Fisherman's Rib Gaiter

Attendance at the Cowlapalooza and Gaiterfest is light so far. This week has been filled with events every single evening running until 10:00pm. I've had time to run home for a quick bite after work before having to head back out for chorus rehearsals and our nephew's winter concert. It's been hectic, and I've only been able to grab a little time here and there to do a few rounds.

Not a good pace, I admit, but today is the last day of classes and the needles of progress will click on. I was able to bind off this gaiter after breakfast and before work. It's a simple 1x1 fisherman's rib over 64 stitches. I had seen a pattern for something similar in Ravelry, but it involved a totally reversible Fisherman's rib -- meaning that one alternated rows of knitting into the stitch below with rows of purling into the stitch below. A little fiddly, yet doable -- however, it seemed to be eating up too much yarn so I ripped back and did a one-sided version. It's not quite as long as the first one, but it looks kind of cool. Sort of a turtleneck without the rest of the sweater.

Six more to go!

Cowlapalooza and Gaiterfest 2010

Over Thanksgiving, Jeff and I were invited to go skiing in Colorado with my brother’s family. My sister and her family will be there too. And, while I generally try to avoid the hassle and bustle of that phenomenon known as Christmas knitting, I decided that I needed to come up with something warm and cozy for all of the family to wear. So I needed to come up with a plan for handy garments that I could knit fast.

My first instinct was scarves – great for stash-busting and quick to knit. I even got started on one. But since I need 8 garments, I slowly realized that I may not be able to get everything done before we head up. After talking with some of my fellow knitters yesterday, I settled on making cowls and neck gaiters. They knit up quick, there are tons of free patterns available, and you can make them from one skein on large needles. Thanks, Snowden, for suggesting this!

So I headed over the Hill Country Weavers where I had a credit from a return I’d made a few weeks ago. I dithered around for an hour or so, grabbing skeins here and there, before I was pointed toward a pile of Berroco Vintage Chunky. Great for size ten needles with good yardage, nice heathered jewel tones, and totally washable.

The next step was figuring out what to knit. There are TONS of free patterns in Ravelry. I just grabbed some that looked like they would fit the eight people I’m knitting for – two adult women, two adult men, two boys and two girls. I’m going to have to do some adjusting for the some of the kids’ cowls to make them fit, but because most of the patterns are fairly simple, it shouldn’t be too hard to adjust them.

First up, is the Cowl’d and Frosty Morning, which I’m knitting for my brother-in-law. The pattern is basically four rounds of seed stitch, followed by 11 rounds of stockinette. Repeat that two more times, and then add four final rounds of seed stitch. I used Jenny’s Surprising Stretchy Bind Off from the Fall 2009 issue of Knitty, and all was done. I cast on last night and finished this morning. I think my plan is going to work.

One down, seven to go. Admittedly I started with the most simple one. My knitting time is going to be limited next week as I have something going almost every evening, most of them associated with the chorus’ winter concert. But I think this is do-able.

Wish me luck.

Tamarix Terminatio

It’s done! It only took me a little over three months, but I’ve put the finishing touches on the Tamarix Quilt. There was nothing so satisfying as going over to Ravelry and putting this project to rest status-wise.

We got a call from Jeff’s dad earlier in the week. His little first cousin once removed did indeed arrive on Monday. So she’s four days old today. I haven’t seen any pictures yet, nor, sadly, do I know the little one’s name! However, I have it on good authority that she’s gorgeous – as I knew she would be.

I was able to get the applied I-cord edging done during the evenings this week. I tweaked the pattern a little bit with this feature. The pattern called for a five-stitch I-cord, but after reading someone else’s comment in Ravelry, I decided to scale this back to a 3-stitch I-cord. I didn’t want the blue-ness to be too overwhelming and wanted a trimmer, less floppy edge. Also, rather than using the method suggested in the pattern, I used the method outlined by Elizabeth Zimmerman in The Opinionated Knitter and which I used when making the garter stitch throw for my in-law’s last year. Here’s the video if you want to refresh your memory. The main difference is that EZ calls for a yarnover which seems to do a good job of hiding the underlying color (green in the photo above) from peeking through.

I’m so happy to have this finished. And although it was frustrating at times, and I lost my mojo halfway through, I’m pleased with the results. I have enough yarn to crank out something else – while I’m on a garter stitch kick, I should try a Baby Surprise Jacket…

But alas, I have other knitting to do. It turns out I’m going to be spending my Christmas holiday somewhere much colder than here with Jeff and eight other relatives. Relatives who will need to keep themselves warm in the cold and snow. More on that next time.

