Progress

On the knitting front, at least.

Warm and Fuzzy (Summer Solstice) is blocking! I finished it last night around midnight and left it soaking in a warm bath overnight.

As I expected (and planned for), the alpaca grew like crazy in length when it hit water. The yarn also softened up nicely and became delightfully drapey.

The end result is a wrap-like sweater that falls below the hip on me--and looks much better on me than on Bertha.

The design is fun to knit, with almost no finishing. I did add a few details that weren't in the original, like these purl stripes on the cuffs, hem, and collar.

It's almost dry now, and I did a little test try-on. It fits perfectly! I'll be taking it to work with me tomorrow, but I'll try to get modeled shots next weekend.

Now, back to that BSJ.

Wipping Things Into Shape

Unlike the U.S. team, my WIP Cup project is still in the running.

I finished the sleeves last night and sewed all the seams while watching a couple episodes of "Medium". It hasn't been blocked yet, so it looks pretty lumpy, but I love these cables.


I'm going to get to work on the collar today and then block it while I choose some buttons from my little button stash.

But Spicy is only a small part of the wipping we've been up to around here. My other project yesterday was this:

See that massive pile of vines? Nine or ten years ago I planted two one-gallon vines, one on each side of the arbor over the dining room window, not visible in this picture. In the interim, those vines have all but taken over the back of my house. Initially I was really pleased with the way they grew and spread and completely covered the 30 year old patio cover that has seen better days. But they are amazingly messy, necessitating daily sweeping of the patio, and the patio cover itself is in desperate need of repair and paining.


So yesterday, with the aid of the KH, I tackled the removal of the vines. It was horrible. Hot, sweaty, and absolutely filthy. We live across from a nature preserve, which mostly seems to preserve millions of rats. They love our yard. There is food galore from my fruit trees and vegetables, a constant source of fresh water from the pool, and lots of vegetation they can hide in. Like piles of vines. When the KH fired up the hedge trimmer and made the first cut, half a dozen of them flew out of the vines like...well...rats.

In yanking and pulling and chopping down the vines, I came across at least half a dozen separate rats' nests. And the poop...oh, God, the poop! I'm sure I have hanta virus.

It took about four hours to yank down and chop up all the vines. I filled every trash can and yard waste can we own, and finally resorted to stuffing the cuttings in large trash bags for future pick up (the city will only take trash in city cans).

But here's the result.

Of course the sad state of the patio cover is now all the more obvious, but that will soon be remedied. We're going to repair it, beef up the posts, and paint the whole thing. I figure I can get at least a few more years out of it.

I can't believe how much more light there is in the house now! I had forgotten how bright the kitchen and family room were before the vines grew in. I love all the light.

Best of all, without the vines on the patio cover, I won't have to sweep the patio every day, and the kids and dogs won't be continually tracking leaves and debris into the house from the back yard.

The kids lost no time in taking advantage of the newly-cleaned patio with a nighttime pool party and S'mores roast:

All in all, a successful day.

Next week, after the trash cans are emptied, I have to tackle this:

That's my son's bedroom window in danger of being swallowed up by the same vines.

But as Scarlett said, I'll think about that tomorrow.

FO: Aran Cardigan

I've owed this one its own post for a while now. I just haven't been able to get decent pictures. Which is odd, considering I've barely taken it off for a week. But here it is now, The Aran Cardigan!

Although I still want to put on-seam pockets in this one, I've bowed to the reality of my own lack of motivation and accepted that I need an interim solution if I want to wear this any time in the near future. So I crocheted the pocket openings closed from the inside for the time being. The seam is virtually invisible from the outside, and if I ever become sufficiently motivated to work out the zippered pockets, it's just one quick tug to reopen the seam.

The Details:

Pattern: #20 Cable/Rib Cardigan (Rav link) by Gayle Bunn (mostly) from the Holiday 2004 Vogue Knitting. Mine is several inches longer in body and sleeves and has a zipper instead of toggles. I also redesigned the sleeves to pick up and knit in the round with a short row shoulder, and made mine a bit narrower. I omitted the four pockets on the front and will probably eventually add on-seam zippered pockets instead.

Size: I followed the directions for the 38", but ended up with more of a 34-36".

