Deep Purple

I think it's finally time...

I've had the yarn for this in the stash for almost a year now. I bought four HUGE (250 gram) hanks of this deep purple Kid Aran at Little Knits last fall with this project in mind. I know that's a lot of yarn, but I have had way too many experiences with running out halfway through the second sleeve, and I knew I'd probably never be able to get more of this hand dyed yarn to match.

After finishing up two lingering projects in the past two days (an endeavor that involved lace repairs, rescue yarn, and the dyepot), I feel I have served my penance for putting the Round Yoke Jacket on the shelf. (I'll show you the finished projects once I can get pictures.) After several rounds of swatching for projects in my queue and not really feeling the love for any of them, I think I am ready to tackle this one. I've been looking forward to it for a long time, but Death By Cables sort of took the edge off my cable love for a while there.

I'm planning to make this one significantly longer than the original. I don't really like cropped sweaters. I hit 5'11" when I was 14, so I've spent most of my life tugging on clothes that are too short. I have a hard time deliberately making a short sweater. I want mine to be hip-length. I think I can just add length to the peplum, but I'll have to see. For those who aren't familiar with this pattern, the peplum is knitted as one long piece, then the upper part of the sweater is worked in right and left halves, each incorporating front, back, and one sleeve. It looks to be a bit complicated to adjust sizing. Fortunately, I fall comfortably within one of the existing sizes, except for the length.

I'm hoping to cast on tonight, after my birthday party! Yes, indeed. Yarnhog is a year older today. I've been 29 for the past 10 years, so I think it may be time to turn 35.

FO: Tahoe

I finally got around to doing a FOto shoot of all my unblogged FO's. Being a prudent blogger, however, I'm not going to show them all at once. One a day, people, just like candy bars. Let the FO parade begin!

We'll kick this thing off with one I've never even blogged at all. But there's a good reason for this. I've mentioned this project a couple of times in passing (I believe I called it "the ugliest thing I've ever made"). I made most of it while we were skiing in Lake Tahoe in February. It was supposed to be Juliet, but that...didn't quite work out. It was only after knitting and ripping the bloody thing four times that I finally got it working--and realized the design didn't suit me at all.

Not wanting to waste all the effort, I ripped back to the yoke. There was no way I was going to rip that sucker out after knitting it four times, so I thought I'd just wing it and come up with something on the fly. In the car. On winding, icy mountain roads. With the kids and the dog in the back and my husband demonstrating his winter driving skills with great enthusiasm and little concern for my utter lack of interest in seeing how neatly he could pull out of a slide or my complete devotion to reciting every prayer I'd ever heard while keeping the car on the road by sheer force of will.

Needless to say, I was less than pleased with the result of my design efforts.

When we got home (in one piece, praise all gods that be), I tried it on and then promptly stuffed it behind the sofa in utter disgust, where it has remained, awaiting frogging, ever since.

And then, in my post-Dickinson project clean up, I came across it again. I pulled it out to frog and it occurred to me that it wasn't as ugly as I remembered. And the yarn was soft and pretty. So I tried it on again. Not one of my better works, certainly, but not--I thought--beyond hope. It did fit pretty well. A little modification to the body, maybe. A couple more inches of length. Maybe some sleeves, and one of those left-over buttons from the CPH...

And you know, I think I like it!

The details:
Pattern: Mine, mostly
Yarn: RYC Soft Tweed, 7 balls in Sprig
Needles: Oh, maybe a 10 1/2. Knit Picks Options circular

FO: Death By Cables

Just in time for summer, I've finally finished Death By Cables! This sweater has the dubious distinction of having taken me longer to complete than any other project ever. It's been on the needles since October of last year--that's seven months; longer even than Icarus. Mercifully, the temperature has dropped from its 100 degree high two days ago to an absolutely lovely 69 degrees, just in time for my photo shoot.

Pattern: Dickinson Pullover by Kathy Zimmerman from the Fall 2007 Interweave Knits (my favorite issue of any knitting magazine ever).

Size: I followed the pattern for a 40 inch finished bust. Mine is not actually 40 inches. I'm not sure how to measure accurately because the ribbing and cables draw in the fabric so much, but I have a 35 inch bust, and as you can see, the finished sweater is fairly clingy. (This may change. I haven't washed and blocked it yet, which is also why the cables are a little uneven looking.)


