purlsandmurmers

New Project

I started a new project even though I still have Wine&Roses to finish plus two other UFO's.  I need a project to knit when we drive to and from Boston this coming weekend and I didn't want to get started too late.  I also wanted to work on it at knitting group on Tuesday evening; since we sit outside I felt it was much too hot to be working on Wine&Roses there.

This is what I chose:
I am actually using the Phildar cotton called for in the pattern, which I have never used before.  It is knitting up very nicely.

I really like the shape of this tank and I am looking forward to wearing it.  However I hate knitting even rib.  I don't mind an odd rib for some perverse reason, such as a 3x2 or some other thing, but 2x2 rib just drives me up the wall with its tediousness.  Once, long ago I forced myself to knit a ribbed shell just because I hated ribbing and always messed up.  I no longer mess up but it is still my least favorite thing to knit.  The problem is that I like wearing ribbed shells.  Perverse huh?

The front is not bad and I am looking forward to knitting it.  The back however is all ribbed.  I will like wearing that because sweaters tend to be too baggy in the back and the ribbing will solve that problem. 

I thought of starting another project as well, just to spell myself when I get sick of ribbing, but the unfortunate truth is that I would just knit the other project and avoid the ribbing.  Besides, I really want to wear this shell this summer.

Here is my progress so far:

It is really turning out nicely.

It has been a long time since I tried new cast on techniques and I decided to learn how to do a 2x2 tubular cast on with this project.  I have at other times, been taught how to do a knitted/purled on cast on for rib and how to do a long-tail cast on in ribbing but have never been completely satisfied with either.   I used the technique described in Knitters Handbook by Montse Stanley and am pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Yes, it does slant, but overall I think it is much more attractive than most other methods I have used for casting on at a ribbed edge.

I will try to post a close-up, I am not sure how much detail will be visible:

Fall Interweave Knits

The new Interweave Knits finally came, I had been waiting for it all week, since Alexine who lives a mile from me had it last Tuesday at group and I didn't.    Ahh, knitting magazine lust, it can drive you crazy.  I would hurry eagerly to the post office every day, I would count the hours until the mail is supposedly in the boxes (11 AM), I would rush to my box and open the door and..disappointment.

Well, it finally came.  I eagerly snatched it out of the box and hurried home.  I forced myself not to turn the pages. I made a cup of coffee; no peeking while I waited. I carried Interweave and my coffee to my knitting chair and turned on the light and -- disappointment.  All that excited anticipation for not much.  What a shame.

This issue is actually not all bad, it is better than the previous two, at least to my mind.  The cover sweater is very intriguing and I have been thinking about it since the magazine arrived (Saturday).  I will probably even knit this, or at least I will think about knitting it.  At 7 stitches to the inch it will require a lot of time, and for a project I am not yet sure about that is a big commitment.  I don't usually like wide bell-shaped sleeves but in this case I am inclined to think that narrowing the sleeve will detract from the sweater.  This at least gives me a dream idea, and it has saved this issue from instant oblivion.

The other really worthwhile article in this magazine is the article on Shibori knitting, which is filled with inspiration.

Otherwise I would have to say the issue is more blah than bad.  There are a lot of boring sweaters, there are several sweaters that have promising shapes or patterns but are knitted in way too bulky yarns, rendering the pattern unwearable in this overheated world and also completely unattractive, except perhaps for the naturally bird-like and they would be overwhelmed by the sheer bulk.

I am wondering why I renewed my subscription.  I have had a long love-hate relationship with this magazine.  I know it is popular in knitting circles and I have sometimes wondered why.  Perhaps I have bad taste.  I love Vogue Knitting, which often has terrible designs, and which seems to be reviled by many knitters, because they at least attempt to stay abreast of fashion trends, and their good patterns can be very very good.

In recent years every magazine seems to have fallen prey to the lure of bulky yarns and Interweave seems to the be the worst at the moment.  Yes they are fast to knit, but it is a wasted effort because why would you ever wear the results of your labor.  At least there are some more fitted sweaters in recent issues, still not appealing, but for a long time I thought of Interweave as the home of the baggy shapeless sweater.  And yet I continue to read the magazine for the promise, for the occasional good article, for the ads and for the inspiration, for there are always patterns that seemed to start out as a good idea and then take some horrible turn for the worse.