Yarn: Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool in Natural Brown. 2.75 (huge) skeins.

Needles: Knit Picks Options circs, sizes 5 and 6.

Thoughts: This was one of the most labor-intensive sweaters I've ever done. And I love the results. This is the sort of sweater you wear daily for years and years. The wool is a bit scratchy and very sturdy, and although the pictures would have you believe it is grey, it is actually a warm, dark brown. The 3x3 ribbing did get tedious, especially on the endless sleeves, which, ironically, turned out to be two inches too long after blocking, and I had to pick out the bind off rows and shorten them. They're still long, but in a good way.

Zipper Installation Unzipped

After staring at the Aran Cardigan hanging over a kitchen chair for two weeks (where I deliberately left it to spur myself to some sort of productive action), I finally tackled the zipper installation. It's not my favorite activity, but sometimes only a zipper will do. A few people commented on an earlier post that they have avoided attempting to install a zipper because it seems so hard. I've made two zippered cardigans before this one, both before I learned that installing a zipper is supposed to be hard, so I was never afraid to try it. In all honesty, I can assure you it is not hard in either concept or execution, even with my negligible sewing skills. If I can manage it, you surely can! For those of you who might not have tried it before, I took pictures of the process so I could prove it to you.

If you recall, the zipper I ordered for this sweater turned out to be much too long. So the first order of business was shortening it. Thanks to Sue, I knew that I needed to remove the zipper stops at the top, cut the zipper to the right length, then reattach the stops. The little things at the top are, naturally, the stops:

Alas, after twenty minutes with a tiny screwdriver and a needlenose pliers, I discovered that, in an excess of caution, the manufacturer of this particular zipper not only crimps the stop in place, but also glues them down, to be sure they won't come loose. And I'm sure they would be happy to know that nothing short of a nuclear blast is going to separate one of their zipper stops from the zipper. Not to worry, though. I happened to have a zipper repair kit handy, and there were extra stops in the kit. So I put the zipper in place and decided where to cut:

[This, by the way, is the actual, real color of the sweater, at least on my monitor.]

Unfortunately, as soon as I cut it, the fabric began to fray, so I sealed it with some clear nail polish and then installed the new stops by crimping them over the end of the zipper with the needlenose pliers:

With the zipper shortened to the proper length, I began pinning it in place:

Leaving the zipper zipped together, I positioned it so that the selvedge stitch covered half the teeth of the zipper. I like my zippers to be hidden. By positioning the selvedge stitch half over the teeth on each side, the zipper will be completely covered when the zipper is closed. It's important not to stretch the knitting while you're pinning so that you don't end up with a weirdly puckered zipper when it's sewn in.

Once I had the first side pinned all the way up, I started sewing. Here you can see how the selvedge stitch partially covers the teeth of the zipper:

I sewed straight through the zipper and the knitted fabric one stitch in from the edge, and as close to the zipper teeth as possible:

I tried to make small, even, straight stitches, but as you can see from the back of the zipper, I'm no seamstress. That's okay; no one will see the back of your zipper. You don't need to know how to sew. Just stitch as neatly as you can and take your time. It's not fun (at least, it's not fun for me), but it's not difficult.

Here's the first side all sewn in:

To sew the zipper to the other front, I unzipped the zipper and pinned the loose half to the opposite side. (You could pin it in place with the zipper closed, but I find this too difficult.)


To make sure I had the zipper lined up properly, I then rezipped the zipper:

It seemed to be lined up correctly, so I unzipped it again and sewed the second half of the zipper in place, and voila!

A completed zipper!

And almost completely hidden:


Now if I can just bring myself to tackle the concept of zippered pockets...

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I measured for a 24" zipper. I special ordered a 24" zipper. This is not a 24" zipper. Clearly. I can hear the Knitting Goddess chuckling from here.

Sleeve Island

I know a lot of people struggle with knitting sleeves. I've certainly heard of Sleeve Island; I've just never visited before now. But folks--I'm there.

(And trek? I swear this is brown yarn. It even says "Nature's Brown" right on the label. My camera can't read and refuses to acknowledge any tone but grey. Honest.)

