all the advantages of this, but the primary disadvantage is usually lack of proper fit in the shoulder and underarm and arm scythe. However, there are some styles of sweater for which knitting in one piece, with a yoke, is the obvious way to go. Audrey seems to me to be a clear candidate to knit this way. So, the first thing I did was to rewrite the pattern to be knit in the round, bottom-up.
The second problem with the pattern is the sizing. Repeat after me: Rowan runs big. The smallest size for Audrey is an XS, which is listed as a size 32. Remember that this sweater is knit in rib, and that ribbing needs negative ease. This should be obvious. Ribbing, especially 2×2 ribbing, normally pulls in, producing a thick, cushy fabric. When it is on the body, you want it to be stretched out enough to give the rib definition – you should be able to see each rib articulated. See in the top photo below, how narrow the sweater looks; it is the width of my hand at the waist. But, as you can see in the second photo, when it is worn the ribs will stretch out and become articulated. They will pop. Ribbing gives an architectural interest to your sweater. If you don’t put enough negative ease into the garment, the ribs won’t pop – and you might as well be knitting in stockinette stitch.
Looking back at my project notes, I can see that I knit down a size for my Audrey, because I knew that Rowan runs big. I knit a size M, which gave me 2″ of negative ease. I can also see from my notes that I fretted the whole time about whether it would fit, because it looks tiny as it comes off the needles. (Note that this problem magically disappears when you knit in the round; I had Emma try this on repeatedly – I know the body fits her perfectly.)
Given all this, imagine my astonishment to look at the schematics for the sweater and see that the XS, which is designed for a 32″ bust, actually has 2″ of positive ease written into the pattern (that is, it is designed for a 34″ circumference around the bust). Thus, it is clear that the XS size in the Audrey pattern, the smallest size it is written in, is a good two sizes too big for Emma. What this all means is that I am rewriting the entire pattern, first to knit it in the round, and second to resize it appropriately for an XS.
There was a chance that I could have finished it for Emma while she was home – if I had had the Audrey Eureka Moment in early December. As it was, I had only 7 days to work on it before I put her on the plane to fly back to Vancouver. So, I did the best I could – I knit the entire body of the sweater up to the armpits, so I know that this bit at least fits properly. Then, I took lots of measurements. I also had Emma try on my Audrey and took measurements on it. For Emma’s sweater, I am obviously making it a lot narrower, to fit her narrower torso, but also, Emma is taller than I am, so I will be adding an inch to the length and at least two inches to the arms. Plus, Emma wants it to definitely be an off-the-shoulder garment, so I will knit the yoke an inch shorter.
I am a little nervous about reworking all of the math, and fitting it, without her here to try it on. It is easy to properly fit a garment when you have your model near to hand and can torture them by having them try it on every inch or so. In this case, I will have to rely on my judgement and my tape measure, and then ship it to her with fingers crossed.
