FO: Amanda

You know you've fallen down on the blogging when you can't remember when you finished the FO you're trying to blog about. Fortunately, I have this one in my projects on Ravelry. It turns out I finished back around Christmas time. This is Amanda (Rav link):

The Details:

Pattern: Amanda by Lisa Lloyd, from A Fine Fleece. I love, love, love this pattern! I modified it by making it longer (of course) and by adding waist shaping.

Size: small (which isn't--the designs in this book are huge!)

Yarn: Sigh. Andean Alpaca Regal in Mallard Heather, 10 skeins. I love this yarn. Soft, gorgeous, drapey--and grows like a teenage boy. This sweater is at least three inches longer in the body than it started and the sleeves are even too long for me. It's really warm and cozy, but the pattern would definitely benefit from a springier yarn with more body. Entirely my fault; I may eventually make another of these in a stickier wool. For now, I wear this as a short robe.

Needles: Knit Picks Options circs, size 8.

I blogged about this here, here, and here, if you want more details.

Sophie seems to like alpaca.

Excuses, Excuses

Why I haven't been blogging:

Jury duty (still!)
One UTI
One migraine
Christmas
Hanukkah
Kids home from school (eternally, it seems)
A large dog with a back injury (three vets and counting)

and...

Just plain laziness.

Christmas was good. We had no house guests this year, which was much less stressful than last year's never-ending tag team of family members in search of a place to sleep and 24-hour kitchen service (I love my family, but...you know). There is some small chance that we have also turned the corner on the sibling-rivalry smack-down, although I'm reserving judgment on that. It could just be carry-over from the annual "if you don't stop smacking your brother, Santa is going to skip right the heck over this house!" threats that we always resort to at this time of year. We are in the midst of our annual holiday veterinary crisis, however. For the third year in a row, one of our pets has decided Christmas is the perfect time to have a medical meltdown. In the past three days, we've been to two vets, done one set of x-rays, and received four prescriptions, and I spent the morning on the phone looking for a veterinary chiropractor (yes, really) who could see her on short notice. After 30 calls, I found one that will see her tomorrow, but the office is an hour drive from our house. Think I can convince the kids it's a field trip?

I personally had a banner Christmas morning. My darling husband has finally bowed to the power of the fiber addiction and accepted that the only gifts I really want have to do with animal hair. I got extra bobbins for my Woolee Winder (which I wanted and requested), a skein winder (which I wanted but didn't request), and--my personal favorite--my very own body double!

She doesn't look exactly like me; there's that little matter of the missing head and limbs. But she is exactly my height and shares my exact measurements, and she's already proved her value. These shots were taken Christmas morning, right after I ripped out the enormous and time-consuming shawl collar on Amanda because there was something just so not right about it.

As soon as I put the sweater on Bertha (or Ruby, or Wilma, depending on the mood), the problem was obvious:

This is the back neckline, according to the pattern, before the stitches are picked up and knitted for the collar. See the problem? Yup. Way too high. But I couldn't see it when I tried the sweater on myself. It's not that easy to see the back of your own neck. With the sweater still on Bertha, I took out the bind off row and ripped back until the neckline was about the right height (this sweater is a bottom-up raglan, so this was simple). Then I bound off again and redid the shawl collar.

The end result is perfect, but I would not have discovered the real problem without Bertha's help. I shudder to think that I would undoubtedly have re-knitted the entire collar, only to have it still not fit properly, because the problem wasn't the collar in the first place. I'm not sure why this problem came up. My stitch gauge was correct. My row gauge was slightly smaller, which should have resulted, if anything, in a shorter raglan with a lower back neckline. The rest of the pattern was perfect, except that the sleeves, as written, would be too short for anyone over five feet tall (unless you're a T-Rex, in which case, knit away). I added three inches to the sleeve length, and they only fit because the yarn grew a lot with washing. If you're considering this pattern, do keep that in mind, and pay attention to the height of the back neck.

Modeled shots to follow, as soon as I can collar a photographer to help me out.