Delivery Imminent

I got some news recently that reminded me of the episode of Keeping Up Appearances in which Hyacinth is expecting the arrival of her new three-piece suite which is an exact replica of one at Sandringham House and is to be delivered by a van displaying the royal warrant. In order to make sure that her neighbors (especially that nosy pseudo-hyphenated Mrs. Barker-Finch at number 23) know all about it, she directs poor Richard to set up traffic cones in front of their house, along with a sign reading, NO PARKING. DELIVERY IMMINENT.

No parking, indeed. Because it turns out the baby for whom I’m knitting this blanket, originally thought to be arriving sometime in mid-December, will now make her appearance on Monday, November 29. Two days from now. As in day after tomorrow. Imminently.

Well, the blanket will be getting there some time after that – a not-quite- so-imminent delivery on my part. I finished square number 100 just a few minutes ago, but I still have to re-weave a few of the early ends I wove in before I tried a new method that I’m happier with, and I still have to attached the applied I-cord edging. But the end is very much near.

And, I got a rare request for a handknit item this holiday weekend. My youngest niece requested a pair of blue socks – so that her feet wouldn’t be cold. Gracie hates being cold. I’m happy to oblige! One evening while she was here, I whipped up a prototype. All I had was a dirty machine-knit sock snatched from her dirty clothes pile to work from for a size reference, and I’m afraid it turned out a bit small. But the cool thing was, I totally knit it while watching TV for a few hours, and didn’t consult a pattern once! While it didn’t fit, she adored the color, so it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something she likes.

A-Minus

I’ve finished 9 of the 10 rows – 90%! It’s actually starting to feel like this project will be finished.

Plugging along. I got to work on this during the week more than I thought I would – plus at various knitting groups meetings. One of which was at my house. So fun to have everyone here. All I had to do was make some coffee. We talked about all our crazy families, Thanksgiving plans, and the bizarre phenomenon of TV shows about people who don’t know they’re pregnant. It was the general consensus among us all, although only a couple of us have ever carried children, that one should know these things.

After everyone left, I caught Miss Mess relaxing quite comfortably – on the blanket! Luckily, she wasn’t interested in pawing at it, chewing on it, or otherwise molesting it. She was more intent on the squirrels that were taunting her outside the window. But it was a bit of a wake up call. It’s so easy to get complacent about such things, and although Kate is by no means an evil dog, it is in her nature to be inquisitive around un-anchored soft things.

As I’ve mentioned before, I sometimes have to knit the squares into a corner. Because I couldn’t quite figure it out, I’ve been knitting them separately and then sewing them in. The seams look a bit different, but they’re acceptable to me. But today, the inevitable happened. I sewed one of the squares in with the wrong side showing. It took nearly an hour to pick out the woven in ends and re-do it. But it’s undetectable at this point.

I’m hoping that I can get the final row (and dare I hope the I-cord edging?) done during this long holiday weekend.

Seven Tenths

For reasons that are murky to me – but probably have something to do with guilt – I picked up the Tamarix Quilt again this week. And, I was able to add a whole row. This row had four squares that had to be sewn in by hand, due to my inability to knit squares into the corners, so I might have even been able to crank out more. I’m hoping to get some more work in on it tomorrow

In other knitting news, I’ve had a hankering to make myself a button-up cardigan. My office gets cold. It’s on a northeast-facing external wall. I’ve been using an old cotton hoodie for those times when it gets a bit chilly, but that needs to change. I need something a bit more librarian-y and Mister Rogers-ish. The pattern I’ve picked out is Kerouac by Jenn Jarvis. I’m not going to make mine striped, though. Gray is the color being considered. I wanted to knit something on small needles, and this fits the bill. I did get some yarn last week for my birthday, but it didn’t quite work out. It was a bit thinner than sport-weight, so by the time I got gauge, the fabric was too loose. I’m thinking of doing some shopping over at Knitpicks. If anyone has a favorite sport-weight yarn that would work for this, speak up!

On Friday, I attended a meeting of local academic librarians. One top of getting great ideas, I was pleased to see that two other librarians brought their needlework with them. One was using Tunisian Crochet to make a scarf. I totally want to use this technique – I think it would be great for place mats. Staci used this technique a while back to make a most awesome baby blanket, and has recently put yet another one of her helpful instructional videos on Tunisian Crochet. Everyone should know how to do this. It’s so easy, and the results are so cool.

