purlsandmurmers

New Verena

The new Verena arrived:

It is not my favorite issue, but there are still several things I want to knit.  It seems, that generally speaking, that I am more of a fall knitter than a summer knitter, at least in terms of the kinds of things I fall in love with and hope to knit, not in terms of when I do the knitting.  These two are my favorites so far:

Not that these are going to get made up right away, but then I haven't knit any of the Verena patterns yet.  Must do that.

At the moment I am not sure what I MUST do.  With the ongoing reconfiguration of the sewing room closet there are a few piles of yarn that are temporarily displaced.  They had not been forgotten, but they were also not directly in my line of sight and therefore not in my daily thoughts.  There certainly is something to that old adage about "out of sight out of mind" and its corollary as well.  As it is, each time I walk by a pretty pile of yarn residing in some temporary resting place I am lured to fondle it and dream of future sweaters.   Keeping my mind on the task at hand is proving difficult, as I am constantly being lulled by the siren song of multiple yarns.

Supposedly I have a plan of things I want to knit.  I don't remember what that plan is right at the moment.  Did I write it down?  I'm not sure.  My brain is increasingly befuddled.  There are several tempting piles of yarn waiting to go back in the closet, or onto my needles, whichever happens first.  The results remain undecided.

On to sleeves

Although many many things have been going on in this murmuring household, knitting has not really been among them.  I did finish the front of Bombolo on Friday but didn't even manage to get it on the blocking board until late this afternoon, in not the most photogenic of lighting situations. 

I did spend some time wondering if it was even worth blocking, the yarn is almost half acrylic and there is really no point to blocking acrylic yarn, but I decided that, since the greater half was wool, a little blocking  probably couldn't hurt things, and it seems like it was a good idea just to help square things up a little bit.

I really love the shape and look of this piece of knitting and am very much looking forward to getting this put together so I can wear it.  Now that winter is finally here, even with a dearth of snow, it is perfect warm snuggly sweater weather.

Here is the back.  Notice the shaping is somewhat different.

I started on the sleeves last night but I only the got the first couple of rows done before I realized I would need to rechart them, not because there was anything wrong with the charts, or because I made any corrections or changes, but just because the charts in the book were a little small to look at conveniently while watching television.

The other advantage of reproducing the chart is the convenience of flipping the pattern to make the second sleeve a mirror image of the first, without having to remember to reverse the pattern while I am knitting. 

Bombola progresses

After literally ripping through the back of the Bombolo sweater, I suddenly shifted into slow gear and have made little progress since.

Here is the completed back, completed Thursday night or Friday morning early (already I forget, it seems like such distant history.)

I really didn't pick up my knitting again until Sunday on the train into NYC.  It is an ambitious train project, large needles, thick bulky yarn, and a chart to work from, usually I go for something which occupies less space.  Nonetheless I thought I was progressing well, and then I discovered a mistake that was just too much of a pain to drop down and fix (I had forgotten an increase 6 rows below, in the middle of a row no less) so I ripped and worked my way back up.  I got a little further and discovered that I had left a row out of my chart, combining a right side and a wrong side row,  I managed to figure that out, recalculating the stitches in my head, but I realized that the chart was going to be off by one row in terms of the repeats of one of the 4 patterns.  It is immanently possible to do this kind of thing in one's head of course, but perhaps not on a return train trip after a day in the city.  Once we were on the train home, in a car filled with a class of high school students who provided plenty of loud distractions, I decided that it was best to let the knitting go for a while.  Besides, I discovered yet another error, this time only two rows down, and thought there are times when it is best to call it quits.

I always have a book in hand as well on the train, and I settled down to read Joseph Conrad's Almayer's Folly, one of the few Conrad novels I have not previously read.

Monday night I fixed the chart, adding a new row at row 31, decided I didn't like the way one part of the pattern looked, ripped the knitting back to about row 20, changed the way I was doing one of the decreases on the chart, and started over. 

If I added up all the times I have re-knit rows 20 - 30, I might have finished the front of the sweater by now.

This time it seems to have finally taken:

A sunny day might be nice, for a sharper less fuzzy picture, but at the rate I am going, I might be done with the front by the time I have sunshine in the house again.

I've been Tagged!