There are several articles by very good, well-known, knitting designers, and yet the sweaters are pretty awful.  How does this happen.  Is it hard to keep coming up with new ideas?  After a certain period is there nothing new under the knitting sun?  Is it that the poor designer is thrown in a knitting dungeon of sorts with a terrible yarn and a terrible idea and forced to knit themselves out of the darkness with inadequate tools?  I suspect that yarn marketing has a lot to do with the bad designs.  Magazines are driven by advertising space, but what about integrity in design?  I suppose that is another one of those idealistic dreams that don't hold up in the cold hard light of day.  Even knitting designers have to make money to put bread, and yarn, on the table.

I decided, after reflection not to post all the awful designs, as there are actually quite a few that are not completely awful, just very badly executed, as I mentioned earlier, a good idea gone horribly awry.  But there is one exception, not actually the worst thing I have ever seen, but a great disappointment to my soul:

I have long loved the work of Shirley Paden.  I think she has designed many interested fashionable and sophisticated knitted garments.  I have been known to buy a knitting magazine just because it contained one of her designs.  I had not, until now, seen a Shirley Paden design that I would call terrible, or that I would not consider knitting;

The bubble has burst.  Everyone can make mistakes, goodness knows I make many.  But for one of my design idols to produce this?  You could carry your whole dinner with you in your sleeves.  It looks like a blanket rolled up into a shrug.  Oh, in the lovely fuzzy photo (another recent trend in Interweave knits) a kind of romantic image of knitting is cast.  You can almost imagine how cozy it must be, until you actually look at it and think about keeping it on your shoulders, about not dragging the sleeves through your soup, about getting your sleeve sucked up into the vacuum when you reach down to pick a penny up off the floor.  If only we lived in some marvelous knitting neverland.

Bettina Finished

I finished Bettina last night and I am wearing her today. 

I really like the way this sweater turned out.  I like the wide neckline and the way it hugs the shoulders.  I like the picot edge:

When I first started knitting summer shells, I was not sure I would wear them but now I can't seem to have too many.  They are a little nicer than t-shirts but cool and comfortable.  The trick, for me at least, is not making them too fitted, if they hug the body too closely they get hot, but the same is true for a t-shirt or a tank as well.  I have always preferred a loose airy shirt to a fitted t-shirt on a hot humid day.

It certainly is hot and humid today and I have been perfectly cool..

The First Week of Summer

Remember those essays we used to have to write the first week back in school -- "what I did on my summer vacation"?  Well, here's what I did the first week of summer:

That's right, I stained 4x4's, 33 of them, with two coats of oil-based stain.  The second coat went on 1 - 2 hours after the first for maximum penetration into the wood.  It was a real pain in the *** working down low like that, but I did not have enough room on the sawhorses for all of the beams.

And yes, I DID finish a knitting project!  Aiko is done.  Here she is sunning herself on the newly painted (and dried) lumber:

Now there was a small problem with Aiko, namely that I did not really like the neckline when I finished it.  As you can see in the original pattern Aiko sweater  the neckline is kind of a wide mock neck, meant to frame the face but not hug the neckline.  Well I should have realized from the artful photo, that they couldn't get the neckline to hang so nicely.  The model probably has a bunch of knitting pinned up behind her neck.  Either that or she has a much wider neck than I do.  If I had been thinking when I read the pattern I would have realized that 8 inches wide across the neckline is too wide for me.  I may not have narrow shoulders  but either I have a narrow neck or they design patterns way too big.  Usually 6-7 inches across the neckline is all I want.  I should have adapted the pattern for less width and perhaps a liitle more depth if I needed extra room to pull it over my head.   

I ripped and redid the neck as a close-fitting turtle which did not work because the neckline edge was still too wide and I thought it looked funny.  Then I went back to the original design and just picked up the stitches and knit the ribbing straight up, making it a little longer than suggested, and going up one needle size at the halfway point so I could turn the collar over.

I actually like it this way, with the collar folded down and I like the way it sits just off my collar-bone, framing the face.

It is too hot to wear heavy cashmere today so this is all you get to see.  The only reason I could tolerate this photo was that I just came out of the pool and my hair was wet (personal air-conditioning) and I went right back in the pool as soon as I got this hot thing off.

I am progressing on my other projects.  Bettina has been put together and I just need to crochet the edges.  I might do that tonight.  I have been working on other things today, cutting out a bunch of sewing projects, but if I get tired of that I might go back to knitting.

Wine&Roses is still on Matilda.  I think I will weave in the ends with her on the dressform.  At the moment I am going to leave the fringe along the front edge, because I really like it there, and try to think of a way to incorporate the fringe into the front band.  I haven't really addressed what I am going to do about the front band anyway.