I think it's the 3x3 ribbing. I'm pretty sure I've knitted at least a mile of it, but I don't seem to be getting any closer to the end. I've been thisclose to finishing the second sleeve for two days, but I've fallen into the knitting time warp and I can't get up. I've started to resent my freakishly long arms. If I had arms that were even close to a normal length, I'd be done by now. But no--I have the Stretch Armstrong version. (Really. I make my sleeves 21" from the underarm to the cuff. And my arms are less than 11" around at their thickest point. My husband calls them "tendrils". If my head were bigger, I could totally play a movie alien and no one would know the difference.)

I am rather proud of my sleeve caps, though.

Instead of working the sleeves flat and sewing them in, I picked up and did a short row cap before knitting around to the cuff. The ribbing sits perfectly in the armhole with no puckering or lumpiness at all. And not having to do any sewing is a big bonus. (If you're making this sweater, as some of you have indicated you plan to, I'll be happy to share how I did this. Just drop me a line and I'll email you directions.)

I have high hopes of finishing this sleeve today and moving on to the collar. (More 3x3 ribbing. *sigh*) Then it's just (yeah, right, "just") the pockets and zippers and this one will be all zipped up!

Aran Angst

Bertha was kind enough to model the Aran-in-progress for me this morning. As you can see, the back and both fronts are done and sewn together. As you can probably also see, it is running a bit small.

It will still fit--I think--thanks to this:

That's a whole lot of ribbing, and fortunately, it's very stretchy. I've tried this on, and it will seems like it will close, but it's going to be a lot more fitted than I intended.

Other than the sizing, I'm really happy with the way it's turning out. I've planned all along to close this with a zipper, but I am debating whether I should add some sort of zipper band to give it a little extra width across the front. I think the fronts turned out about an inch narrower than they should have. It's surprisingly difficult to get an accurate gauge measurement over a cabled surface until it is finished and sewn up and blocked (I steam blocked these pieces before sewing them together). In fact, it's not all that easy to get an accurate measurement even after it's all sewn up, which is why I only think the fronts are somewhat narrow, and I'm not sure that I need a zipper band.

That little gap on the side seam is deliberate. It occurred to me as I was sewing that on-seam pockets would be nice. I love to wear sweaters, but it's a pain not to have pockets. This sweater is sturdy enough to handle pockets, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

To keep the pockets from gaping open and ruining the lines, I will insert zippers to close them. At least this is my plan. If it turns out to be too much trouble, I can always forget the pockets and sew up the seams.

Now I just have to work out the sleeves. The pattern calls for bottom-up sleeves, knitted flat and sewn in. This sounds like a lot of trouble to me, and ribbed sleeves are notoriously difficult to sew into the armhole neatly, so I decided to pick up and knit down, shaping the sleeve cap with short rows. This means no sewing, and I can get the sleeves exactly the right length. But it also means I have to figure out the short rows for the shoulder, and I do not excel at this. Actually, I'm kind of wishing I had another project on the needles so that I could avoid thinking about it for a while. But I don't, so if you hear swearing and whining from the lower left corner of the country tonight, you'll know I'm knitting.

The Aran Report

Is anyone else starting to feel that updates on the Aran Cardigan are becoming a regular feature on this blog? Most of my projects don't have such...um...staying power. Here's today's picture:

That's two fronts and an almost completed back. It's possible my love affair with rough brown yarn is beginning to wane. Ten million rows of 3x3 ribbing can have that effect on a person. Since the sleeves--all both of them--are also 3x3 ribbing, I'm starting to play games with myself to keep it interesting. Games like: "How many rows can I knit during the next set of commercials? How many rows can I knit without looking at my knitting? How many rows can I knit behind my back?" [Remember the scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart is playing the piano upside down and backwards? That's next.] But seeing the approach of the end of the endless back is heartening and may give me the strength to tackle the first sleeve, at least.

