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Pattern adjustments; or, the devil is in the details

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a pullover pattern by Sari Nordlund, called Onnen:

© Sari Nordlund

It checks a number of boxes for me at the moment – easy to knit, worsted-weight yarn, raglan, interesting but not too complicated cables, vertical pattern, comfortable, comforting, wearable. After looking through literally thousands of patterns over a period of many weeks, I found that I kept coming back to this one. I even have the yarn at hand to knit this with.

So, I bought the pattern and spent some time looking it over, and immediately hit a conceptual snag. The gauge is listed as follows (this is available right on the pattern page on Ravelry, so I’m not giving anything away):

Gauge:
19 sts and 25 rounds = 10 cm over stockinette stitch on 4.5 mm / US 7 needles, in a round, after blocking.
25 sts and 27 rounds = 10 cm over cabled pattern on 4.5 mm / US 7 needles, in a round, after blocking. Measurement taken approximately over round 19.

So far so good. Looking at the pattern, however, I became confused. The pullover is knitted bottom-up in-the-round. For the size L (47″), it asks that you cast on 244 stitches. Markers are added to divide the front and the back, which is divided evenly so that both back and front have 122 stitches. However, the back is knitted entirely in stockinette stitch which has a gauge of 19 stitches to 4in/10cm, and the front is composed of a central block of 68 stitches in cable pattern knitted at a gauge of 25 stitches to 4in/10cm, plus 54 stitches (27 either side) knitted in stockinette at a 19 stitch gauge. I have to admit that this sets up warning bells for me.

I did some math. It turns out that if you are hitting the recommended gauges, for the size L, the back will measure 25.68″ and the front will measure 22.24″. (It goes like this: 19 stitches per 10cm/4″ equals 1.9 stitches/cm or 4.75 stitches/inch. 25 stitches per 10cm/4″ equals 2.5 stitches/cm or 6.25 stitches/inch. To continue in inches, the back will thus be 122 stitches at 4.75 per inch, or 25.68″. The front will be 54 stitches at 4.75 stitches/inch (11.36″) PLUS 68 stitches at 6.25 stitches/inch (10.88″) which equals 22.24″. Yikes! It’s worse than I imagined.

(At this point, I asked Doug to read this, and I did his head in. “What’s the problem?”, he asked. “The circumference works out right and its knitted in the round.” The problem is with the placement of the markers, and thus the side seams, and thus the placement of the sleeves and raglan shapings. If the side seams are placed so that both back and front have an equal number of stitches, then the sleeves will be in the wrong place, and the front of the sweater will be bunched over the chest, while the back of the sweater will be too wide.)

Why would you knit a sweater and place the raglan sleeve shapings unevenly skewed towards the front, so that the front measures significantly less than the back? By this time I thought maybe I was over-thinking things and I wrote to the designer (on Ravelry, which perhaps she doesn’t monitor) and I never heard back.

I thought about forgetting the pattern altogether, and spent a few more weeks searching around for something else to knit, but in fact, I like this pullover. (I have quite a few of Nordlund’s newer patterns on my favourites list.) I do think the pattern photos look just a bit off around the raglan shapings, but of course that makes sense if they are fundamentally in the wrong place. So, being overly fussy, I checked every single photo of this sweater which exists on Ravelry. There are currently 98 of them. Of those 98, only 2 photos show the back of the sweater being worn on an actual person (there are a number of photos of the back of the sweater, while it is hanging on a hanger). Of those two, one of them is obscured by a bunch of long hair and a slightly angled shot, and the other looks, frankly, much too wide across the back.

I then spent a long time re-calculating the widths of back and front as I moved the markers towards the back one stitch at a time, and discovered that if I moved the markers back 4 stitches on each side, so that the overall stitch count is the same, but the back has 16 fewer stitches than the front, then the finished pullover measurements should be roughly equal for the front and back.

I won’t go into the details too much here, but I also freaked out about the fact that the ribbing was even across the bottom of the sweater, even though the central cabled portion of the sweater had a much tighter gauge. For those of you interested in the nitty gritty details, I ended up casting on 240 stitches for the ribbing, and then increasing 4 stitches evenly across the cabled block of stitches at the front, while at the same time, placing the markers so that there are 114 stitches on the back and 130 stitches on the front.