Love: A Review

I will apologize right up front for the quantity and quality of the photos in this post. The quantity is my fault; the quality, not so much. I will explain later.

Like most of you, I own a number of knitting books. Some are technique books, some are stitch dictionaries, and some are pattern books. Of them, the pattern books are the most fun; who doesn't love to look at beautiful sweaters, shawls, or socks? But they're also the books I "use" the least. I rarely knit straight from a pattern. Most of the time, I start with a pattern, then modify it to suit my body, my taste, and my yarn. When I do buy a pattern book, it is usually not because I want to use the patterns, but because there is one or more project that I find inspiring in tangible way, meaning I can base an actual project on it. Even when I love a book, like Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits, I rarely knit more than one project from it, at best. (In point of fact, I have not made a single project from Custom Knits, although I have done two top-down sweaters using techniques from the book since I bought it a couple of months ago.)

Which makes it almost shocking to me that I have come across a book with not one or two patterns that I want to knit, but a whole wardrobe of them:

This is an amazing book. It is organized around the concept of using handspun yarns to produce gorgeous, heirloom sweaters, and it is sort of generally directed at spinners, since it provides instruction on different fibers and how to spin yarns for specific purposes, but it is not a spinning book. One of the interesting aspects is that each project is shown in both a handspun yarn and a substitute commercial yarn, sometimes quite similar to the handspun, and sometimes completely different, which is particularly useful, since it illustrates how much power yarn choice has on a finished project.

But for me, the definite highlight is the patterns.

I love this take on a traditional aran:


Or how about this one? I never thought of an aran as "dressy" before.


And how could you not love this?

There's a men's and a women's version of this one. I love the collar.


This Chanel-esque one caught my eye, too, although I don't like either of the yarns they used for it.

And here's where I'll apologize for the photo quality. I took several shots of this and couldn't get a clear one. Then I realized it was blurry in the book. A lot of the photos are. Most of them showcase each sweater in two yarns, often with one in the foreground and one in the background, with one or the other out of focus. And many of the photos, while beautiful, are not particularly useful for a knitter who wants to get a clear view of the garment. They are either partial shots, closeups, or too far away, or they only show the back, etc. For almost every project, I found myself turning the page to see another view, only to discover there wasn't one. This is one of two major issues I have with this book.

It really irritated me with regard to this sweater, which made me gasp out loud with delight:

I love this sweater! See the texture? Not so well? Yeah, well, get used to it. The only other picture of this sweater is this one:

And yes, they are in "soft focus" in the book. That won't stop me from making this sweater; I have the perfect yarn in the stash, and I've been wanting to use it for a cozy, squishy cardigan. I'll make mine a little longer, and add some waist shaping.

Obviously, no book is going to appeal to everyone equally. If you don't like cables and textured patterns, and rustic, woolly yarns make you itch just looking at them, this probably isn't the book for you. It runs heavily to aran/fisherman-type sweaters with lots of cables and textured stitches, although as you can see from the pictures above, there are certainly other designs as well. There are also some scarf, hat, and sock designs. Most of the patterns are unisex, which leads me to my other major complaint: most of the patterns start at a 38"-40" chest and go up from there. If you are a plus size, you are well-covered with this book. If you're on the small side, be prepared to do some creative re-sizing, or swim in your sweater like the models in the book. (Most of the sweaters also lack waist shaping, and many have drop shoulders, so unless you're shaped like SpongeBob Squarepants, you may want to consider some modifications there, too.)

But despite what I consider to be fairly significant flaws, I really love this book. As a spinner, I especially enjoyed the section on different fibers. Ever wonder whether Romney is coarser or finer than Corriedale, or what the difference is between Blue Faced Leicester and Border Leicester? I know now! There's also a bit of information on blending fibers, estimating fiber quantities per project, etc., but nothing you wouldn't find in greater detail in a spinning book. As a knitter, I find the projects absolutely irresistible. There is enough quantity and variety here to keep me busy all winter. Now, if the weather would just cooperate...