Triumph

The grey sweater is finished, and best of all, it fits!

(Sorry about the lousy picture: self-photography is hard)

It doesn't fit perfectly - it could use a little bit more ease across the back, a touch less ease across the front, and the arms could stand to have a slightly bigger circumference. But despite that, it fits well enough. I wore it all day Thursday (it did snow), and I'm pleased with both its warmth and comfort.

The yoke pattern is No. 10 from Lett-Lopi No. 16, and it looks almost as good from the reverse as it does from the right side.


I didn't follow the pattern at all for shaping the body and sleeves. I winged it with the help of Elizabeth Zimmermann's seamless sweater guidelines. The challenging aspect of this was completely unexpected. Before I started, I swatched on both size 6 and size 7 needles so I could pick which fabric I liked better. I preferred the fabric knit on size 7 needles (it was a little lighter, and less stiff), so I went to the store and bought size 7 circulars in varying lengths. Or at least I thought I did. As I was finishing the body, I started trying it on the check the length and noticed that it seemed tighter than it ought. Perplexed, I checked the gauge of the sweater and discovered that it was the same as the swatch I'd done on size 6 needles. This seemed odd to me, so I got out my needle size checker and discovered that I'd been knitting on size 6 needles! There was no possibility of mix-up on my end (I simply don't own enough needles), since these had gone straight from the store's package labeled size 7 to my knitting. At that point, I wasn't willing to frog the body, so I adjusted the number of stitches to account for it all being on size 6s and went with it. The lesson? Always double check your needles, even when they're fresh from the store.

There's so much I like about this sweater - I love the dark blue with the grey. I really like the pattern of the yoke. I like the way it fits. I like the blue on the cuffs and hem. The technical detail I'm proudest of, though? The underarm grafts:


When I introduced the sweater to the blog, I mentioned that it was my Knitting Olympics project. Despite my late finish, I think I could have done the sweater in two weeks had I not severely underestimated the amount of time school was going to take. Still, I think I'm at least as happy with it now as I would be had I finished it during the Olympics.

Wet wool...

... smells remarkably like wet dog. Except cleaner.

My Lopi sweater is blocking. My process? I gave it a bath in cold water with Woolite (it's what I've got), and rinsed it well - I was really surprised at how dirty the wash water was. Maybe it's related to the rather high vegetative content of Lopi... After rinsing it, I folded the sweater up in a towel and walked on it until the towel was as wet as the sweater. Then I carefully laid the sweater out on a different towel and left it to dry. Despite the lack of steam and pins, the blocking has been remarkably successful in removing the imperfections.


I'll post a finished object series of pictures later this week. It's supposed to get cold and maybe snow Thursday and Friday, so I think I'll actually get to wear the sweater. :-)

Now that I'm done with the sweater, I'm trying to decide what to knit next. I really like the Cable-Down Raglan from the spring IK. I also kind of like the Green Tea Raglan - except that I'd knit it in purple. Or maybe I should knit socks... I was thinking of using the Trekking XXL I got to make a variation of these. I've got some Baby Ull I could turn into Jaywalkers... Or maybe lace is really what I want to do next. I've got some black Kidsilk Night and some ideas for a pattern...

Of course, as I'm pondering these possibilities, there are other voices crying for my attention. My collection of WIPs can be pretty vocal when it wants to be. A few weeks ago when I was weighing my stash, I came across my longest neglected WIP - a scarf that I must have started about four years ago. It didn't even have needles stuck in it any more, but its yarn is Mission Falls 1824, a delightfully soft, squishy wool.


I'm still planning to cast on something new this weekend - any recommendations? But in the meantime, I stuck needles back into the neglected scarf and have been working on it as reading knitting (something I can knit while reading). I've also been making pretty good progress on my class knitting - the cabled scarf that matches the mittenettes.


Don't tell the scarf (since I really do like it), but I'm starting to get a little bored with it. It'll be lovely when it's done, but right now I want some excitement in my knitting...

Yarnharlotry

I can't think of a better way to end a week than last Friday evening. The week was a bit rough - more homework than I would have liked and a less-than-fun test Friday morning. Friday evening, though, one of my roommates was throwing a birthday part for my other roommate, but I skipped out on it. Why?


To see Yarnharlot! Stephanie was giving a talk and signing here in Pittsburgh, and it was a fantastic evening. I got to chat with a bunch of other nice knitters before the talk. I worked on my grey sweater and my Bayerische sock. I loved Stephanie's talk - it was thoughtful and hilarious. After the talk, I milled around the bookstore working on my sock until it was my turn to stand in line, and then, after about a half hour in line, I got to meet Stephanie! I took her some chocolate, showed her my sweater and sock, and I got to hold her sock! It was like touching the Shroud of Turin...


The sock and the sweater thoroughly enjoyed the night, and the sock felt honored to be held by Stephanie. In fact, it's still giddy.

The sweater is coming along nicely. I've got just a few more rows of the neckband to knit, the underarms to graft, the ends to weave in, and then blocking. In fact, it should be finished some time early this week; it'll depend on the school work.