Am I being unduly obsessive? Will this work out in the end? Only time will tell.

Please note: Language in post updated slightly, with thanks to Sarah; 16/01/22.

The cost of knitting has just gone up

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I just saw a report of this on the news, and it cracked me up. A man received a fine for 90£ for allegedly driving in a bus lane, 120 miles from his home. The photographic evidence shows a woman walking in the bus lane while wearing a sweatshirt that says “KNITTER”. The traffic computers sent an automated ticket to a man with the license plate “KN19TER”.

Here is a link to the news article, but I must say the local TV news report was better. They tried to interview the man who had received the ticket, and he and his wife couldn’t stop giggling. A bit of knitting humour to lift up your day.

Confused

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This morning, Doug showed me an article on men’s fashion from the Financial Times. It’s called “The Family Man; A celebration of ageless style”. I think that there is a paywall on FT, so I don’t have a direct link to the article, but will show one photo here. The article showcases photos of intergenerational style, including many lovely and sometimes eye-wateringly expensive clothes modelled by many ages of boys and men. There is one photo which I keep coming back to, because it leaves me completely confused. I think this photo is lovely, and the sweater is luscious, but… is it one sweater or two? What is the baby wearing? Is there a kangaroo pouch? Look at it carefully and see if you can see why I’m confused.

© James Harvey-Kelly; Photography by James Harvey-Kelly. Styling by Julian Ganio
 SEPTEMBER 15 2021; Financial Times

Change of scene: Helsinki

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I normally do a lot of travel for my job, but that stopped in March 2020 due to Covid. With restrictions easing, I just made my first business trip in almost 20 months – to Helsinki. Since I was teaching there on a Friday, Doug flew in with me and we spent the weekend. It was fun and also kind of weird to be travelling again. There were tons of forms to fill in, and tests to take, and lots of new procedures involved in travelling in a Covid world, which we had to get our heads around, but it was great to get away.

Helsinki is lovely. Many of the buildings reminded us of Potsdam, where we lived for a decade shortly after reunification, but Helsinki is on the water, and the miles of harbour give it a unique feel. There are lots of boats, and fish, and marketplaces; sometimes all three in one:

There are boats sailing on the water:

There are interesting architectural shapes:

This bird has a prime spot:

This being Finland, there are knitting shops! This is Snurre:

This is me shopping in Snurre:

It is a fantastic shop, with two rooms packed full of gorgeous yarn and other knitting stuff:

A knitter, after visiting Snurre, might find herself with a small bag of goodies to take home:

A knitter, in fact, may find herself sitting by the water and knitting while enjoying the sights of the busy harbour:

The city seems to have negotiated Covid fairly well, and it felt safe. Even these guys were wearing masks:

It is a lovely place for tourists to wander while wearing dapper hand-knitted waistcoats:

Or for tourists to look relaxed and happy while wearing lovely hand-knitted tops:

It’s amazing what a short change of scene can do for your mental health!

10 years of blogging

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Ten years ago today, I published my very first post on this blog. A lot of things happen in ten years – I have grown and changed in ways I never would have imagined, and the world around me is almost unrecognisable at times – and yet this blog is still here with me. I still sit down, nearly every weekend, and pour some thoughts onto the (virtual) page. I spend countless hours planning, plotting, photographing, styling, writing, editing, posing, and yes, most of all, knitting.

When I began, I worried that I would not have anything to say. This post, this one right here, is my 550th post. At times, I have been brimming with creativity and new ideas, and projects are jumping up and down in my brain and off my needles. Other times, I have been so busy that knitting and blogging is a fought-for luxury in my week. Sometimes, the mojo is gone and I creak along waiting for it to return. Throughout it all, this blog has been here, providing a bit of sanity and creativity and fun; it is both my platform and my retreat.

I went back today to look at that first post, and it makes me laugh. My very first sentence, on the very first post says: “Last weekend,  I finally managed to block my Stripe Study Shawl.” I started as if I was in the middle of a conversation! So funny! I remember arguing with my family that I didn’t want to start by saying “Hi. I’m Kelly. This is my blog.” So I just started as I meant to go on. I never meant it to go on for ten years.

