Ursula Waistcoat

Posted on April 25, 2021 by knitigatingcircumstances

I am thrilled to be able to show you some photos of the waistcoat I knitted for Doug.

I am really pleased with how it turned out. It fits! (My measurements told me that it was going to fit; but we all know that, in knitting, measurements sometimes lie.) Most important, Doug likes it too!

Those of you who follow this space will know that the waistcoat/vest was a very long-term project, something which percolated in the back of my mind for some years before I finally set my yarn to needles. Most of that time was spent in trying to find a pattern that I liked and wanted to knit. I had some parameters – Doug wanted it to button down the front, I wanted to try my hand at knitting a stranded garment and steeking, we both wanted it to be colourful and interesting and fun, and furthermore, because this (a steeked, stranded garment) was all new to me, I wanted it to feel achievable – with a small, controlled number of colours and a pattern that was cool but uncomplicated. Try as I might, I could not find any vest patterns that I liked.

I kept coming back to Ursula [Ravelry link]; a very nice women’s cardigan pattern designed by Kate Davies. It had all of the features I wanted – a small, regular fair isle pattern that was easy to memorise, that was well-suited to colour exploration, and that looked intrinsically cool and pleasing. Most of all, the pattern was written by someone I trust to get the details right and to write them in a way which worked for me. Having knitted several of Kate’s patterns previously, I knew that she could walk me through a process, even one which pushed against my comfort zone.

Of course, I had to do a bit of pattern tinkering to take a women’s cardigan and produce a man’s waistcoat. I followed the pattern exactly for the size 48, until I got to the underarms. Then I had to do lots of calculations. I added some length to the garment, both above and below the armholes, and I made a V-neck. I calculated and measured ad nauseum, to try and ensure that the slope of the decreases at the arm would work and that the shoulders would fit properly and lie nicely. Although I would tweak a few things here and there if I were to do it again, I am happy with the results.

I used Shetland wool, which is amazingly easy to steek. It is “sticky” and has great stitch definition. This vest is knitted with Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in the shades Shlomit (an undyed shade), Conifer, Raspberry, and Loganberry.

As I knitted this, I became more comfortable with stranded knitting. There are lots of different techniques for stranding; I tried lots of them to see which worked best for me. The one I ended up sticking to was holding the background yarn in my right hand and throwing it and holding the foreground yarn in my left-hand and picking it. It eventually settled into a rhythm for me and I think it ended up with very neat stitchwork, with no pulling in and very even stitches. There are no very long floats and so I let them be and did not bother to catch them. Here, Doug is wearing it inside out so that you can see the reverse side:

Why do I keep switching between the terms waistcoat and vest? I think as an American living in Britain, my mind keeps toggling between the two terms. The difference seems to be regional, as well as one of quality (with a waistcoat being more formal). I have blogged about this project a lot so I will try not to repeat myself too much in this post. In case you are interested in some of the techniques, thought processes, or decisions involved, I have provided links below to some of the posts I’ve written previously which you might like or find useful.

Vests:

A baker’s dozen of men’s knitted vest patterns; this post from 2017 showcases 13 men’s vest patterns. I ended up not choosing any of them, but it is a good compilation of interesting patterns.

Ursula waistcoat:

Brownie points; picking the colours, swatching, choosing the type of ribbing. You can see that I had no idea what I was doing – I ordered more than twice the amount of yarn I would need.

Inauguration side effects; a humorous post about how changes in your stress levels is reflected in your stitchwork.

Knitting on instinct; this post goes into some details on shaping the armholes and neckline.

Steeking without tears; this post goes into a lot of detail on the process of steeking. It detailed why and how I picked up the stitches for the ribbing before cutting the steeks, and how I plotted, with extreme precision, to ensure that the buttonholes and the ribbing and the pattern would all line up precisely (it is a bit OCD).

Buttons and lambs; about choosing buttons for this project.

“Holy Fair Isle Batsuit, Batman!”; another humorous post, about how the partially steeked vest looks like a toddler’s fair isle batsuit.

Some Kate Davies patterns which I have knitted and blogged about:

Treit

Highland Rogue Cowl

Capping off the year; the “peerie floors” hat

Cautious vs impulsive

Posted on April 17, 2021 by knitigatingcircumstances

A few weeks ago, I saw a photo of the Tin Roof pattern (Ravelry link) by Yamagara Knits:

The pattern is designed so that you can be creative. It is flexible and is a great way to combine different yarns from your stash and let you find a use for single skeins. The minute I saw the pattern, I had a flash to a bag, located somewhere in my stash, of multiple skeins of Quince & Co Sparrow linen yarn.

I have a complicated story with Sparrow. When the yarn was released, many years ago now, I saw it at Loop in London, loved the beautiful shades and the crispness of the linen, and went a bit crazy buying lots of it. I then twice tried to knit a summer top with it, and both of them ended up being put aside. I just didn’t like the Sparrow. First of all, it torques – the knitting gets stretched out to one side. Tin Roof is knitted from side to side, however. Plus, the not insubstantial bit of stockinette and ribbing added on to the bottom of the panels, seems like it would give a bit of stability to the piece and keep it from torqueing. In other words, I think that the way the top is constructed would mitigate for the tendency of the knitted fabric to torque.