But while my urge to knit with rough brown yarn is fading, apparently my urge to spin with it is not. Check this out:

That is a lot of roving from my beloved Beaverslide Dry Goods. There was a reason for this, which seemed perfectly logical at the time. I was drooling over the various yarns on their website, as I am inclined to do on a regular basis, when I saw on the sale page that they were offering "natural black" roving for a truly amazing price. Being me, I quickly determined that I could buy and spin the roving and end up with about the same worsted weight yarn that they also sell on the website for a mere fraction of what it would cost me to buy the already-spun yarn. And I would get the added entertainment value of spinning it myself. Although I am (nominally, anyway) in a stash-abatement period, fiber does not count as stash, since I don't have any real fiber stash to speak of. I whipped out the American Express and ordered way too much roving.

Alas, when the roving arrived, I was sorely disappointed. It was a) not black at all, or even mixed charcoal grey, as described on the website, but rather a dark, chocolatey brown (which I love, but dudes, there is a limit to how much brown yarn I can possibly use); b) not even remotely like the the yarn I so love in texture, but instead coarse and very, very springy; and c) well, just too much.

But I decided it wasn't fair to judge it so harshly without even testing it, so I spun up the equivalent of a swatch:

I didn't much enjoy spinning this, truth be told. I am spoiled from spinning commercially-prepared super-soft merino, alpaca, and silk rovings. This is a much-closer-to-the-sheep sort of fiber. It doesn't slip easily through my fingers while I draft, and there is no way I could ever make this stuff spin up smoothly. But after plying and washing it, it's starting to grow on me. Although it's not as soft as Beaverslide yarn, it's no rougher than the fishermen's wool I'm using for the Aran Cardigan. It has a nice springiness to it, and I suspect I will eventually decide it's just perfect for some future project. I'm not in a great rush to spin up this monster pile of fiber, but I imagine it will gradually fill up my spinning basket.

I realize this post is getting much too long, but I do want to show you one more thing before I go:

This is the swatch I knitted up for Wisteria, from the merino-silk roving I've been spinning. You can see that even knitting it didn't completely tame the lumpiness of the yarn. I've decided to call it "character" and move on. The good news is, I am getting gauge! I had pretty serious doubts about that, since the yarn seemed significantly heavier than worsted weight, but perhaps it's just fluffy. The swatch has a nice drape, even worked up on size 6 needles to give me 18 stitches to four inches, so I think Wisteria is a go!

Progress

You know it's going to be a rough day when you awaken to a child standing beside your bed, saying, "Hey, wake up! I have to be at the bus stop at ten 'til!"

I, in my sleepy stupor, could think of no response except, "Ten 'til what?" It seemed a perfectly reasonable question, even though the answer has been "ten 'til seven" for nearly six months.

Unfortunately, this was at 6:42. Fortunately, it was my husband's morning to get up.

The day didn't improve a whole lot after that, but at least I have yarn and fiber to turn to for comfort.

I am slowly making progress on the Aran Cardigan:

I know this looks the same as the last picture I showed you, but this is the second front! I also have about half of the back done. I am working it simultaneously with the fronts because it is flat 3x3 ribbing, and sometimes I don't have the concentration to work these cables, as evidenced by the four separate times I had to rip back the first front.

And I've finished the spinning for my Wisteria. Seven 100 gram skeins of worsted-ish weight two-ply wool and silk:

I still can't get a completely accurate picture of the color(s). It's mostly grey, with a purplish cast, due to the burgundy and green accents in the roving. I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out, although I'm not convinced it will work for the intended pattern. If it doesn't, I have a backup plan for this yarn. It's a couple of projects back in the queue anyway. I need to finish the Aran Cardigan first, and then I have a very simple sweater project in mind for our annual ski trip, which includes 22 hours in the car. I learned my lesson about car knitting two years ago, when I tried to work a lace pattern with two kids and two dogs bouncing around in the back seat. Suffice it to say, I ended up ripping all 22 hours of progress on that one. Now I know: nothing but plain stockinette in the car. The added advantage is that I can knit stockinette in the dark, so even after the sun goes down, I can keep knitting. Obsessed? Of course not. Just...ah...determined.

I did mention that I'm not the driver, didn't I?

Ah...Now I Remember...

Why I haven't done a cabled sweater in a while, that is.

I love cables. I love the little magic that happens when you rearrange a few stitches on a knitting needle. I love they way they create shadows and hollows and depth in even the most boring yarn. I love the way they dance across the fabric, making something static look like it's in motion.