The End of the Line

I finished knitting Bettina and she is on the blocking board:

In order to claim her rightful place she had to evict Aiko, who had been claiming the board for far too long, mostly because of seamstress neglect.

Of course, Matilda is still wearing Wine&Roses, waiting for me to weave in those ends.  I have managed to walk by her every day and note that the ends need weaving but make no further effort to do so. 

The moment of truth has arrived; I need to finish something.  I cannot, in good conscience, start a new project while continuing to ignore the growing pile of "someday sweaters".

Which one will be finished first?

A night of knitting and music

I have not done much any knitting for the past week or so, hence no posts, although I could have kept you informed of my non-progress; no knitting until this past Thursday that is.

Thursday we had tickets for our last symphony concert of the season at Avery Fisher Hall and I planned to knit on the train.  Knit I did, in fact much longer than expected. The train stalled at Cortland and we were delayed for an hour.  That meant I had THREE WHOLE HOURS of knitting time.   I can honestly say this is the longest period of time I have ever spent in Cortland in my life, and I still haven't seen anything other than the train station.

When they got us down to Croton Harmon, the half-way point, we were transferred to one of the new trains, which neither of us had ever been on before.  I think these are reserved for the Westchester commuters, not us lowly Dutchess County Residents. 

I knitted up to the bind off for the underarm shaping on the front of Bettina:

As you will note I am only a little beyond that point now.  I was, as is often the case, too tired to knit much on the trip back.  We just barely made the 10:00 train and didn't want to wait another hour.  We ran into Grand Central with 5 minutes to spare and I had to buy a new 10 trip pass (the power was out at the Poughkeepsie Station when we left so I couldn't buy it then, and when we arrived in NY we were rushing to Lincoln Center)

But it was all worthwhile.  The concert was spectacular.  Gil Shaham played the Sibelius Violin Concerto very very well.  It was really marvelously lush and intense.  The concert ended with Stravinsky's Firebird and it was also a fantastic, fiery performance. I'm obviously not a music critic 'cause I can't think of anything more to say.

I did knit a paltry 8 rows on the train, not much but better than nothing I suppose.  I dozed.  I fidgeted a great deal.  I was terribly thirsty since I spent my only spare time buying a ticket, not a bottle of water, and was still looking for a seat when the train left the station.  The man in the row across the aisle from us left a half drunk bottle of beer under his seat when he got off the train and I kept staring at it, my eyes glazing over,  dreaming of the taste of that beer, of anything liquid flowing down my throat.  This didn't help.  The yarn felt scratchy and dry in my hands, my throat felt more dry with every stitch, it seemed better to try to sleep.

The sweater will be done soon.

The promise of a future sweater

It's hard to believe that this sweater is actually going to fit, or look good.

It almost looks like there is half a body in there already, especially in the sleeve, which seems to have a life of its own. 

This picture on the carpet has no relationship to reality.  Does this fit a human (yes) is the arm too narrow (no).  Will it all work?  Well, I believe so as I have been trying it on as I go.  Of course I still have all the ends to deal with but I am growing much calmer about the prospect.  Right now it is just the seaming that is slowing down my progress.  There is so much "spaghetti" to work around that I have to be pretty meticulous in the seaming, not something I always feel like fighting my way through at the end of  the day.

Crochet Fantasy

I received a new magazine in the mail:

My mom gave me the subscription because her friend Diane recently bought the magazine and she knows I used to crochet and have a weakness for all things needlework related. 

The magazine is really interesting.  I did crochet a couple of sweaters in my early 20's.  I was more interested in sweaters than afghans or doilies etc, as I still am, and there seemed to be a dearth of interesting sweater patterns that looked like something I would wear available. There have been more interesting crochet patterns lately, although the "doilies and afghans disquised as a sweater" patterns still seem to be in great supply, and there are even a few hiding in this particular issue. 

Since I took up knitting I have done precious little crochet but I DO think about it. 

The magazine is interesting because there are a couple of nice patterns, the cover pattern included, and one or two others.  There are also some very interesting articles on technique with ideas for sweaters or that can be adapted for sweaters.  I also like the article with one basic shell that is made up three different ways with different yarns.  That should be basic stuff, but when you are learning, or just getting back to something, it is nice to have someone hold your hand and guide you through the process somewhat.  Besides, we are all so distracted today that sometimes we just don't have time to do the basic calculations ourselves.  There is so much knowledge that used to be taken for granted that we have forgotten, or at least I have forgotten.