I also didn’t like the texture of the Sparrow in the two projects I had tried to knit before. I had used a US4 needle to knit them, and found the finished fabric had lost the crispness which was part of what appealed to me about the yarn. So, I determined to knit up a swatch with a US3 needle. And guess what: the gauge is only slightly different from the US4, but the resultant fabric is significantly nicer. Here is the swatch on the US3:

It is hard to see from the photo, but it has a really great feel to it. It is like a completely different yarn knitted at this gauge. And here you can see the fantastic colours of Sparrow from my stash and can imagine how pretty they would look in this top:

This, then, is the “Cautious” bit of the title of this post. This is my normal way of figuring out a project. It involves a lot of time – I think about the project, I think about the yarn, I look at all of the project photos and notes from knitters, I think about it some more. I ask for opinions – Doug and I will have lengthy discussions about it, I will call the kids up and annoy them: “What do you think of this one?” “How will it look with this yarn?” Eventually, I will buy the pattern and examine it minutely before deciding whether to cast on. I will swatch. In this case, I have been thinking for at least two weeks, have the yarn in stash, and have even swatched. I am still working up to buying the pattern. I am moving very slowly and deliberately towards casting this on.

Occasionally, however, I find myself making a total impulse buy. These are sometimes fantastic buys, and are frequently disasters. I made an impulse buy this last week. I received a newsletter from Loop, and in it they mentioned that they were putting together kits for the Scout Shawl (Ravelry link) from Florence Spurling, which could be pre-ordered. They posted a photo of the shawl:

This was before the shawl pattern was listed on Ravelry, so I had virtually no information about it, other than the photo. I bought it instantly. Only later did I realise that it wasn’t steeked. This shawl is knitted back and forth, with both stranding and intarsia! I must be insane! Yes, it is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, but, I repeat, it is knitted back and forth, with both stranding and intarsia! On the other hand, I keep saying that I need a challenge to kick-start me back into a creative space. Maybe this is it. I don’t feel as if my knitting skills are up to this, but how else does one up-skill except by doing?

There you have it: two approaches to choosing a project. Cautious and impulsive: which do you use?

Another shade of grey

Posted on April 10, 2021 by knitigatingcircumstances

My two weeks of annual leave is about to end, and it has been mostly remarkable for its total lack of remarkableness. I wanted to go for a long walk each day, but it is cold and gross outside. I started about 47 books and managed to read an average of 2.9 pages of each one. I stared at my three knitting projects currently in progress, and failed to be excited by any of them. I looked at my 3495 favorited projects/patterns on Ravelry and couldn’t find a single one to knit. Finally, I took down the mountain of boxes stacked up in the corner containing my knitting stash and ripped through them, trying to find something that says “Knit me!”.

Me in my knitting cave, surrounded by stash boxes:

I grabbed a skein of gorgeous, fingering weight, hand-dyed yarn in a merino silk blend in luscious, subtle tonal shades of grey with very slight undertones of lavender and pink. I realised that this skein had been a Christmas gift to me some years ago from my daughter, Emma, who had purchased it on a trip to Portland. I never have to remember dates, because I write a blog so I can literally look this stuff up – and it turns out that Emma bought me this beautiful skein of yarn way back in 2014! I wrote about it in the post titled “How to spoil a knitter for Christmas”, which you can find here. Okay, so one problem solved: have yarn. Now, what to knit with it?

I spent another (very long) time searching patterns that could be knit with a single skein of yarn (this was more difficult than it sounds because I ruled out socks, mitts, and hats). I eventually picked out seven patterns and sent links to Emma. Before she could write back, I had already settled on one pattern in particular, and then Emma responded with the same choice. That makes life easier. The pattern is called Fractal Danger (Ravelry link), by Martina Behm. The reason it won, besides the fact that it’s a lovely pattern: it is basically composed of garter stitch, my stitch of choice when I need comfort knitting.

I started it yesterday, and it does make for lovely comfort knitting, with an intuitive, rhythmic pattern:

Here is a close-up in which you can see the tonal shades of grey:

Don’t say: “What a horrible mom I am! My daughter buys me some beautiful yarn and I stick it in a box for 6 years!”

Do say: “I have the best family on earth. They really get me. How nice that they buy me beautiful yarn to stash away for a day when I need comforting.”

The best intentions

Posted on April 5, 2021 by knitigatingcircumstances

I took two weeks of annual leave from work, which is already more than half gone. We are still pretty much locked down here, so I had no plans of travel nor grand adventure, no museum-hopping, restaurant-eating, people-meeting, window-shopping activities to fill up my days. But I did have the best intentions, namely:

I would not look at my email.

I would go for long walks every day.

I would do lots of knitting. My plan was to finish Doug’s vest during the first week, including all of the steeking, ribbing, and sewing of buttons – and to block, photograph and blog about it as well. During the second week, I intended to power my way through the Dyemonds pullover, and to do lots of swatching for some new projects.

I would organise all of my knitting stuff, sorting through mountains of boxes and piles of assorted tools and haberdashery and get it all cleaned up. My plan was to actually be able to find the thing I needed when I needed it.

I would sit in the garden and read. I would read something meaty and intelligent.

This is what I’ve done:

I have not looked at my email.

I went for one walk.

I lounged on the couch with my feet up and watched the new robot vacuum cleaner that Doug bought as it vacuumed its way around the room. (This is highly recommended.)

I have slept 12 hours a day.

I have knit exactly 5 rows on Doug’s vest, albeit fairly long rows.