What I don't love is how. long. they. take.

This is my progress on the Aran Cardigan:


I think (with no modesty whatsoever) that it's just beautiful. The wool is as woolly as you could possibly get, still full of lanolin and springy and scratchy (in a good way), and it shows the cables perfectly. There is no way this stuff will ever stretch or pill or, for that matter, wear out. I am going to love wearing it.

But I think I've spent as long on the left front as I usually spend on a whole sweater. Part of the issue is that I don't have very good spatial orientation, so I have a hard time memorizing charts. Part of it is that I added seven inches to the length of this sweater (seven!), because the original is only 20 inches long, which would put the hem somewhere above my belly button. Part of it is that, for reasons known only to the designer, who undoubtedly does not suffer from the same degree of asymmetry-aversion as I do, the armhole shaping cuts into the main cable--but only by three frickin' stitches, which is just enough that it throws off the balance of the cable, but not enough that it looks intentional. [This could not be allowed to stand, so after working halfway up the armhole, I ripped back and reworked it to keep the cable intact. This will require a slight shortening of the sleeve cap, when I get there, but it's not a big deal. And it's important that I be able to look at the finished product without hyperventilating, so it's worth the trouble.] But most of it is simply that it takes a lot longer to stop and rearrange the stitches as you work them. (I can't even imagine how long this would take if I were using a cable needle. Please, if you like knitting cables--or are planning to do so anyway--take a few minutes and learn to cable without a cable needle! It's not hard at all, and it simplifies the whole process immensely. There's a link over in my sidebar to Grumperina's truly excellent tutorial.)

I'm not complaining. Actually, I'm patting myself on the back for having the cleverness and foresight to realize that I don't have the patience to knit an entire sweater covered in cables, and so choosing one that only has cables on the front. (It's all a lie, of course. It was completely accidental. Although I have made several all-over cabled sweaters--Death By Cables, anyone?-- including one in a 50 inch chest that I designed myself and had to have done in only three weeks--god save me from ever making that sort of choice again--I have a selective memory where cables are concerned. It's like childbirth. No matter how much it hurts while it's happening, no matter how clearly I remember the pain, it seems to have no bearing on my decision to go through it again.)

Fortunately, we finally got season four of Lost from Netflix, and we're trying to catch up before season five starts in a few days, so there is a lot of knitting time built into the next few days.

Spin Cycle

I've been knitting away on my Aran Cardigan. It's rather slower going than usual, due to the moderate complexity of the cables, but very satisfying. I still have to read the charts as I knit, so I'm only about halfway through the left front so far. That's fine, since the cables are only on the fronts. The rest of the body and the sleeves and collar are all just 3x3 ribbing, which will fly by.

I've also been spinning away on the roving I want to use for Wisteria. I have three 100 gram, 2-ply skeins spun. Here are the first two:

The color is pretty accurate in these pictures. In this closeup you can almost see the green and pink tones in the grey (they're a little bit more noticeable in person):

I'm not the world's greatest spinner. As you can see, even my plied yarn is not especially even. But I've found the knitted fabric disguises a lot of the unevenness. (I tell myself that it doesn't matter; if I wanted perfectly smooth, even yarn, I could just buy machine spun and be done with it. I don't quite believe it.) My yarn may not be perfectly spun, but man is it soft! It's 70% merino, 30% silk. The roving is like buttah, I tell ya. I've spun it fairly tightly to help prevent pilling, but even so the finished yarn is soft, with an itch factor of zero--important for a high-necked design.

I think I've got close to the right gauge. I'm getting 9 wpi (wraps per inch), which is a worsted weight and the same wpi as the yarn called for in the pattern. But common sense tells me this yarn is heavier than worsted weight. Maybe aran? I don't think I've entered into bulky territory, though. I'm hoping I can make this work with the pattern. I wish the pattern had smaller sizing; even the smallest is a little big for me, and if my yarn is indeed heavier, I'd prefer to knit a size down from what I would usually pick. I may have to make some changes to the pattern to accommodate this yarn, but I think I can make it work.

Three skeins down, five to go!