Medical History: Diagnosing with Yarn

Today, I depart from the usual tediously detailed ramblings on knitting to bring you a little story about how colored yarn was used in early research into color blindness. Interesting, no?

I'm currently reading Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher. It's quite good so far. In the early part of the book, there is a section about how the vocabulary of color arose (or didn't) in various languages and what that might have to say about cultural development. As it happens, at the same time that linguists were talking about color vocabulary, the concept of color-blindness was recognized.

And an early tool in the diagnosing of color blindness was something called the Holmgren Test for Color Blindness. Devised by Swedish professor Alarik Holmgren after a horrible color-blindness-related train crash, this test was used to determine color blindness in employees of occupations related to public transportation and shipping and other trades where being able to discern color accurately was of great importance. This tool was also used in cultural anthropology research to test the detail of color vocabulary amongst various groups -- for instance, noting whether a language discriminated between blue and black, for instance.

In the color-blindness application, those being tested were asked to choose from among the available scraps of yarn for the 10 pieces that best matched, say, a light green. Clicking on the image above will take you to the web site for the the UK's Science Museum's website on the history of medicine. From there, clicking on the image takes you to a very large version where you can read the tester's instructions inside the lid of the box. I think it's cool that some of these original 19th-century kits have been preserved -- and that the pieces of wool inside are still so vibrant -- assuming those are still the originals.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Boo!

In both senses of the word. Boo! – it’s Halloween! And also, Boo! -- I haven’t posted to my blog in for-freakin’-ever.

This morning, Jeff and I celebrated Halloween by baking oatmeal in pumpkins. Such a cool idea. We used this recipe from Baking With My Kid. I think I saw this originally on Boing Boing. It was fairly easy to make. I love carving pumpkins, but hate dealing with all the mess. This is a great way to get your carve on, and then eat the results! The only thing I wish we’d done differently was perhaps to bake it just a bit longer. I would recommend getting smaller pumpkins. Our oatmeal mixture didn’t nearly fill the pumpkins as much as I thought they should. And we should have halved the recipe. One pumpkin is plenty for two. But we baked two, and now I have a couple of breakfasts all set for next week. I can definitely recommend giving this a try, especially if you’re an oatmeal freak like me.

The Tamarix Quilt is resting peacefully right now. I haven’t touched it in three weeks. Things got a bit intense, and we both decided we need our space. I’ll get back to it soon. In the meantime, I picked up my Oliver Socks and got back to them. This weekend I finished the heel flap, turned the heel and am almost up to the toe decreases. I really like the cool traveling decrease pattern that comes to a point at the base of the toes. I’ll do a modeling shot later. It’s been a while since I’ve worked on socks, and they’re just the thing to get me back to knitting. I got a lot done this weekend at both of my knitting groups – I think I may be back on track. I’ll try to get back on track with blogging, too.

In the Hood

Today, I rode my bike to my knitting group in this glorious weather we’ve been having. Riding was a little dicey. A rather large music festival is taking place about a mile from my house, and cars and pedestrians are everywhere, despite the “No Event Parking in Neighborhood” signs posted at the end of every block.

While chatting along with my Saturday morning knitters, I accidentally attached a side that I wasn’t supposed to. I forgot that that the first square on a new row should only attach along half of the cast on. I was just so used to attaching on a side that I did it without thinking. This basically attached my new square to the row below along two edges, forming a cup. Someone suggested that this reminded them of those little hooded baby bath towels. Well, that’s all it took for things to devolve into silliness. Snowden texted me this picture from her camera, for which I’m grateful. I know there are others out there.

I’ll post updates if they appear. UPDATE: This one has reared it’s be-blanketed head – thanks Steph!

Not much happened knit-wise this week. Essentially, I’ve done half a square on the blanket since I checked in last week. The next week or so will be very busy with the meeting I’m helping to host, but I’ll try to squeeze in some knitting when I can. My fellow knitters have threatened to come knit at the hotel where my meeting is being held, just to rattle my nerves. I bet they’ll do it. On the upside, they might get to meet some of the other knitters I know, and that could only be a good thing.

I’m thinking of giving the blanket a bit of a rest and getting cracking on some socks. I restarted the Oliver socks over a month ago, getting the first one down to the heel. But they’ve been languishing while I work on the blanket. Maybe if I blog about them and get a project on them started in Ravelry, I might get them done.