This blog is me – my thoughts, my knitting, my writing – but it is also in many ways a family affair. My daughter Emma spent a few years wearing me down, convincing me to start a knitting blog. Doug and Emma and Leah and I spent an entire day trying to come up with a name. We must have tried out hundreds before coming up with Knitigating Circumstances. I still think that the name is one of the best things about the blog; I smile every time I see it. (Although every time I have to write it, I wish I had picked something really short and sweet.)

For the first two years, this blog was a joint effort between Emma and myself, with a huge amount of work being put in behind the scenes by Emma, who did all of the photography and style editing, and technical editing, and proof reading, as well as being a sounding board and originator of ideas. I’ve written every post but one, which was written by Emma and is still one of my favourites. (I have a funny story to tell about that post. It is called “Move over Mom!”, as Emma was pushing me aside to write a post. We originally thought that she would write a series of occasional posts and wanted a name to tag her posts. We tagged it “Emma butts in!” and created a new column on the blog menu for these posts. A few weeks later, I noticed that I was getting a lot of referrals from, shall we say, dodgy-looking search terms. A little research and we discovered that there was a porn star whose first name was Emma and last name was Butts. We quietly removed the tags, and eventually the search engines gave up.) When Emma moved to Canada, it became harder and harder for her to participate in the every day running of the blog, and I learned to do more of it myself, although I still bug her at least once a week about blog-related things. I never would have done this without her. I have also knitted her lots of fabulous things; many patterns which I wouldn’t make for myself but which look smashing on her.

Leah has also proof-read countless posts, posed for innumerable photos, and has served as a muse for some of my more interesting projects over the years (like the Tolkien pillow, or the sweater I knitted her based on Anglo-Saxon gold and garnet cloisonné jewellery, finished project here). In the meantime, Doug has taken over nearly all of the photography for the blog, as well as reading most every post before I hit the publish button. Doug also provides inspiration for some of my favourite posts, which detail funny conversations between us. I often hear knitters complain that they can’t get their spouse to take a project photo for them. I can ask Doug to take a photo of a new skein of yarn, and he will come back with a hundred of them, all of them interesting (and in focus).

When I started this blog, I had just turned 50. I had two teenagers at home. I worked a 9-5 job as a manager of a research facility (having put my first academic teaching job – as a linguist – to rest when the girls were born). Every week, I ferried the girls, and a carful of instruments, to school, saxophone lessons, piano lessons, cello lessons, band practice, orchestra practice. I had my knitting with me everywhere and got tons done. Since then, the girls left home, I went back to school (for an MBA), took up a second academic career in a second academic discipline, travelled heavily both for my job and for pleasure, and still the blog kept going.

This is a time of transitions and milestones for me. In the past ten weeks, I have turned 60, had my 30th wedding anniversary, and been promoted (I am now an Associate Professor of Leadership – who would have imagined such a thing 10 years ago?). And today, I celebrate my 10th anniversary as a blogger.

Part of the joy of this blog is that I have you along for the ride. To those of you who keep coming back and reading, who put comments here and send me messages on Ravelry, who get inspired and inspire me, and who share my love of knitting and community, thank you.

A naturally gluten-free cheesecake

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I had a knitting post all worked out in my head for this weekend. Unfortunately, I have been either too busy, or too lazy, all weekend to write it. So, instead I will tell you about the amazing cheesecake I baked today. I found the recipe in an article in The Guardian this week, containing recipes from Nigel Slater’s new cookbook. Many of you will know that I have coeliac disease and maintain an entirely gluten-free diet. I was struck by this recipe, which has no crust, and is naturally gluten-free. Nigel writes about eating this Basque cheesecake in San Sebastián.

He writes:

“I chose a slice of cheesecake, its centre as soft as syllabub, its crust scorched. A cheesecake with no pastry or crumb crust to support its curds, no berries rippled through the deep, vanilla-scented custard. A cake that wobbled mousse-like on the fork. I was surprised not to miss the crunch of pounded crumbs. Not only was it not missed, the biscuit crumbs suddenly felt like an interference. Grit in the oyster. The smoky bitterness of the blackened crust was all the contrast I needed.”

