Blues - part 2

So at first, I thought I wanted to rip out this 2/3 of a back I'd started. Bear in mind, this was started nearly 6 years ago after our son was born, and I was still going through new mom denial that I could still do everything I had before he was born (and that nothing would take much longer than it ever had, ha!)
Now, of course, that would be dumb (it's been knit for 6 years, it ain't comin' apart) and now I realize, I don't really want to. Oh, and it's 50 percent mohair, and that stuff doesn't rip out at all.

I've had this sack of assorted blues, grays, purples, and blacks for years, and have already made 2 sweaters out of it (all of these are from Fassett's Glorious Knits) the first was the outlined stars pattern (here's the picture from the book - I made this for my mom who gave it my cousin [it took me 2 years to do because I was working and going to school at the time] - in fairness, it was way too big)
... and the second one was jack's back pattern - again from the book because I don't have the sweater anymore, I gave that one to my other mom (she's not related at all, I just like her so I adopted her - she taught me to spin) and as far as I know, she still has hers.
So, what I had thought I wanted to do was this:

and I still want to try it, in a normal size sweater, rather than a coat, but maybe in earth tones, rather than as blues and grays.
So I think my new project is to finish that 6 year old pillowcase full of loveliness.

Blues - to be written in installments

So, here we have a very unpromising looking sac of yarn - it's an old pillowcase:









And here's what lives in it.
The whole mess of yarns started off with a huge skein of Ellen Minard's spaced-dyed mohair, which comes in a 1 lb. skein. I don't know what the color way was called at the time, something blue, purple and black.
Over time I assembled a bunch of Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair, Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride, cotton chenille which I have long since lost the labels to, and other odds and ends of wool, mohair, cotton and blends.

Finishing things

It still needs to be washed, but here it is - size 4-6 child's aran sweater made of WildFlower DK in salmon. It's got a nice hand (cotton/acrylic) but you have to pay attention when working with it or it will split a lot. It comes in some nice grown up colors, too, so maybe I'll make a cardigan out of black. Good idea, make something in black out of a yarn that splits all the time. :)
And, the lion quilt is coming along. I had help over the weekend, little man thought doing the actual sewing was way cool. Since I don't really know what I'm doing with appliqué, I'm just cutting out pieces to match the big chunks of the lion and building them up - so it may come out sort 3-D. See - the lion now has a butt and half a tail.
As I'm closing out one or two things, my brain is starting to turn on an old pillowcase full of blues, grays, blacks and purples in the closet. I've already made 2 K. Fassett sweaters from this batch, and I think I need to do one more . . .
I'll take pictures of the sweaters and the yarn tomorrow . . . .

Working on the quilt

(Typing is hard right now, our age-indeterminant crabby old man cat who came with our house [another way to look at this, we got a free house with our $200,000.00 cat] is sitting on my lap, trying to scratch his head on my fingers as I type with them)
Anyway . . .
Little one is very into helping quilt. I had help tying off all kinds of things today and let him have some fabric, thread and needles and he made us each bow ties. I remember feeling like that, that the grown ups had all the cool trinkets to play with - like the little collapsible scissors that I'm constantly in danger of losing.
So, middle of last week, the quilt looked like this:














And tonight it looks like this:
Well, now that I look at it, it's not very impressive in these pictures, but there is a lot of sewing in there.
Once all the piecing done, I'm going to do all the detail with the size 5 cotton.
And, we have a new camera on it's way in the mail. Perhaps that will help my picture-taking.
And, a final picture of the spinning which went in the mail on Friday:

Adaptations

So, perhaps I have developed the mythical malady of "finish-itis" (and I think I'd be the only knitter ever known to suffer from it if I am) and I'm working on the small one's Gryffindor quilt again. It's pretty slow going, I've never done appliqué before so there's a learning curve (I'll post a picture when I get somewhere more exciting looking than the last one I put up).
But . . . .
I'm back to thinking about charting complicated intarsia patterns. I will finish charting the lion, but I think I need to find a portable light table somewhere. ???? There must be such a thing, I should look at JoAnn's or something.
But, charts from other areas (needlepoint, fillet crochet) and adapting them to intarsia, very fun.
This has been tugging at my brain:
There are others one could use too, but what about making a fingering weight pullover with a placket neck and using this for the color pattern? You could do a modified version of just the tail, make a sort of flower/vine motif up on the yoke and have the dragons march around the base?
I haven't tried Knitpicks Palette yet, but you could do a tradition 2 or 3 color, or you could go crazy and make the dragons really colorful, purples and greens . . . .