As the Days Dwindle Down

I used to post on days other than weekends. Really, I did. But not lately. I suppose it’s when I have the time. And, as the days dwindle down (as the song says), it’s easier to take pictures on weekends than in the evenings during the week.

Yesterday, knitting friends and I spent a glorious morning knitting outdoors. It’s only just now gotten to where it’s consistently comfortable to do so of a morning. Yummy scones (ginger!), good coffee, and lots of laughs. Snowden had some of Brooklyn Tweed’s new Shelter in the colorway Tent.  I, of course, loved the color. Um, it’s kind of green. It looks like it will knit up beautifully and wear well. It does seem a tad on the scratchy side, so probably not appropriate for next-to-the-skin stuff (like Snowden’s awesomely beautiful Cecily Camisole, which was modeled for us). It is kind of cool that one of the nine physical retail stores chosen to sell this yarn is right here in Austin.

The grass has finally slowed down enough that I think I can get away without mowing and doing other yard work this weekend, so I spent much of the morning and early afternoon outdoors working on the Tamarix Quilt and catching up on podcasts. I’ve finished 60 squares and with the center motif finished (center left in photo), I feel like I’ve hit a milestone. I’m going to try and get as much as I can done in the next week or so before a big professional meeting that’s being hosted here in Austin. Although I’ll be busy, one of the great things about this meeting is that there are usually several knitters in attendance. I’m looking forward to seeing them!

Hold My Hand and We’re Halfway There

I just finished my 50th square on the Tamarix Quilt, and so now I’m halfway done. Or nearly so – I keep leaving out the applied I-cord edging in my percentage calculations. So let’s leave that out of the equation for now. Counting it just throws everything off and makes the whole how-far-do-I-have-to-go issue messy.

Work on this is uneven. It was a busy week, so Monday through Friday I made one and a half squares, and this weekend I made eight. It’s been like that. As I go along, the temptation to put this aside and start something new and shiny grows, but so far I’ve managed to remain monogamous.

50 bottles of beer on the wall, 50 bottles of beer…

Real Quilters of Austin

I’ve been working on this Tamarix Quilt fairly diligently, but progress is slow. I’ve finished the fourth row, and started square 41. I had to rip out the smaller brown portion upon realizing it was supposed to be green. Almost always, yellow and brown are paired in the squares of this quilt, and I got lazy. But I’m back on track.

Yesterday, I got to see some real quilting. I, along with Jeff, my sister, my niece and my Aunt June, attended the 2010 Austin Area Quilt Guild Show and Sale, “Changing Gears.” I thought while I was sitting by the phone waiting to hear whether I’d won a beautiful quilt in the show’s raffle, I’d go ahead and do a quick blog post. Get on the phone, people – fall’s a-comin’!

The show is held biannually and Aunt June tries to come up for it each time. We had a good time wandering around all the wonderful works. There was some true talent on display. There was one quilt made of 1440 blocks, each of which was composed of nine tiny squares! I’ll think of that the next time grumbling about 100 squares. There were so many beautiful colors and styles, and I really enjoyed reading the stories behind the quilts. I ran into friends and neighbors, including a colleague at work who, unbeknownst to me, has her own quilting business set up with her sisters. All in all it was a great show. Aunt June got a glint in her eye and asked me when I was going to start quilting. I don’t know that I will. But I did tell her that it looked interesting and that it looked like it would be fun to do, which were almost my exact words over five years ago when I saw my friend Janelle knitting…

I took one picture of a quilt. I just loved it. Among all the log cabins and double wedding rings, cathedral windows and pinwheels, there was this charming little piece called “Friends.” The creator wrote that she thought that all the possible quilting motifs had already been explored, and she wanted to go in a whole different direction. Boy, did she! She also wrote that this quilt was “simultaneously repulsive and cute, gross and comforting.” It was fun watching people see it and trying to figure out what it was. I thought it was innovative, humorous, and well done. I didn’t get the border in the picture but the quilting stitch pattern mirrored the fabric pattern used for the border. I just love this thing. But don’t expect an intarsia version anytime soon.

A Third

I’m slowly making progress on the Tamarix Quilt, but not much since last week. I”ve finished thirty three squares, so technically, I’m 13 short rows short of a third of the way finished.