Nigel Slater, The Guardian, Monday 20th September, 2021

It is fantastic! Here it is right out of the oven:

I highly recommend this recipe, whether you avoid gluten or not. It has a glorious texture and manages to be both amazingly rich and also meltingly light, at the same time.

I am reminded of a funny story about cheesecake. About 15 years ago or so, we were in New York in December with the girls. I had told them many times how much I had loved the cheesecake from the Carnegie Deli in my gluten-eating youth. We took them there on a cold, snowy afternoon and the girls and Doug all ordered a piece of cheesecake. I asked the waitress if they had anything that was gluten-free. She said to me “There is nothing gluten-free on offer here; you can’t eat anything in this restaurant.” I admit to be taken aback by this, which seemed rather rude, and simply ordered a coffee.

Some time later, while Doug and the girls were waxing euphoric over their cheesecake, I picked up a spoon and leaned across the table to take a tiny bite of Emma’s cake. Cheesecake normally has a gluten-free filling and it is the graham cracker crust that is problematic for coeliacs. I intended to sample a small bite of the filing. Before you could say “Boo!” the waitress ran over to the table and snatched the spoon from my hand and said “I told you that you can’t eat here!” In my nearly 30 years of eating gluten-free in cities all over the world, this stands out as one of the weirder experiences.

This is a lovely cake and I am sure to make it again. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I substituted half of the cream cheese with mascarpone (which has a higher fat content) and I used Creme fraiche instead of soured cream (which is difficult to find here). It is very easy to make, and it turned out perfectly the first time.

Enjoy!

The Not-holiday

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We’ve just had two weeks off of work. We have the kind of holiday days which are use-them-or-lose-them, and our holiday calendar starts at the beginning of October every year. We had holiday days accumulated because, well…. Covid. We needed a break and had to take it now. Unfortunately, neither Doug nor I were feeling comfortable with travelling internationally (and in particular, didn’t want to ruin the blissed out glow of a week spent lazing in the sun by coming back through Heathrow in its current crazy chaos). Additionally, Doug had some major mouth surgery just before the start of the holiday, and he looked like he found the wrong end of a bar fight, in addition to having a mouth full of stitches that needed removing, and, oh yeah, a lot of pain. So we decided to have what the British are so sweetly calling a “staycation”. In other words, have a holiday here in the UK.

What we failed to take into account is that some people actually plan a holiday in advance! They make bookings! For September even, when the schools are back in session. The nerve! I could tell you a long, pointless, and ultimately boring story about how we tried to find a place to stay, but I won’t. The point is that we did not plan in advance, and thus we stayed at home.

That is not to say we did nothing. We read, we cooked, and we took a lot of nice walks. I knitted. (“Aha!”, you think, “finally some knitting content.” If this is you, skip to the bottom of the post and I promise I will talk knitting.)

We took a number of walks locally along the Thames. I liked this spot, near Pangbourne, where on an unexpectedly hot afternoon, the locals gathered to swim. I wonder who was more surprised: the cows or the people?

We spent a lovely day at Kew Gardens, which was lush and green and peaceful. Doug even convinced me to take the areal walk, which is 9 flights of stairs up in the treetops:

I am afraid of heights, so I tried (not quite successfully) to relax my clenched teeth enough to get this photo showing me up in the treetops:

Kew is beautiful and I heartily recommend a visit there. We are members, but still don’t spend as much time there as I would like.

(It was unfortunately on the way back from Kew, that our car broke down, as mentioned in my last post.)

We spent a day hiking around Hughenden Manor, the home of Benjamin Disraeli. It is now a National Trust property and has some pretty gardens and attached parkland. They also have great beach chairs scattered around, which almost makes it like a beach holiday (only without the water, or the sand, or the gin & tonic).

We spent an absolutely glorious morning at the West Green House Gardens. This is a private house with the most beautiful gardens. It was truly lovely and we hit it on a magical day.

We also celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last week. Here, just for fun, is a photo of us 30 years ago:

Lastly, some knitting to report. I have mostly been working on Caravay, a Linda Marveng design. This oversized pullover is knitted in a very cool textural stitch which has a lot of depth, made even more rich by the beautiful burgundy yarn (Tinde pelsullgarn by Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk). I took innumerable photos of the work in progress, but find it is almost impossible to capture both the colour and the texture properly. Here are two different shots, which hopefully give an idea of the richness:

I also did some swatching for a mystery pullover, in this pretty pink DK wool from the Wool Barn. (Note that this is a mystery for you, not for me. As I have noted before in response to the craze for Mystery Knit-a-longs: “I like to know what I am knitting”.)