Mary Beth at The Stitchery  has tagged me! Initially I started to panic, hoped it was a mistake, and wondered if I could disappear into the bowels of the earth.  Well, secretly I was thrilled, like the child I was once was who was always one of the last ones chosen to be on a team during PE.  Terrified, but thrilled.

Here are the rules (lifted from Mary Beth's blog).  Thank you Mary Beth!

1. someone tags you,
2. you post five things about yourself that you haven’t already mentioned on your blog,
3. you tag 5 people you’d like to know more about

1.  I mentioned the first one in that first paragraph.  I was the kind of child that was never picked in school.  When I was very young it bothered me terribly but I learned that the harder I tried the more I was teased.  So I started pointedly ignoring everyone else, trying to be different, deliberately walking a different path.  I think I was trying to fool myself as much as the others and it didn't always work, but I think I became much more resilient in the long run.  And although I still secretly want to be "chosen" the popularity game is one game I can't bring myself to play.

2.  I grew up in a small town in the bible belt in a very protected environment.  Although I was not completely ignorant -- I read widely and was familiar with literature, science, world politics, I was completely naive about the world.  I knew racism existed but I didn't know I had ever encountered it.  I knew homosexuality existed in an abstract intellectual way, but I had not been aware if I had ever seen or encountered it.   I traveled 1500 miles across the country to go to college in the age of sex, drugs, rock & roll, and cynicism as a complete naif.  Although I knew first hand that people were not nice, I believed that liberal intellectual people lived their lives seeking a platonic ideal of goodness and knowledge. 

3.  When I moved away to college I knew the words to every song John Denver and Barry Manilow had ever written. I still probably know most of them.

4.  At one of my first jobs, the company I worked for offered to pay my way through Law School.  I turned them down because I thought I was too shy to be a good lawyer.  I now think I probably would have made an excellent lawyer, but other opportunities have presented themselves.

5.  I knew that I would end up marrying my husband the first time we spoke.  I have never regretted that decision.

Now who to tag?  Always one to over think these things I worry, what if I tag someone who doesn't want to share things on their blog? What if they don't do tags?  What if?  What if?  Will I commit some king of faux pas (there is the girl who wasn't chosen speaking up again).  Oh who cares.  Consider yourself tagged.  Respond if you wish...or don't.

SewIntriguing , DiaryofaSewingFanatic , Life in LaLaLumay Land ,  Hungry Zombie Couture , Bad Mom Good Mom

Pretty in Pink

Some time back, Elann  had some Austermann Bombola on sale and they showed a rather intriguing pattern for a cabled pullover with the yarn.  I was intrigued, but I didn't succumb.  Still, I kept coming back -- a bad sign as well you all know.

Then, just as I had almost forgotten the temptation, Liana posted that she had made that same pullover and also commented on how much she liked the patterns in the Austermann book.  My fate was sealed.  I ordered the yarn and the book, even though I was not fully convinced that it would look as good on me as on Liana.   I can't seem to escape that urge to copy everything that inspires me.

I started the project yesterday.  Well, actually yesterday I recharted the project because I need to lengthen the sweater a bit to accommodate my taller, longer-waisted frame.  It is fortunate that this pattern is knitted on such bulky needles (12 mm) that I only needed to add 4 rows to the pattern, but even that required a little adjustment in the patterns to make sure that all the cables ended up in the proper place with the addition of the new rows.    Now for years I did this by hand, with reams of graph paper, and often, if I made mistake much swearing and cursing.  I would dread regraphing things, not that they were all that difficult, but they were enormous time drains.  But computers make things much easier, and although it took some time to enter the charts into the computer, and alter the cables to accommodate the new rows, I pretty much redid the charts in a couple of available hours on Tuesday.

This morning I got up and instead of doing the various things I usually do early in the morning before my beloved gets up, I curled up in my chair and started knitting.  At 6 1/2 stitches to 4 inches, it goes fast, but not as fast as one might think.  I still find a 12 mm needle much harder to hold in the hand and much more tiring to work with than a finer needle, 4.5 mm or smaller let's say.  Even the tiny sock needles are easier on my fingers than the big bulky ones.