I did two squares today, which was a bit of a marathon in comparison with what I’ve managed to get done on the blanket lately. Much of the rest of the week has involved dealing with contractors, noise, dust and pouty dogs. With the torrential rains we got earlier in the week, and shifted chorus rehearsals around the Labor Day holiday, they didn’t get the walks they needed or deserved.

Again, I’m happy with the progress on the blanket. The colors are matching up every time now that I’ve figured out how to count backwards down the selvedge chain to figure out where to initially join the squares together. It makes total sense, but it would be maddening to try and explain this in a pattern. I’ll try and write up a good description and include it in my notes at Ravelry.

67 squares to go. And now, I have to go get dressed for my appearance on stage with Margaret Cho...

Update: A picture!

A Fifth

Not a whole lot to report on the knitting front this week. But I did just finish my 20th square on the Tamarix Quilt, which means I’m a fifth of the way there.

I didn’t do as much knitting this week as I’d like. I decided to get back to riding my bike to work more, which means I get home tired and sweaty and not inclined to touch yarn – even if it’s cotton. Also, we have minor chaos at our house these days with bathroom renovations afoot. Contractors in the house make me nervous as a cat. My fellow knitters at my knitting group this morning diagnosed it as a control issue. I think they’re entirely correct. Deep breaths, deep breaths. The dogs are handling this way better than I am.

Speaking of issues – and back to knitting: at times, using the seams-as-you-go method outlined the pattern, one has to cast on and then join both the sides, knitting toward a corner. This happened twice on the second row, at squares 17 and 20. Square 17 I seamed as I went. I wasn’t entirely happy, and at Square 20, which involved seaming unmatched colors during the process, I was really unhappy. So for Square 20, I knit it independently and then seamed it afterwards. I liked this better. I’ll do that from now on. Looking at the pattern, I can see that this will occur exactly at least 19 more times. You can totally geek out numerically on this pattern, that’s for sure.

So on we go. It’s nice to see the pattern developing, especially the nested squares that occur on the corners. The second row, just completed, contained six blocks that were combinations of the yellow (primrose) and brown (VanDyke brown), which got a bit old. It was nice to get back to the moss (green) and purple (heathered pansy) again. I’m enjoying how the decrease lines create a faux seaming affect, as if squares on a quilt have been cut on the bias. This definitely looks better from a distance than it does close up. I’m still finding strange joins and weird colors showing through at points, but I”m still intrigued by the overall effect.

Puzzling

12 down, 88 to go.

I’m a little dismayed with my inability to seam these squares together consistently. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten down how to attach from side to side in order for the colors to line up, but I’m still having issues getting corners to match up.

The blanket is 10 squares by 10 squares. The 12 square, the second one on the second row, is the first one that is attached on two sides as it is knit. Fortunately for me, they were both picked up edges. Soon, though, I will be casting on half the stitches, picking up the other half, and then seaming on one side as I go. There are many possibilities. So while you’re basically doing the same thing 100 times, the way that each one is begun and seamed is a bit different.

I had to start several squares multiple times on the first row. There were a few times where I had to cast on half the stitches, and then figure out how to pick up while the yarn was on the wrong end of the needles. This just involved flipping the needles around, but it took me a long time to wrap my brain around this. In reading Ravelry, I see that others are running into similar confusion. My biggest fear right now is completing and attaching an entire squire only to discover that I put the wrong one in the wrong place. I’m constantly consulting the diagrams in the pattern to try to prevent this. If it happens, you’ll hear about it.

It looks like really sloppy right now, but hopefully things will come together as I go. And remember that there will be an i-cord edging around the whole thing that should hide a multitude of sins.

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

All together now!

I’ve started the Tamarix Quilt from the Fall 2010 issue of Interweave Knits. It’s for Jeff’s cousin, who is expecting in December. I’m not quite sure what I’ve gotten myself into. I didn’t get to rest on my laurels quite long enough from my last project – “fiddly” is definitely a word that could be used to describe this. But I”m all about the fiddly.

This quilt is made of 100 tiny squares, about 3.5 inches across (mine are closer to 4). One can knit them, stack them like pancakes in an old cartoon, and then spend the whole time dreading what the Discovery Channel might dub “Seaming Week!”. Or, there are specific, if somewhat vague, instructions on how to pick up stitches and join sides together as one goes. That’s what I’m doing. And it’s really slowing me down as I figure out all the intricacies of hiding color jogs and figuring out how to combine picked up rows with cast on stitches, etc. etc. The instructions do advise to be careful in how you choose to proceed, noting that the careless knitter might end up having to join on all four sides of a square at one time. Really? Someone would knit the outsides first and then have to figure out how to join the squares in the middle? That might work in jigsaw puzzles, but not in knitting!

