FO: Wisteria

Next up in the FO Parade is Wisteria:

The Details:

Pattern: Wisteria by Kate Gilbert from The Twist Collective. I love this pattern. I had a few problems with it, mostly from misreading the pattern (which I still hold was not entirely my fault). Mostly, though, I was able to knit from the pattern. I did lengthen the body and sleeves, and used front and back darts instead of side decreases for shaping. I also did an extra repeat of the collar pattern to make a higher collar--mine's more of a mock turtleneck than a high crewneck.

Size: 37"-ish

Yarn: My handspun, from Ashland Bay roving, 70/30 merino/tussah silk in the Autumn colorway.

Needles: Knit Picks Options circs (natch!), size 6

Thoughts: This project holds a special place in my heart. It's not the best sweater I've ever made, and it's not my first handspun sweater, but it is the first sweater for which I have attempted to deliberately spin yarn. I've blogged about this process several times, although I realize I barely mentioned the knitting part at all. (That's because I knitted this sweater during our Tahoe vacation, and I couldn't blog.) The yarn turned out maybe just a bit heavier than it should have been, but I was able to get gauge by knitting just a little tighter than I would have liked. This worked in my favor, actually, since the yarn grew more on blocking than I anticipated, and would certainly have grown more had I not knitted it rather firmly.

I haven't actually worn this yet; the weather hasn't been cool enough for such a warm, heavy pullover. But I am looking forward to finally putting it to use...next winter.

Wrestling Wisteria

I cast on for Wisteria tonight. Five times. I learned a lot in the process, like just how many ways it is possible to mess up. Wanna know? Here's a list:

1. Read directions. Cast on 150 stitches. Count them twice to confirm 150 stitches on the needle. Join, being careful not to twist. Work four rounds. Realize it doesn't look like the picture. Read directions again. And again. Finally realize that Round 1: Work row 1 of Collar and Yoke chart 12 times does not mean "work round one 12 times," but rather, repeat the chart for round one 12 times, taking you all the way around the first round. (For the record, I think this is a completely crappy way of wording that direction, but it could be I'm a little cranky.) Say bad word. Rip.

2. Cast on 150 stitches. Count them twice to confirm 150 stitches on the needle. Join, being careful not to twist. Work round 1 once, round 2 once, round 3 once, round 4 once, and wonder why the collar looks rather large. Like, almost large enough to fit around your bust. Count the stitches again. Confirm 150 stitches on the needle. Check gauge. Confirm that it is correct. Go on Ravelry and see if anyone else has this problem. Note that it seems to be a personal thing. Work another two rounds to see if it pulls in. Check pattern again. Notice that pattern reads CO 120 sts. Recognize that 120 is significantly less than 150. Say more bad words. Loudly. Rip.

3. Cast on 120 stitches. Count them twice to confirm 120 stitches on the needle. Work round 1 once, round 2 once, round 3 once. Take satisfaction in human-sized collar. Wonder why it looks different from the past two attempts in ways other than size. Attempt round 4 and discover it to be physically impossible to complete. Realize that, while you have joined, you have not been careful not to twist. Congratulations. You have knitted a mobius. You have not, however, knitted a collar. Choke back really bad words struggling to escape in deference to children in the room. Pour large glass of wine instead. Rip.

4. Cast on 150 stitches. Do I even need to tell you where this ended up? Send children out of room. Say lots and lots of bad words. Finish wine. Rip.

5. Cast on 120 stitches. Count them twice to confirm 120 stitches on the needle. Check the pattern to make sure you in fact need 120 stitches. Join, being careful not to twist. Work round 1 once. Work round 2 once. Work round 3 once. Confirm that you have not twisted. Confirm that you still have 120 stitches on the needle. Put the knitting down and go to bed while you're ahead.

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?

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.