Despite that complaint, my morning knitting and an afternoon knitting break when I returned from a perhaps ill-advised trip to the gym and a pretty intense workout left me exhausted with a return to full-sinus distress, yielded pretty impressive results:

I'm a bit more than half-way through the back of the sweater.  At first, I wasn't sure what I thought, but the more I see, the more I like the sweater.  It will be warm, fuzzy, fast, inexpensive, and very, very pink.  What is there not to love in that combination?  Well, once I would have said I am not a pink kind of girl, but obviously that is not true.  It looks like it will be fun and funky too, the perfect thing for a winter's day and a pair of jeans.

Soft and Warm and Fuzzy

Just in time for the arrival of winter temperatures; I present Haute Luce:

"Haute Luce" from Anny Blatt Book 197, Intemporel
Yarn Bouton D'or Candide, Color Zinnia.

My sweater is not quite like the original.  As you will note here:

The original sleeves balloon just above the cuff, and have knitted and crocheted motifs appliqued to the sweater after knitting.  Since I was basically attracted to the simple shape of the sweater and the YARN, I dispensed with both of these features.

Also, I messed up the shoulder shaping.  As you see in the next photo, although the sweater is knit in reverse stockinette stitch, the shaping is done so that the stockinette shaping shows on the outside of the fabric, in short it is done in the reverse.  I did not realize that as I knit the sweater.  I was working in the car and I only had a photocopy of the instructions with me, no photo of the garment.  The instructions made no special mention of technique for the decreases and I therefore did not think about making them decorative.

One thing I really like about Anny Blatt sweaters is the shaping and this sweater is no exception.  I probably could have bought the yarn and knit any old raglan sweater but the results here are very nice and the shaping is wonderful, hugging my curves rather well.  I did have to do some juggling with the pattern, I needed to lengthen the sweater about 2 inches above the waist shaping and 1 inch below, and my row gauge was off; matching row gauge to a written pattern is very difficult for me, even when I get proper stitch gauge.  So I had to recalculate all the shaping, since I always count my rows and make my decreases by row numbers not vague measurements on a ruler.  Rulers lie, or more exactly the knitter is not always meticulous about how she measures.

I started with a larger size at the hips, tapered to a smaller size at the waist, and then back to my normal medium size at the bust.  It all worked rather well. 

I was somewhat concerned as to whether I would get the shaping right for the raglan sleeves, what with recalculating everything and all, but it turned out beautifully.  One of the nice features of this sweater is the shaping at the shoulders -- the front edge of the sleeve is shaped differently from the back edge of the sleeve.  This makes sense of course, our bodies are not identical in front and back.  And I think the resulting garment is one of the nicest raglan-sleeve sweaters I have ever worn.  I shall keep a note of the technique and the shape for the future.

One thing I did note however, is that I still get a fold along the front raglan sleeve, something that I always get on every sweater, but it is much smaller here, and pretty much follows the seam line., as you see in the photo below: ( I have no idea where that rather imperious expression came from)

Normally I get a lot of bunching in raglan sweaters.  The fact that I only have one small wrinkle, and it follows the seam leads me to think that the shaping is basically good but that I should have decreased a little more at the beginning of the raglan sleeve cap, taking almost another inch out of the front edge.   

I have made a note of this for the future. It will not affect my enjoyment of this sweater.  I absolutely love it and it is deliciously soft and cuddly.  Bring on the winter weather.

Donegal Scarf and Hat

The garter stitch hat and scarf are done.  I had more than enough yarn for a child-sized hat and scarf, so I ended up making the scarf longer and re-knitting the hat in a larger size.  They are now mine, but not to wear with Rogue:

I like the width of the scarf, it is about 5 inches, actually narrower than I would normally make it, so it is  extra long.  I will have to make a note of this for the future,  It wraps easily multiple times around the neck and is not too bulky.

There will be no photo of the white-faced and red-nosed Mardel showing of the scarf and hat.   I have been holed up with a cold or flu, I am not sure which, as I have had symptoms of both; whatever it is I seem to be on the mend and will be back to normal activity early in the week.  I should have realized I was coming down with something when I came home from Knitting Group Thursday night and went right to bed, sleeping over 9 hours, an almost unheard of feat for me.

As I have not been up to much but mindless knitting and light reading there is also progress, slow but progress nonetheless, on the purple sweater.

A little garter stitch

As I pinned Haute Luce to the blocking board I envisioned finishing it last week and I was so thrilled with myself, figuring I would have a completed sweater before the new year was two weeks old.  I thought I might wear it to knitting group on Thursday night. 