I’m using Cascade Sierra, a cotton yarn that is much less forgiving than the Palette I was just using for the vest. But I really like the colors. They are, from top to bottom: moss, heathered pansy (ahem), primrose and Vandyke brown. Can’t wait to see how it all comes together. Right now, it’s kind of like playing the world’s slowest game of Tetris.

“97 squares of quilt to go, 97 squares of quilt. Cast stitches on, miter like hell, 96 squares of quilt to go…”

Vaila Versatility

The Vaila Slipover is done! During the week I did one armhole and yesterday morning I cut the final steek and finished up the second. This was the one with all the knots behind it due to the color changes. It was so refreshing to be able to just snip them all away and not worry about all those ends. I got the armhole ribbing done by late afternoon, wove in some ends, threw the whole thing into some water to soak, and went to a neighbor’s pool party. When I got home, I put it out to block – with LOTS of stretching – and this morning it was dry and ready for its debut. In August.

I’m so pleased with how this turned out. Despite the many anxieties I had about colors and weaving in and gauge and all those other things, this went relatively smoothly. And, it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I didn’t work all that steadily on it; there were a few Mondays-through-Fridays where I didn’t touch it. About seven weeks start to finish, which isn’t too bad. I actually started thinking toward the end that I might have enough yarn left over to put some sleeves on this thing, but I was kind of ready to be done and when I realized I would have to chart out the sleeve pattern on my own, I quickly abandoned the idea.

While working on this, two great 20th century figures who knew how to work the Fair Isle look came to mind, and for fun, I thought I might model the sweater with these two gentlemen in mind. I know I’m going to regret this…

The first is the future Edward VIII during his Prince of Wales days. This portrait of him and what I’m guessing is a Cairn Terrier, appeared in the Illustrated London News in November of 1925 and helped popularize Fair Isle garments in Britain during the 20s and 30s. Of course this is a long-sleeved version (pullover vs. slipover?), but I like how the ribbing around the collar and waist are very similar to the Ann Feitelson pattern I just completed. Clicking this picture should take you to more information at the website for the UK’s National Portrait Gallery.

I don’t have a Cairn Terrier, but in a pinch, a Basenji (this is Kate) works just fine. Pona doesn’t look nearly so composed or graceful when being carried (think baby giraffe), so I went with Kate. It was already a bazillion degrees outside, so we had to work fast. And those are shorts I’m wearing, not heavy wool pleated trousers like I’m sure HRH is wearing. I almost went looking for a cool hat like that, but then decided it just wasn’t worth the trouble for one shot. I really like this picture though. Kate is quite stunning in it! (Thanks, Jeff!). Also, be-heathered  Scottish braes are hard to find around here, so we had to go with a background of house.

The second great icon of 20th century Fair Isle fashion is Our Onslow from Keeping up Appearances. Onslow is often seen wearing a sleeveless t-shirt or one of these sleeveless Fair Isle vests, which his stuffy sister-in-law Hyacinth is always trying to get him cover up with a jacket or something. Onslow has let himself go a long time ago, but he can strike up a conversation with anyone, is addicted to the horse races, loud television and crisps (smoky bacon flavor!), and has a keen interest in theoretical physics. What’s not to like?

So I thought I’d give it a shot. I don’t run around in heavy construction circles, so I don’t have access to a Fulton Hogan hat, but I did have one in a similar blue. I don’t think I could dress like this in real life, but I love that Onslow does. He must dress like this more often – note his lack of and my abundance of farmer tan!  I remember several episodes in which Onslow and Daisy’s large dog, who usually lives in the abandoned car in the front yard, was stretched across Onslow’s lap (and sometimes Hyacinth’s, to her dismay). I started to see if I could replicate this with Kate, but I think she’d had enough modeling for one day.

“Aw, nice!”

Colllar-ed Greens (and Yellows)

Despite my fears that the recently cut ends of my steek would fray, unwind, unravel and otherwise disassemble themselves overnight, they stayed put. I spent a good chunk of the morning picking up stitches around the v-neck collar of the Vaila Slipover.