Thanks for all the nice comments here and on Stephanie's page about my sock. It's coming along quite nicely, although there's not really been any noticeable change since the last time I posted pictures.

Negative Progress

This is the current state of the Lopi sweater:


Yes, there did use to be a yoke on it. In fact, the yoke had been coming along nicely. I'd finally gotten to the point where the floats were short enough I could just hold one color in each hand without having to pause to twist them. I was really enjoying the knitting, and I was loving the way the dark blue looked against the grey.


Then I tried it on and discovered that it didn't so much fit:


The picture doesn't do justice to the not-fitting of the sweater. The yoke was really much too tight, the body was stretching more across the bust than I would have liked, and the sleeves were each about an inch too short. So I frogged. I'm going to add an inch to each sleeve, as well as two stitches. For the body, I'm going to add one to two inches length-wise, and enough stitches for another patter repeat. So, hopefully within the next day or so, I'll be back to putting the pieces together again. And with better fitting this time around.

Not "other work"

This week was my first week of classes. In the first two days, the instructors must have told us a dozen times that we aren't to do "other work" during lecture. Fortunately, it turns out that knitting doesn't count as "other work." I've knit in every class except the first one (the amount of knitting is inversely proportional to the amount of note-taking required), and I was a little worried that it would bother the instructors. I do sit in the first row, and I'm not exactly clandestine about my knitting. On Friday, though, the head of the school (who often sits in on our classes) told me that the concurrence among the instructors is that "knitting doesn't count as doing other work."

Thursday evening I finished the second grey sleeve while reading for class, so I had to come up with something else to knit in class. I needed something small, chart-free, and simple, so that I could do most of the knitting without actually needing to look at it. The solution?

A scarf to match the Cable Mittenettes!

The cables are simple, so no chart is required, and there's only cabling every fourth row, so I mostly don't have to look at it. Also, I don't use a cable needle, so that helps minimize the conspicuousness of knitting in the front row.

You'll be happy to know that the grey Lopi sweater hasn't been neglected just because it isn't my class knitting any more. I attached the arms to the body and knit several rows of the yoke. The yoke puckers a little bit, I think because the floats are so long. It isn't bad, though, and I think it will block out nicely.

So much better

Today has been as much better on the technology front as could possibly be wished. I fixed my laptop keyboard; its screen's backlight decided to work again (it had been on the fritz); and best of all, I got a wireless card and very nice new speakers for my desktop. In the computer realm, I am totally in business. I even got some knitting done (in class, but none of the teachers seem to mind). In fact, I'm making good progress on the second sleeve. I think I might even get it done this week, and that's without doing any knitting outside of class.

(The sleeve is basking in the sound of my new speakers.)

I know I've been promising the pattern for the Cable Mittenettes, but that's going to have to wait another post. I have a bit of homework to do tonight, so I need to keep this relatively short, and writing out pattern instructions in a nice, usable form is going to take more time than I have to spend tonight. So instead, I'll answer a few questions:

DPNs or two circulars for sleeves? I've never knit a sleeve on DPNs. In fact, this is only the second sleeve I've ever knit. I'm using two circulars because that's what I had handy when I started. I generally like DPNs, but I find that the large-ish metal ones are too heavy to handle easily, and I didn't have any wood ones around when I needed them. The other thing is that I like short-ish DPNs, and the sleeve gets to a circumference that wouldn't work on a four-needle set, although it might be ok on a five-needle set. On the other hand, I'm not entirely enamored of the two circular method, either. I really think I need to knit more sleeves before I can offer anything resembling an informed opinion on the matter.

So, you just moved. Have you found the LYS yet? Well, sort of. Google told me where it is (the nearest is pretty close to where I live), but I haven't been there yet. I'm sort of wondering why I need to check out the LYS during Lent when I gave up buying yarn... Of course, I do need needle for some of the lace knitting I have planned.

That Ostrich thing in some of your pictures - what is it? I'd like to tell you it's a disk filled with good knitting karma, or something to that effect, but that would be wholly untrue, although possibly more interesting than what it really is. The Ostrich was the airplane that was my senior design project. The team I was on had a deep appreciation for irony (our second choice for a name was Icarus). The Ostrich could fly 10L of water, and was the only plane in the competition (scroll down for 2005-06) to be able to fly so much. The Ostrich fuselage was rack for soda bottles, and the disk is a water-jet cutout from one of the openings. Several of us kept one as a souvenir, and I use mine as a coaster.

What do you do with those washcloths that you knit, anyway? I give them away. A few have been gifts for family, but the bulk of them I've given to the Missionaries of Charity in Washington D.C., who run a shelter for single mothers and mothers-to-be.

Piece of crap...

That would be my computer, not my knitting. I was going to give you a nice post with the pattern for the Cable Mittenettes, but then the g, h, and backspace keys on my laptop quit working and my evening was instead spent fighting with the stupid computer. grrr...

I have done some knitting, though. I started the second sleeve for my grey Lopi sweater. I would have gotten a lot further along, but I did the wrong number of rows between increase rows and had to frog about 30 rows.


I really hope tomorrow is better, at least on the technology front...