But here it is Wednesday night, over a week later, and the sweater still languishes on the floor.  Part of me doesn't mind because I have been happily occupied with other things:  reading and sewing mostly, aside from those necessary evils that must be done before boss and family revolt. I spent more time on a sewing project than I planned and I have continued knitting the remnants of the Tahki Donegal tweed.  The hat is finished and now I am working on a scarf. 

It has been the perfect kind of week for a little bit of mindless garter stitch, and I have been quite happy to have it.  The thing is I really don't mind garter stitch, and it is nice to have a really simple project I can just pick up and work on for a few rows before moving on to something else.  I even worked in a couple of rows on the blue sock, but I was at someone's house and the lighting was not good, two dropped stitches on those 000 needles was enough to put an end to that project for that night.

In fact I could go on like this forever, working in the sewing/fiber/knitting room.  The world could just go on its merry way and I would be content, for a while at least.  I have been missing this sense of just enjoying myself with my hobbies and it is lovely.   It is too bad that laundry, vacuuming, and other worldly activities must intrude, but nonetheless, when I have time I am relaxing in my space, happily engaged.

I know I will get the purple sweater off the blocking board.  It is the next major thing on my fiberly agenda, now that the sewing project is out of the way.  It is unlikely that I will get it sewed together in time to pick up the stitches and knit the neckline at group tomorrow night, Thursdays tend to by rather busy with no real personal time until I get to knitting group/class.  I for one can't sew in my lap while I am talking to other people.  A garter stitch scarf is a much safer bet.

I am still contemplating the VK cover sweater.  I will knit it, and soon, but so far I prefer to knit a few other things first.  It is a subject that I am finding infinitely satisfying to ponder and about which to dream.  Knitting and dreaming; how nice.

VK Winter 2006/7

When I finally got to the post office on Wednesday there were three buckets of mail waiting.  More than 24 hours later I still have not caught up with everything, but I have dealt with most of the first class mail (although not all my office mail which was also voluminous). 

When I saw the cover of the Vogue Knitting I immediately grabbed it up and put it aside, not in the stack of general catalogs and magazines that will be read as time allows.  You see,  I adore the cover sweater:

I couldn't wait to see what other wonders lurked inside the pages of the magazine, so I treated myself to a preview while I ate my lunch.  Lunch wasn't long enough to get me to the design pages however, I was still poring over the ads and the columns and the various bits adding up to the main course.

So the rest of the magazine waited.

In the end however it is this sweater I adore. There are other sweaters I like very much, other sweaters I might knit and wear, but this sweater has completely captured my attention.  I think about it while I sit in my chair dozing off in a cold-induced haze.  I dream about it.

(I do hope you had previously realized that I am a total loon)

I have to knit this.

But when!!

There are at least three, or is it four, other sweaters about which I am currently obsessed, sweaters with patterns I adore, or for which the yarn is so luscious and yummy it calls to me , tempts me and taunts me.

The competition in the yarn stash is growing fierce.  Things might get rough before it is all settled.

On the Floor and On the Needles

I began a new project on December 25.  I finished knitting the main pieces on January 1.  26 hours of round-trip driving time does wonders for one's knitting progress:

The pattern is Haute Luce , the cover sweater from Anny Blatt book 197, Fall 2006. I am using the same yarn shown in the photo. I think I like how the sweater is turning out, although there were some adjustments and  I am still holding off judgment until I see how it works out in the end.

Meanwhile I am eager to get this finished, and eager to start my next project, but I cannot until this dries.  If I start my next sweater I will not feel like coming back to this one, and another project will go on the UFO pile. 

In an attempt to find a quick knitting project, I pulled up the two extra skeins of Tahki Donegal Tweed remaining from Rogue and cast on for a cap to donate to the children at Morse School in Poughkeepsie.  I am embarrassed to say that I have done no Morse knitting this year and I am sure they will need caps eventually, there are still several months of potential winter ahead.

I have not been inspired and the cap seems to be progressing interminably.  I suppose it is really only that I want to finish the other sweater and am not in the mood to wait.  I have so many things I want to knit I don't know where to begin but I steadfastly refuse to start to many simultaneous projects.  This is only the path to UFOs and frustration.