And I cast on for the Gresham Shawl. If you recall, I received a kit for this shawl on my birthday a few weeks ago. This is knit with worsted weight wool so it flies off the needles:

Tomorrow we go back to work. I am not convinced I feel entirely rested, but I will admit that I don’t feel nearly as crushed as I did beforehand. The trees are starting to turn, and my inbox is filled with knitting pretties, and new autumn patterns are appearing. Sweater weather is here, and with it, the usual boost to my knitting mojo and the re-charging of my creative muscles. Do you have new projects on your needles? Curious minds want to know.

Dear Miss Fashion Smarty-pants

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Dear Miss Fashion Smarty-pants,

What should the fashion-conscious motorist wear to get a puncture on the M4?

Signed, Sartorially Challenged

Dear Sartorially Challenged,

In our opinion, if one is to spend two hours on the hard shoulder of the M4 during rush hour, awaiting a tow, the well-dressed motorist would be best advised to wear a hand-knitted garment. Or perhaps two.

With best wishes, Miss Fashion Smarty-pants

Birthday treats

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I turned 60 this week. It is going to take a while for that to sink in. I had a nice day – Doug cooked me a great meal, I chatted with the girls and with lots of old friends, I received some lovely gifts. You may not be surprised to hear that there was yarn.

Below is a great big pile of yarn which I received from the girls:

This is the bouncy, soft, 100% wool, Woolstok Worsted from Blue Sky Fibers, in 8 shades; it was purchased as a kit from Tribe Yarns, to make this extra large shawl, the Gresham Wrap by Michael Vloedman:

© Blue Sky Fibers

Blue Sky Fibers make really nice yarn (I knitted my Cool Boots Neutral Shawl in Blue Sky Metalico) and this yarn is so lovely and sunny and cheerful. I will enjoy knitting with it, but also am enjoying just looking at all the beautiful shades.

I also received this fantastic yarn from The Uncommon Thread, Linum in the colour Pontus. This hand-dyed yarn is 50% baby alpaca, 25% silk, and 25% linen.

I have wanted to try this yarn for a while, and have something in mind for it, but as it is a summery thing, I will put it aside for awhile. The Uncommon Thread makes absolutely gorgeous yarn, and I have used it for many projects, such as Mignon, Skelter, Laelia, and Livvy (links are to blog posts I wrote about each project).

I am calling this a magical mystery birthday gift. How can you get a magical mystery birthday gift, too? It is easy, just follow these simple steps:

  1. Pre-order some great yarn from an independent dyer.
  2. Forget all about it.

Having it arrive in time for your birthday is a bit trickier, but I am certain that you enterprising knitters can figure that one out.

I have not done lots of knitting the past few weeks, but I have started the Caravay sweater by designer Linda Marveng. The yarn is fantastic and I am so happy we picked this gorgeous shade of Burgundy (the yarn and pattern were won in a prize and you can see details in this post). The stitch pattern is quite interesting – not difficult or in-your-face, but pleasingly textual.

And, as a last nod to a knitting birthday, I received my copy of the new Confident Knitting book. It happened to arrive on my birthday, which I am sure was intricately coordinated by Jen and Jim (the editors). It is a lovely book and I have been happily reading it this morning. It is part of the Confident Knitting club from Arnall-Culliford Knitting, which I heartily recommend you check out. They make fantastic instructional videos, and work with an array of diverse, independent, and talented designers and dyers. And they are very nice to boot!

Doug had a birthday last week too. He received lovely gifts, but no yarn. Poor Doug! Birthdays are always better with yarn.

Sheep Art

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Could you use a virtual hug today? Then watch this!

The link leads to an article in the Guardian about a beautiful piece of “sheep art”; “A sheep farmer stuck in lockdown in New South Wales who was unable to attend his aunt’s funeral has honoured her memory with the ultimate tribute: a love heart made from sheep.” Make sure to watch the video. This made me smile.