At any rate, I am not sure that I buy knitting magazines exclusively for the patterns, because they frankly are not always that good.  If there are interesting articles, either about interesting knitters or good articles on technique, then the whole issue is usually worthwhile.  Some of the yarn companies publish excellent magazines or books with very good patterns, some do not.   I think if I learn something, or am inspired to try something new, whether I take a pattern as is or adapt ideas from it to my own purposes, then the magazine was worthwhile.  This one has been good bedtime reading and seems to have lots of potential. 

The Assembly Line Cranks Up

I finally made a decision on how to proceed with Wine&Roses:  I am using a seaming technique from The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt.  I can't post a link to the actual instructions and the book is out of print.  I am appalled at how much copies of this book are selling for on Amazon.com  ($225.00 and up).  It is a great book, but not for beginners, and June Hiatt is extremely opinionated, but then, aren't we all?  Still, whenever I am not sure what to do in a given knitting situation, she always provides food for thought, if not an outright solution.

I have not used this particular seaming technique before, but so far, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!  The sweater is pretty bulky and the actual guage varies row by row, but the seam is flat and small and quite attractively almost invisible.  The pieces are seamed right-sides together, and sewing up is actually a bit of a challenge because I have to get all those loose ends out of the way and try to detrmine the difference between the actual selvedge stitches and the knots tying the yarns together.  (Yes, Virginia, there are knots).

Here is a picture of me sewing the seam:

As you can see the edge is a tangle of yarns and it is quite difficult to see where I am working, of course my eyesight is not great in the best of circumstances. The good news is that it is equally hard to find the seam once it has been sewn.

Here is the finished seam from the outside:

Can you see the seam?  The stripes on the sweater are horizontal.  The picture is not.

Here's another picture, this time of the inside of the same seam:

As you can see, the ends are still hanging free.

I haven't completely decided what to do about them yet, but the seams look pretty nice, even with the ends still attached.  Montse Stanley, in The Knitters Handbook  recomments knotting the yarns and leaving a short fringe as one of the alternatives seam finishes.  Originally I thought this would be far too bulky in this sweater but I am beginning to revise that opinion.  A short fringe might be quite attractive.  I might just tack the seam and fringe edge down lightly with a little hand sewing just to keep everything under control.  Or I might still work out some other way to deal with the ends.  I still have a lot of seaming ahead so there is plenty of time to make up my mind.

Bettina in the Grass

The back of Bettina is done:

Her general cushy springy texture makes her not want to lay flat.  I am sure  a good blocking bath will cure part of this.

The modem died on my computer this week and locked up the entire computer.   It unfortunately happened just as I was beginning to transmit the payroll on Tuesday morning.  Once we figured out it was the modem, and got the offending card out of the computer, I was able to use the computer enough to get the accounting data backed up and on to my portable.  A mini revolution would have occurred had paychecks not appeared in their proper bank accounts by the end of the week.

While I waited for the technician to come with the new modem card (I should have just put it in myself) I cleaned up the sewing room/office and caught up on other household tasks.  I was somehow too annoyed to work on sewing up sweaters.  Busy work was needed, no thought involved.

Then, when the computer guy did not show up  on Wednesday, as promised by my Dell 24 hour on site service plan, and after a long and rather annoyed call to Dell, when they promised he would be there the next day, I decided it was time to clean out and reorganize the sweater drawers.

I emptied everything out, resorted sweaters by color, which was roughly the order anyway, using a color wheel as a guide, really looking at the more difficult sweaters to see where they really fit, and looking at color charts to figure out how to classify some colors.  It was actually fun and entertaining.  I must have been pretty desperate huh....

I even took notes as to what I was missing and particularly wanted to go in my wardrobe.  I have a couple of bags for Goodwill containing those sweaters that I haven't worn for years and don't really like anymore or were in colors that I really don't wear and don't look good on me.  Most of the sweaters I don't wear don't get worn because they don't look good.  Most of the rejects were purchased sweaters not hand-knit ones (thank goodness) except for one, my first cabled sweater, from about 12 years ago.  First of all it was Mustard, which is not a good color.  Secondly it was a VERY WARM heavy worsted wool.  Thirdly it was so obviously late 80's in style it looked tremendously dated, more like a costume than a wearable garment.  It was a vest with  lots of cable work and square shoulder/arm panels that stuck out to the side making it look something like a combination of tyrolean-Samurai-Star Wars.  Not at all appealing.

The computer saga continues as the new modem went in but then new problems materialized.   It looks like we are going to be cleaning out that computer and restarting it from scratch.  MY patience will be tested.  More simple new knitting will probably occur.