Great places to go . . .

We lived in Atlanta for nearly 4 years before I went to a yarn shop.
I can hardly imagine it. Ugh.
Of course, in the pre-internet age, I'd have died. But I made do with shopping via the web, and I never buy anything the first time I see it anyway, so I can stretch a purchase out for over a year between first thinking of something and the time I finally buy it.
But then, the Mad Crocheter took me to Knitch. And if you live within driving distance, you should go. They're having some cool guests this fall, including Stephanie Pearl McPhee, aka The Yarn Harlot (9/19/07). Later on (not sure when) there's a book signing with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably. I really may need to go, Fassett was very important to my knitting development.

But this is making me think of other great places. Or maybe it's the 101 degree heat. One of my all time favorite places was the Yarn Basket in Portsmouth NH. It's this TINY little place, and its just jammed with stuff in a way that is awe inspiring; both in the selection Elaine offers and the fact that she gets so much stuff into so little space and you can still see everything.
Up by my mom in Norwich VT there is Northern Nights (no website yet, but (802) 649 2000) and Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm (her stuff is really amazing, and I don't think she has enough pictures on her site to do her work justice, but you can go to her farm or catch her at all kinds of festivals in NH, VT, etc.) and Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney VT (nicely redesigned site).
Some of my old favorites have shut down - the Spinning Wheel in Dover, NH and Clothworks in Norwich VT.

I miss the NH Sheep and Wool Festival - I don't think there is anything really like it down here in GA (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong!). I keep threatening to haul the whole family to it if we can just move back north . . .

Sunflower raglan

Ahhh, I have no head.

But it's a darn fine picture of the sweater.
Thanks hon!

The nice thing about this pattern, as it is knit from the neck down, you can adjust it to any size person once you get past the neck and the first few inches of raglan increase, you can slip half the stitches onto scrap yarn and try it on until you like how it fits. Or use anything for the neck, I just like the roll.
The pattern is posted (see July 3).

Shine worsted (Knitpicks) is great - holds up well to machine washing and drying (so far) and holds it's shape. It's so soft and nice to wear, I love it.
Too bad we're in the middle of a 100 degree plus heat wave. Maybe sometime in November I can wear it.

That wet wool smell

So, I go to the trouble of spinning up 7 plus skeins of lovely, Merino jewel tone fleece and then chuck in water. Now it doesn't look (or smell) lovely.
At all.
But the twist should set nicely once I hang it up. It's drying wrapped in a towel right now.
I'm going to send it as an early Christmas present to my sister in law, who loves to knit but doesn't spin (or she didn't last I knew) so this might be nice fall project.

Getting close to finishing the bag

I probably have only 2 more skeins left to spin on this Copper Moose Fleece.
This is both sad and exciting. I'm going to send it off as a very early Christmas present, I think. Because I stink at surprises.
Neither of these pictures does this justice, the colors are better than either picture and somewhere in the middle.
However, having this much spun up, it's nice to pile it up and play with it.
For some reason Blogger is freaking out trying to add my pictures. More later (Hey look, here they are!).
The sunflower sweater is done too, but that needs washing. I've posted the pattern (see July 3) and wil post a picture once I have a decent one.

No longer a half shirt, and another new idea

When I get to 25 inches from neck to bottom, I'm going to switch to smaller needles and begin the bottom roll for this sweater. I wove in all the ends at the armpit joins this morning, so once it's cast off, it will basically be done. I like it, and Shine Worsted is great stuff, BUT, you have to be even and clean in your work, or it will show every tiny flaw with it's smooth, shiny evenness.



















Now, here's the new idea.
I got a couple of skeins of Manos del Uruguay in color 102 (right, that means a lot, doesn't it? 102 is rich reddish browns, purple, and dark gold, very nice, very November autumn) and I think it would be great paired up with Lamb's Pride to make the Green Mountain Spinnery's Norwegian Roses Cardigan. I think it would go nicely with Gold (14), Medieval Red (26) and Aubergine (185).

Minnesota Half-Shirt?

Second sleeve finished (they actually match) so now all I have to do is finish working down the body until I run out of yarn or decide it's long enough. Don't even half to look at my hands while I knit this - awesome. But it really does make me think of a half-shirt, which is really ridiculous when you feel how heavy the fabric of it is.
And while we were hiking this weekend, we saw this flower. While I know that the inspiration is supposed to precede the project, it's almost as though the image in my head only crystallized once I saw this flower.

