Granite is grey, trellis is pink

My sister knitted Granite by Helga Isager a while ago, and it came out really nice. She washed it and put it outside to dry. And a disaster happended! It was made out of silk/alpaca, and there is a reason they always tell you not to dry silk in direct sunlight. Instead of a lovely white sweater, a strange, yellowish garment came back in. She had it sitting in the closet for while, until we dyed it the other day. It is now considered saved!
We had lots of little helpers, one of them helped simply by sleeping through the whole thing:

others were more vocal in their assistance:

3-year old Iris wanted to "color something too", and after some negotiation settled for a lone sock

It turns black!

The Granite sweater didn't actually turn out black, more of a dark grey, similar to what it looks like here


In other news, I've also finished the Trellis cardigan for Dagmar, here she is sporting it

It's the 12 month size, a little big still on 8-month Dagmar, so it will fit through the winter. It's less than 3 skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted on 5 mm needles. Modifications: I knitted the body in one piece and picked up the sleeve stitches and knitted them both at the same time (with 2-at-a-time sock technique). Voila! Almost seamless.

En babycardigan fra helvede

Så er den endelig færdig, cardiganen til det lille hentesæt af silke/alpaca. Det har taget sin tid. Mange overspringshandlinger, senest blev ærmernes glatstrikning oversprunget af anden glatstrikning i form af et Kusha Kusha tørklæde. Det kom jeg så til at sidde fast i da mønsteret gik over til delen med ren silke/rustfrit stål, for det er ret levende og irriterende at strikke med. Men det er vel egentligt også meningen med en overspringshandling, at den skal tvinge en tilbage til det man egentligt var i gang med??

Men nu er den altså færdig. Den er 5 cm kortere end mønsterets vanvittigt lange rør, men jeg fandt selvfølglig først ud af at den var alt for lang da hele kroppen var strikket og skuldrene lukket af. Jeg er nu godt tilfreds med, at jeg fandt selvdisciplinen til at lave det om. Eneste anden modifikation er kraven, som jeg lukkede af før ombukket, for jeg kan ikke se hvad en baby, der kun kan ligge ned, skal med sådan en bukket krave.
Og her er den så:

Cardigan for Tadpole

This project is a quick little knit that wasn't really that quick, as it involved some finishing. The pattern for this little cardigan is from "Simple Knits for Cherished Babies" by Erika Knight. I was seduced by the wonderful photography throughout the book, but I guess I should have researched the case a bit more before buying. The book is filled with errors, so beginners definately can't knit most of the projects. Advanced knitters can probably reconstruct most of it from the photos. The pattern for this little cardigan did not have any errors, possibly the only error-free pattern in the entire book! Earlier, I tried making a little garter stitch wrap top, but had to give up because the pattern was so unclear. Well, also ran out of yarn, and didn't want to buy more for such a dubious project.

But this little cardigan turned out very nice - from the front:


and from the back:


It's made of Rowan wool cotton, knitted on 3 mm needles though the pattern recommends 3 3/4 mm. But I think garter stitch needs to be tight to look good. I made a couple of modifications:
- added 5 stitches to the sleeve length
- knitted on edge around neck-fronts-back in the round with alternating purled/knitted rows

Mixed WIPs

I haven't blogged for a while, but I also haven't finished anything for a while!

But I do have a truckload of WIPs. First my Noro Bohus vest. It's coming along, I'll be at the underarm quite soon. Meanwhile, the patterns and color combinations are proliferating in unexpected ways



I've also had some good progress with my Bog Jacket. I'm past the critical point - the point where you remove the thumb trick stitches and graft the two ends together. Quite nasty, but it came out... not invisible, but not that frankensteinian either



Some other TV knitting (and lots of episodes of The Wire) is my Cobalt Jacket. A top-down raglan of my own design. The earlier version was knitted on bigger needles, but the most recent incarnation is on 4 mm, relatively small for the thick mystery yarn I'm using



Last, but not least, I've knitted most of my Aeolian for Vibeke, shhh! My first and probably last piece of beaded knitting. But it does look good, and I'll be done soon (just unraveling several rows tonight, but that's a temporary step back. Lifelines? No)

Shalom!

I really liked the yoke pattern on Meghan McFarlane's Shalom from first sight. It is similar to Mini til voksne from design-club.dk, which I had been looking at for a while. But design-club only sell their patterns with yarn, so that would be something like $100. Their yarn comes from Henriksens Uldspinderi, and I can just drive there myself and buy directly from them at a discount. I understand that knitting designers have to make money, but we costumers don't enjoy being treated like idiots. I'll pay a reasonable price for a good pattern, but I'm not going to buy your overpriced yarns.