Yarn: Berroco Softwist Bulky (wool/rayon) in burgundy. Seven skeins, I think. The yarn is beautiful: drapey and soft, with a gorgeous sheen from the rayon. I will never, ever use it again. It was the biggest pain in the world to knit with. The rayon is not only incredibly slippery, but splits like nothing I've ever seen and snags on everything. Working numerous cables and textured stitches in this yarn was like slowly peeling off my own fingernails. The only yarn I have ever disliked working with as much is Berroco Cotton Twist, which is a cotton/rayon blend, and for exactly the same reasons.

Needles: Size 8 (for the body) and 6 (for the collar) Knit Picks Harmony circulars. They were perfect for this slippery yarn.


Mods: I made the body two inches longer and the sleeves 3/4 of an inch longer than the pattern called for, to accommodate my height. I'm very happy with the finished length of both body and sleeves. Other than that, I followed the pattern to the letter. There's a first time for everything, I guess! If I were to do this again (and I won't--not ever), I would leave out the textured stitches on the sides of the large cable motif on both the body and sleeves and knit those sections in plain stockinette. I like the textured stitches, but they added four whole charts to the pattern, and those charts were not in sync with the cable charts and were impossible for me to memorize. Without those, the pattern would have been much, much easier for me to follow, and I would undoubtedly have been able to finish months ago. So although I like the way they look, I wouldn't knit them again.

Do you think this finally gets me off the hook with the KG?

And On It Goes

I consider myself a decent knitter. I've got yarn; I've got needles. I even have many, many completed projects that look good and fit correctly. But recent evidence indicates that maybe I need to reconsider how I think of my knitting skills.

I've been through a whole string of knitting disasters lately: gauge issues, fit problems, seaming goofs, running out of yarn (that's been a big one). Last night I discovered a whole new way to screw up.

I finished the knitting for Death By Cables! Yes, despite 100 degree temperatures, I've been plugging dutifully along on a chunky weight cabled wool pullover. And--who'd have thought?--all that knitting led to a finished sweater. Or, um, at least a finished something.

What's wrong with this picture?

If you guessed, "Hey, someone sewed those raglan sleeves to each other!" you're right. Just for the record, I don't have two right arms. I do, however, have a sweater with two right sleeves. You should have seen me trying to make it fit. I have spatial orientation issues, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that no amount of pulling and adjusting was going to get the left sleeve onto the left side of my body when it was sewn to the right sleeve.

Fortunately, I have other projects to share with you.

We have a pool in our backyard, and, like most pools, it is in full sun. This is lovely when one is floating in cool water, but not so lovely when one is steaming in the hot tub. For years, I've wished our hot tub was located in the shade, but there didn't seem to be any way to arrange this, since the hot tub is integrated into the pool. And then I saw a picture of an offset umbrella and a lightbulb went on.

We faced a small dilemma. The very large weighted base required to support the cantilevered umbrella would not fit on the narrow strip of concrete that edges the hot tub.


So my brilliant former-engineer husband came up with an alternate solution. He bought a pre-formed concrete footing and bolted the bottom section of the umbrella pole to the top of the footing.


Then he dug a big ol' hole in the raised bed behind the hot tub. He dug down far enough to sink the entire concrete footing below the level of the patio.


Then he reinstalled the landscape blocks and backfilled the hole. We put the umbrella into the base, and voila!

Instant shade (almost)! We've been delighted to find that the hot tub remains in full shade until about 3:30 in the afternoon. After that, the late afternoon sun slowly creeps under the western edge of the umbrella and lights the hot tub. But during the hottest part of the day, the hot tub is in lovely, cool, refreshing shade, while the pool remains in full sun. No frogging required!

Dear Knitting Goddess:

You win.

Dickinson it is.

Staggering On

Just to prove that I really am still plodding on through Death By Cables:

The back and front are done. This is the first sleeve. It's about a third of the way done. I have stuck to my vow to the Knitting Goddess not to cast on any new projects until I finish this...I mean, if you don't count socks, or the Great Green Glob. Speaking of which...

Here is the G-cubed prior to felting. That's me holding it. This is one freakin' huge bag.

And here it is after felting. It's like magic. It's still pretty big, but after multiple trips through the washer, it is dense enough to stop bullets, and I just don't think it's going to felt any more. I got a huge kick out of knitting this, which was a sort of knitting joke. And who doesn't love a good knitting joke, after all?