Lion quilt start

I'm not sure if there are many things I find more annoying than ironing 108" fabric on a tiny, warped, table-mount ironing board that I got while in school because I didn't want to spend more than $12 on any single purchase . . . . (Well, duh, of course a great many things are more annoying and I should stop complaining and get a real ironing board, but where's the fun in that?)
But once the front was ironed, I was able to center the shield for the quilt. Here it is:
The lion will be appliquéd on top of it, along with the helmet and foliage and I'm planning to work in the details with the pearl cotton.

More to come . . .

Sleeve #1

So, finished the first sleeve - it's going to be doubled over, so here's pictures of it both ways.

The neck down adventure continues

It really does look like a thneed, from the Lorax, but it's starting to look more like a garment and less like a bicycle seat cover. The Shine Worsted is so soft and has such a nice drape to it, it seems very promising for a fall sweater. And the color is better in these pictures than the first ones.
It's hard to say which is more relaxing, knitting on this (yes, I have all three needles in at once, what a mess) or spinning. I'm almost ready to ply the next batch, so that's very exciting.
















Yesterday, Stephanie McPhee had a post about both Elizabeth Zimmermann's Surprise Jacket and her spinning. The spinning was really lovely. But I hadn't seen the Surprise Jacket before. How COOL - and all that stuff I have sitting in tubs in the small one's closet . . . . (evil hand rubbing)

Gryffindor Quilt materials

So, when the small person and I brought our fabric up to the cutting station at JoAnn's, the woman working there looked at our colors and asked "Is this something for Harry Potter, or Gryffindor or something?"
The darker red is the front and back, 108" and the brighter red and gold will be for the shield and some simplified decoration. The brighter gold is for the lion and the pearl cotton is to work in some finer designs.
Right now, the fabric is waiting for the dryer, then the iron. I'm planning to work the shield and all that design and then apply it to the large ground of the front. Not sure about quilting versus tying, maybe I'll quilt the snitch into it.

Knitpicks Shine Worsted Pattern - Sunflower Sweater, raglan

Materials:
17 skeins Shine Worsted Sunflower
size 6 and 7 circular needles
Size: Women's small to medium

Body:
On smaller needles, cast on 108 stitches for the neck. Join and work in straight stitch for 2.25 inches, placing a marker for the beginning of the rounds, then markers dividing the work into 4 sections of 33 stitches (front), 21 stitches (right sleeve), 33 stitches (back), 21 stitches (left sleeve).
Change to larger needles and work 5 rows plain in straight stitch. Next row, begin increases as follows:

• Row one: [Starting at the initial marker] *knit one, work one Left Edge increase (see Vogue Knitting ISBN 039457186X, pp. 41), knit to within 2 stitches of the next marker, work one Right Edge increase (see Vogue Knitting ISBN 039457186X, pp. 41), knit 1, pass next marker**. Repeat * to ** 3 more times, until completing one full found, increasing 8 stitches in total.
• Row two: Work one round plain (no increases).

Work these two rows 26 times until there are a totals of 85, 73, 85, 73, stitches ending with an increase row.
Work five rounds without increases, then divide the sweater for body and arms this way:

• Knit across 85 stitches for the front, with a scrap piece of yarn, place the 73 stitches for the right sleeve and secure them. With another piece of scrap yarn cast on 12 stitches and then knit over them continuing from the front of the sweater - total of 97 stitches. Continue across the 85 stitches of the back of the sweater, with a scrap piece of yarn, place the 73 stitches for the right sleeve and secure them. With another piece of scrap yarn cast on 12 stitches and then knit over them and join back up with the front of the sweater. Work until piece measures desired length (this was 19 inches) and finish by casting off 6 stitches evenly spaced at the same time changing to smaller needles and working 1.5 inches of tighter straight stitch to form a roll bottom.

Sleeves:

• Join another skein of yarn and work 73 stitches for the first sleeve. Next, with a piece of scrap yarn, cast on 12 stitches and then knit over them and placing a marker between the 6th and 7th stitches, joining all stitches into a circle, being careful not to twist the cast on stitches.
• Work straight for 2 inches, the begin casting off for sleeve seams - treat the marker as the beginning of each round.
• Knit one, knit 2 together, knit 79, slip, slip knit 2 together, knit one.
• Work 4 rounds straight.
• Work these 5 rounds 17 times = 51 stitches.
• Work 2 rows straight.
• Change to size 6 needles and decrease 11 stitches evenly spaced = 40 stitches.
• Work knit 2, purl 2 twist rib for 3 inches, then work plain knit 2, purl 2 rib for 3 inches. Cast off loosely.
• Finish cuffs by folding them inside and sewing down the edges along the beginning of the cuff ribbing (loosely).
  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
(If you make any interesting versions, I'd love to hear about them.)