Next Up

I've been having an unusually difficult time choosing a pattern for my next project. I am in a woolly sort of mood these days, probably because the weather is (finally!) consistently in the 50's and 60's, which is as close to winter as we get around here. I have an urge to knit a zippered aran cardigan from some brown fishermen's wool I have in the stash. One would think, of all the thousands of aran sweater patterns, it should be easy to pick one that suits and just get on with it. Not so. After a truly absurd amount of time perusing the options on Ravelry, in my various books, and in every back issue of every knitting magazine I own, I finally found a winner (Ravelry link). Ironically enough, it was already in my queue, which is, of course, the last place I looked. Alas, it is not available for download or individual purchase, and is from a four year old magazine. But, oh, I love the internet! A copy should even now be winging its way toward me--I hope.

In the meantime, I am unwilling to cast on anything else, since I know I will want to start the aran as soon as I have the pattern in hand (yes, I really do try to keep to one primary project at a time). I have been keeping busy instead by modifying some of my FO's to better suit. As I've mentioned before, I've come to realize I like my sweaters a bit longer than I usually make them. So I've been altering some of my favorites. This one, for example:

This is my Not-So-Sahara, knitted from lovely Cascade Eco Wool. I wear it almost constantly. But the wool is springy rather than stretchy, and I find it tends to shrink up as I wear it after blocking, causing me to tug at the bottom and cuffs. So I picked out the bound off edges (just one more advantage to top-down knits) and lengthened them about two inches. Now it looks like this:

I'm much happier with it now.

I also fixed one of my husband's sweaters, which I knitted about three years ago (the yarn is discontinued Cervinia Londra--wool and acrylic; the design is my own).

That's Bertha modeling it. She's smaller than my husband, so it's a little drapey.

This one was done in pieces, bottom up, and sewn together. So it wasn't until the whole thing was done that I realized the sleeves were long enough for an orangutan. He's worn them rolled up for years, but it's always bugged him. So I shortened them. This proved to be much more difficult than I expected. I figured I could just cut the sleeves where I wanted the cuffs to start, pick up the live stitches, and work downward. It works well in theory. It was hugely frustrating in practice. The yarn is slightly fuzzy, and has been worn and washed a lot. It was tough to locate individual rows, much less individual stitches. And then there are a multitude of cables and textured stitches, which complicated things. It ended up taking me several hours to get all the stitches onto needles in a way that made sense. And then I realized that I had made all the sleeve increases below the elbow, so that after cutting off the bottom four inches of sleeve, I had a really, really w i d e cuff to work with. I ended up decreasing a lot of stitches, hiding the decreases in both the last pattern row and the cuff itself. I was afraid I was going to end up with a weird sort of puffed sleeve effect (anyone remember the "puffy shirt" from Seinfeld?), but it seems to have turned out pretty well. Here's a close up:

My husband is happy with it, anyway, which is what matters.

Next up is going to be this:

This is another recent project, my Kochoran Scoop. There is really nothing wrong with this, except that I think I would wear it more if it were longer. Since I have more of the yarn I used, and this one is also top-down, it's a simple thing to add a few inches to the bottom. That should keep me busy for this evening, at least.

And finally, I've set to work on a new spinning project. I have about a pound and a half of merino/silk roving in a silvery-grey with green and burgundy accents that I think would be perfect for Wisteria.

I was pretty ho-hum about that particular pattern, until I saw this version (Ravelry link). I think the stripey-ness of the semi-variegated yarn used in the original turned me off; I love the more subdued look of the heathered grey. I spun up some of my roving last night, and it is coming out a muted silver with a beautiful silky sheen.


Color in spinning is utterly baffling to me. I never have the slightest idea how a roving will look spun up--or if I do, I'm completely wrong. The spun singles here is almost solid, although it's a little darker in person than in the picture. I like Wisteria better in a solid color, so that's okay. I think I'm spinning to get about the right gauge (after I ply it)--although spinning gauge, too, is always a mystery to me--so it may work out. Don't look for an immediate cast on in any case; I'm not a very fast spinner, and a pound and a half is a lot of roving.

There you have it: what a sweater knitter does when she doesn't have a sweater on the needles. I mean, other than sit in a corner, rocking and moaning and sucking her thumb.