So. In addition to being free, Shalom also has a nicer pattern on the yoke. I found that purling tbl is not as bad as its reputation, and it really makes the pattern so much more elegant.

I changed a number of things. First, I knitted long sleeves. If it is cold enough to wear something this bulky, chances are my arms will be cold, too. I used some mystery Icelandic wool, which I believe is 100 m per 100 g, knitting on a 6 mm needle. Did not try to get gauge, just made up some numbers on the way. The pattern only has one (small) size, so I made it larger by adding a 4th pattern repeat to the yoke:

After the 3rd repeat, I had 159 pattern sts (plus 10 edge sts). I increased 46 sts more or less evenly over the pattern part, for a total of 215 sts. I arrived at this number by looking at the previous increase. 159 is 130% of 123 sts, so the next number should be 130% of 159 = 205 sts, plus 10 edge sts = 215 sts. Don't know if this logic fits with general rules of yoke shape, Zimmermann percentage system, and so on, but it seems to have worked well.

So I knitted the 4th repeat, and then the next problem was how to split the stitches for body and sleeves. McFarlane splits the stitches to make bit fluffy sleeve caps on purpose, but my situation was different as I wanted sleeves. So I just put the yoke on an measured on myself. This resulted in 46 sts for each sleeve, 59 for the back, and 32 for each front.

The sleeves are only very slightly tapered, decreasing 4 sts on the first 20 rows. I increased a few stitches in each side on the last 10 cm of the body, to give a bit of illusion of a waist (I have none).

That's that. Love how it turned out:

Sooo proud of myself

Look at this:



Wow! It's a swatch. First time I both 1) made a swatch 2) washed it before measuring!!!
I know. 1) should be automatic and actually 2) should, too. But for me it took some unexpected happenings with the gauge of my forecast cardigan when I washed it, to actually start doing this.
The wonderful swatch is for Sukkertrøjen, designed by Marianne Isager. It is knitted with half Tvinni and half Spinni Alpaca (50% wool, 50% alpaca), both from Henrichsens Uldspinderi. I went on another trip to their factory outlet, and I promise I bought almost nothing there and it was very cheap...

Fitted Forecast

Here's my version of Stefanie Japel's Forecast. I've made quite a lot of changes, replacing the ribs on sleeves and body with shaped knitting in pattern. And, of course, removed the bobbles in the cable, because I don't want to be covered in nipples, especially not on the arms. Also, I made the button bands and cuffs in seed stitch to match the collar, and I have to say I like it better with less pattern confusion, and I think my version looks nicer on my body, while the original looks better on skinny girls!



Here are the changes in more detail:

• I knitted size L, with 10 extra sts cast on under each arm, for a less tight fit under the arms (176 sts).
  
• I knitted the 176 sts to just under the bust, then started decreasing, 16 sts over 11 cm, which with my gauge was 4 sts on every 10th row, 2 in each side with 6 sts between decreases
• Then, I increased 4 sts (2 on each side) on every 4th row 6 times, then on every 7th row 3 times. I also increased 8 sts between the cables that run down the back, so they flare a bit away from each other (saved the sts for later).
• The sleeves are tapered, starting with 67 sts and decreasing to 47 sts by decreasing 2 sts on every 8th row. I finished with 4 rows of reverse stockinette, 12 rows of seed stitch, then cast off with knitting on the wrong side.
• Then, I picked up all the sts of each front and the bottom edge, and knitted 3 rows of reverse stockinette (2 sts increase once on each corner), then seed stitch button bands (8 rows each) on front and cast off like on sleeve cuffs.
  

The back, showing off the increases between cables, and on the sides:

Knitter's Favorite Season

Is there anything better than winter? Yesterday, we got this snow in just an hour:
The perfect time for knitting, and for wearing knits. Although I have enough already, here's a new WIP:
It's an Evelyn Clark Heartland Shawl. It calls for Buffalo Gold, and even has a hoofprint incorporated in the pattern, so it is appropriate to use my precious, long-stashed Greenlandic Arnica qiviut (moskusokse fra Grønland). So my excuse for starting something new is that a) it has been stashed for a looong time already and b) it was actually already started, but with a pattern I didn't care for. So, what I was in the middle of was Japel's Forecast. Started with a size M (with an extra 10 stitches cast on under the arm) and the correct gauge, which should fit... but knitted the whole body according to pattern and it did not fit at all. I had tried it on several times, but it came out much to small. I think this happened because the size fit just under the arm, but it should be larger than that to fit over the bust. Ahem. Will not make that mistake again. Also, I didn't like how the front was wavy because the different textures have such different proportions. That could possibly be solved by blocking, but still, the thing just didn't fit.
So, without any pictures, ripped it out to above the arm/body split, knitted to size L, and cast on 10 stitches under the arms again. Just to get a little vaiation, I them knitted the sleeves (2 at a time of course). I made them tapered, and finished with a seed stitch cuff to match the collar:
So now, it's the body. I'm making it fitted, without the original rib. More about that later - this is as far as I got, because then the Heartland came along.
A bit about another project that is not just hibernating, I think it's stone dead. This is 3 skeins of Lamb's Pride Worsted knitted into a long scarf on 6 mm needles, with quarters tied in (with elastic bands) to make a shibori pattern. I first tried some smaller glass pebbles, but they popped out between the stitches. So then went with the quarters instead. Each is only covered by a few stitches:
Because this was very heavy, I decided to try hand-fulling instead of throwing it in the machine. Immediately, quarters started popping out between the stitches. Grrrr! In a couple of minutes, at least 10 had popped out. I had to give up. This is the point where i should have thrown the whole thing out of the window. Instead, I decided to take the elastic bands off (out of wet wool) and dry the scarf to think about my options. So, it took almost 2 hours to plan out the wavy pattern, mark it with threads, and tie in the quarters. The felting attempt and getting all the stuff out of there another hour. With no result whatsoever. Grrrrr!
I don't think I'll make another shibori attempt soon. The problem was obviously the ratio of stitch size to quarters. But you're supposed to knit big for fulling, right?? And I don't want to use something much bigger for the bobbles, that would look ridiculous. Shibori is on the compost pile for now. As far as the Lamb's Pride is concerned, it will be frogged and used for something else. But I might stash it for some decades for punishment before I do anything with it again.

Finally February, Baby!

Everybody is making the Zimmermann February Baby sweater, and I always want to be like everybody else! Bought the wondrously cheap Knitter's Almanac and some cotton (3 skeins Mirasol Samp'a, 50 g and 110 m/120 yds per skein). The pattern of course calls for wool, but had seen the February knitted in cotton and wanted to give it a try. Why, I actually don't recall, as I really don't like knitting cotton....
Well, here's the beginning, the neck opening is at the bottom in this picture.So far so good, but here is a close-up of the armhole:What's the problem in this picture? The knitter is trying to out-smart EZ. Don't try this at home. The pattern tells you to work the sleeves first, and then continue with the body. I did it the other way round, saving the stiches for the sleeves until the end, so the knitting had to strech a lot when I continued because of the extra 7 cast-on stitches on each side of the saved sleeve stitches. This would not happen if I had followed the pattern... the good thing is that it did not show in the end, though. I worked the sleeves until all 3 skeins were used up, that looked like this:
Hmm... are short-sleeved cardigans in fashion?? Well, the good thing was that the cardigan was bigger than the baby, but could actually be used anyway because of the short sleeves. Meanwhile, I went back for another skein, and the sleeves have now been lengthened:
It actually wasn't too annoying to do, as I only had to unravel the lower garter-stitch edges. The sleeves now measure 20 cm from underarm to edge. Hope it fits now! The overall proportions still look a bit strange to me, but I think it actually really does fit, as the shoulder area just under the garter-stitch yoke stretches, so the distance from top to armhole is not longer than the distance from armhole to bottom when worn

Noro madness

In one illustration of chaos theory, the flutter of a butterfly's wings can start a hurricane on the other side of the Earth.
This story is in some way similar. After recieving one skein of Noro Kureyon for my birthday, I ran off and bought 6 more. So now I have 7 (seven!!). And the headache of figuring out what to do with them. My first 3 or so swatches were about finding the right number of stiches for the full circumference of a cardigan, knitting back and forth on a circular needle. It looks like this:
I love the colors, but I think the stripe is too massive. And this yarn repeats the colors in the same sequence over and over, so the cardigan would just have wide stripes.So in the next try, I striped two skeins together, knitting one from the inside and one from the outside. This means that the colors will "meet" at some point, it happens twice in this picture (the black stripe with light green on both sides, and the dark green with cyan on both sides). But besides that, this is so much better, and does more justice to the wonderful Noro