Came back to find it on the kitchen counter

Here again, we see the very decrepit porch, this time with a whole bunch of Shine Worsted in Sunflower. Yay, knitpicks and cheap, nice yarn, not so yay on the timing of my order.
Started working on the neck of the sweater - top down roll neck raglan, on size 6's, the body will be on 7's. Shine Worsted is so soft and smooth - really lovely. The color isn't quite as bright yellow-orange as I had thought it would be, it has this tinge of the 1970's, but I still like it a lot.
I'm planning to do raglan increases on all 4 seams every other row until it looks right, take off the sleeves . . . pretty simple drill once you've done a raglan. More pictures will follow.
Peeping out from underneath, you can see the Wildflower DK sweater on which I did next to no work while traveling . . .

ADDENDUM
While riding the shuttle this morning, I decided that I should add a raised leaf motif to the yoke of this sweater. Maybe something like this - just the leaf, of course. Barbara Walker has all kinds of lovely stitch patterns for this kind of thing, so I should be able to find something. I'm picturing embossed leaves hanging down the yoke just below the neck.

SECOND ADDENDUM
After playing around with a leaf pattern, I decided that it wouldn't work on the yoke of an otherwise straight stitch sweater. Basically, the weight of all that other yarn would just pull on the yoke and the design would get all elongated and look bad, and it would be a weak point in the fabric at a really bad place. So it's just straight stitch. But I'm logging the pattern as I go and will post it when it's done.

Not in time

Sigh. Very sad. Oh well, I guess I will just bring this with me - it's Wildflower DK - cotton acrylic blend in salmon. It's lovely stuff, very soft, but it splits a lot. For another small person in our lives.
I guess I'll finish up the sleeves and maybe put it together. This is the back, the front and sleeves are the same. The neck has a button up side.

Something supposedly restful that's now a source of tension

Get it? Tension?
Anyway, I have to make a longish trip next week involving flying on Delta. Yuck. So, I decided I should start something really boring and easy that will make for nice "in transit" knitting. Not making a tapestry lion.
So, inspired by the beauty of the Mad Crocheter's sweater she's making with Knit Picks Shine Worsted, I picked Sunflower and have vague plans to make a roll neck pullover out of it.
I do not expect the color to look great on me, but it's bright and sunny and I like it. One of the nice things about getting older is I just don't feel the pressing need to wear black/grey/navy/army green EVERY DAY anymore. Those dark colors just make the gray hairs pop anyway.
I'll take pictures when I start.
The Mad Crocheter has promised to take a picture of her SW sweater, but the real beauty of the thing is the way it feels, and that doesn't photograph. But the incredible regularity of her stitch work does, so here's hoping she'll load some . . .
Why the tension? The order claims it will arrive the 28th. Which is the day I'll be on the plane. Can everyone please think speedy-yarn-shipping thoughts?????

Noro Daria Exchange Bag

After a week of thinking of nothing but the Noro Daria I was talking about recently, I gave up and went back to Knitch to buy it. It's the most I've spent on a single project so far, but sometimes you have to treat yourself. I promptly started on the Exchange Bag from The Happy Hooker, and this is my progress thus far. The colors make me think of fall, and I really love the way they bob in and out of the shell pattern.

The project has not been without tears -- there's been a lot of ripping out and redoing, and the cord was hard on my hands, especially at first. I usually go for yarns that feel even better than they look, just because I love the way the yarn feels going through my fingers. I'm actually really glad I tried something different this time; it gave me a perspective on what Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was talking about in her book At Knit's End:

Imagine this: you are shipwrecked on an island with only the knitting that you had with you on the boat. When you are done knitting it, do you unravel the work and start again, just to have something to knit? If so, you are a process knitter. You knit for the pleasure of knitting. If you imagine that, upon finishing, you put on the sweater and go look for wild grasses that you could knit into a tent or a hammock, you are a product knitter. You knit for the pleasure of the finished item.

I'm normally a process crocheter through and through, but I've gotten through the rough spots on this one by focusing on how cute my finished purse will look. It's good to see things from the other side.