Ann Feitelson makes a point in her chapter on Fair Isle techniques that Shetlanders draw the yarn up from behind the fabric when picking up stitches. They find it distorts the pattern stitches less than pulling up bars and pulling the yarn from the front of the fabric. This made sense to me, so I did it. This meant a lot of yarn manipulation in the vicinity of my unreinforced steek cuts, but it didn’t seem to cause any problems, despite starting over several times. Whew. Clicking on the picture above takes you to the photo at Flickr with notes for more details.

Once I got them picked up (on a size 1 needle), the rest was a piece of cake.Just nine rounds of k2p2 alternating colors and switching the purl color every few rows. There’s a tidy little 3-stitch decrease at the bottom of the V, and that’s it. I had to agree that the join between these two fabric types works well and I have to chalk it up to drawing yarn up from behind. It’s a little weird at first, and I somehow managed to get all the oyster heather-colored stitches on backwards, but the overall effect is nice. I should do this all the time.

As you might be able to see, there is a bit of curliness to the bound-off edge of the collar ribbing. One of the finishing instructions suggests running a basting thread through the ends of the ribbing and drawing it in during the blocking process to take care of this. I’ll definitely try it.

So far so good. All that’s left to do is cut the armhole steeks and do the ribbing for them. And then some blocking and finishing. But the end is in sight! I’m really pleased with the retro look this is taking on. Seeing the collar ribbing does improve the overall look.

In Wool We Trust

Last night I finished knitting the body of the Vaila Slipover. Here it is, in all of its sack-o-potatoes glory.

And this morning, while knitting with friends, I did a 3-needle bind-off across the shoulders. It’s a cool construction. After putting some of the stitches at the back of the neck on a holder, a mini-steek about 6 rows long is added across the gap. Then, during the 3-needle bind-off, the mini-steek is connected to the main v-neck steek. This would only work if you had the correct number of stitches across the shoulders, which I had, because I’d changed the number of decreases as mentioned in the last post. I wish I could say that I’d done the math to figure it out, but I didn’t. This pattern doesn’t give much in the way of stitch count checks, but at the one point the pattern told me how many stitches I should have, I was spot on. So I was right. Yay, me!

I agonized over whether to sew this steek to reinforce it. So, after reading a bit about this yarn and thinking about it, I took the plunge. I decided to just trust that this wool would be grabby enough to just hang on. The next part of the instructions read, with alarming simplicity and off-handedness, “Cut neck extra sts up the center.” So that’s what I did.

Behold, the power of 100% wool! No reinforcing. No crochet chain. No hand sewing. No machine sewing. Just the yarn wanting to stick to itself. Now, I haven’t gotten all fiddly with it yet, so it remains to be seen how well this all sticks together. I’m thinking of running the steamer over the cut edges and giving them a little zhuzh to encourage the fibers to interlock. But so far, with the minimal amount of handling I’ve done, all is well. After the steam treatment, I get to pick up the stitches around the neck edge. That’s when we’ll find out whether my faith was warranted.

And even though I’ve cut steeks before, you have no idea how much my hands were shaking during all that snipping.

Neck and Neck

Still plugging away, but as you can see, I’m getting closer.

This picture shows my progress up to about 18 rows before 6 rows or so of neck shaping. However, I’ve run into a bit of an issue. I’ve come across part of the pattern that I don’t think is correct. I tell myself (and others) to always trust the pattern, but I’m still apprehensive. I’ve checked for errata and written an email to Interweave to see what they think. Only a dozen or so people in Ravelry have made this pattern, so maybe it’s not well known?

Here’s the deal. The instructions for the decreases for the v-neck area say to decrease a total of 18(25,21) times. I’m making the large size. I’m thinking that the decreases should run 18(21,25), from smallest number to largest. The main reason I think this is that 25 decreases, in the row spacing required by the instructions, come to within 1 round of the total number of rounds needed before neck shaping. So that’s what I’m working with.

I’m nervous that when I get to some later part of the pattern, I’m going to have an “Oh, that’s why” moment. But I’m going to do it anyway. I’ll let you know what the good folks at Interweave say.

Oh --the men’s knitting get-together was fun on Sunday. There were four of us and everyone was very pleasant --- and talented. The other guys were relatively new to knitting and crocheting, or re-learning it after a long hiatus, but I was extremely impressed with their grasp of how knitting works and how fast they were learning (and wanting to learn) new skills. They were way ahead of where I was as a newbie knitter. We talked yarn, patterns, jobs, and life in general. All in all a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.