A Prime Number Less Than 50

This morning, my knitting group celebrated my birthday. Out of the whole group, mine is the only birthday not in the spring or summer, so I’m the odd man out on many, many levels.
In addition to a thoughtful (ahem) card and a gift certificate to my favorite local bike repair shop, I was presented with a set of 2.5mm 6” Signature Needle Arts stiletto-point dpns, in all their lovely greenness. They are absolutely wonderful and I put one of them to work right away on the edging on the baby blanket – only a little more than one side left to go.

As an added extra surprise, I was hoodwinked into bringing my Hillhead Slipover under the pretense of Staci borrowing it for instruction purposes. When I arrived, I wondered why Jene was wearing an over-the-top Christmas sweater, and then it hit me –- they were all wearing knitted vests. Those whacky gals! It’s one of the things I love about this group – we tease because we love. We share just about everything, and I find that meeting with this group on a weekend acts as a kind of emotional reset button. I really, really miss it when I can’t go. It’s about so much more than the knitting.

Thanks, ladies – I love each and every one of you!

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.

Two Steeks Well Done, One Medium

I really ought to work on something else so that you can read about something besides this same garment post after post. But I’m all about sharin’ the love.

I’m still enjoying working on this, which is the real reason nothing has distracted me. I was a little tempted by the Tamarix Quilt featured in the latest Interweave Knits magazine to land on my doorstep – I want to knit it for Jeff’s cousin who is expecting at the end of the year – but I really don’t want this vest to languish. So I queued Tamarix up in Ravelry, and got back to the vest.

I’m at the steeks now, which is exciting. There are three. One at the beginning of the round for the left arm, one at the front for the v-neck opening, and one for the right arm. The latter two are the ones that are well done. It’s the steek that occurs at the beginning and end of the round that’s giving me fits. Because it’s at the beginning of the round, it’s where the colors change – right in the middle of the 12-stitch steek. So things are a bit loosey-goosey. It doesn’t make sense to weave the colors in as I was doing earlier with the color changes, since this section will be cut. I’ve tried tying the new color to the old with a square knot, but more often than (k)not, the knot is pulling through the first stitch of the round. It started out okay, but it’s getting rapidly uglier. I, uh, didn’t take a picture of that steek.

The next round I’m going to try just adding the new color, doing a bit of knitting, and then coming back to knot later. That way I can get the tension right before knotting. I probably shouldn’t be fretting about a section that’s going to be cut anyway, but since I plan to trust the physics of wool fiber rather than crocheting or sewing to reinforce the steek before cutting, I want things as neat and tidy as possible.

An interesting note that Ann Feitelson makes about the decreases: she instructs the knitter to always slant them toward the steek (or “extra stitches” as she calls them) rather than toward the knitted fabric. I’ve always done the opposite with decreases around neck and armholes in sweaters, and she notes that most American knitters do this. Feitelson points out that slanting toward the fabric actually exaggerates the edge of the fabric. Having followed her instructions,  I can see her point. Clicking on the picture above will take you to the Flickr photo with notes showing which kinds of decreases I’m doing on each side of the steek.

I’m somewhere near row 100 of the 160 rounds I get to knit before shaping the neck. Over halfway there! The decreases are getting a bit strange and hard to track (at 4 places every 2 rounds 13 times and at 2 places every 3 rounds 21 times), but so far I’m keeping up.

A Basenji of Interest

We had a little crime scene at our house this afternoon, and we’re pretty sure who the guilty party is.

Every once in a while, Kate can’t resist plucking a ball of yarn from out of my knitting bag. She doesn’t dig in there, or anything – she just waits for me to leave it open. And then she carefully plucks it out and wreaks her havoc. I’ve caught her in the act a few times. But this is the most damage she’s done. Luckily, I overbought in the main accent color for the Vaila Slipover (Oyster Heather), so I don’t think we’re going to have much of a problem. There wasn’t much left in the ball. I have four balls left and I’m a third of the way through the project. So I think I’m good! Still, I hope I’ve learned a lesson about keeping the bag closed and putting my projects away after working on them.

Progress on this project continues – not rapidly, but steadily. I’m 3/4 of the way through the third of four pattern repeats. Then it's ten more rows before starting the armhole decreases and the arm and neck steeks. When that happens, I’ll really feel like I’m getting someplace. I’m quite comfortable with the pattern at this point – it’s just finding the time to work on it. That, and having to take frequent breaks from having a wad of wool on my lap in 95-degree weather. Ugh. It’s definitely July in Texas.

I decided to give the vest a haircut today – all the woven in ends were starting to drive me crazy. It was just a matter of moments to trim them all back. I left about 1/4 inch on each to give them a chance to felt into the back of the work with wear. That’s the idea, anyway. I’m still a bit freaked about having only a few inches of loosely woven-in yarn at the beginning and end of each round, but to date there have been no signs of unraveling. I’m going to trust that this yarn wants to to stay knit.

Back to it!

Weaver & Weber

My ancestry includes my maternal grandmother, born with the surname Weaver, and a paternal great-grandmother with the surname Weber (German for Weaver). So perhaps my reluctance to knot the ends behind the work of my stranded knitting has an ancestral origin. Abbe asked if I was worried that Elizabeth Zimmerman would haunt me in my dreams –which may well have something to do with it. But for whatever reason, weave I will.

The process I discussed in the last post is working pretty well, and I’m getting faster at it. I’m not entirely consistent, but I try to start weaving in the new colors behind the working strands about 10 stitches before the round change. Then, I weave the ends of the old colors behind the strands of the new colors for 10 stitches or so into the new round. Most the time I switch from two colors to two different colors, but often I’m only changing the background color while keeping the oyster heather pattern color. And in a few rows, I get to work with the same two colors for two complete rounds  -- my favorite.

It’s amazing how grabby the yarn is. Probably not as sticky as actual Shetland wool, but it does work its way in rather quickly. After weaving in behind one stitch, it slips out at the slightest tug. But by the time the yarn has been woven in behind three stitches, it would probably break before coming unwoven. I’ve chosen to leave the ends hanging just for shock value, but in truth, all of the ends you see dangling in the first picture are ready to be trimmed. I’ll trim them eventually.

Progress is going faster than I thought it would. My two-fisted knitting is getting more coordinated. Things still look lumpy on the needle, but when I spread the fabric out, it looks pretty good. Unlike some projects, I’m really looking forward to the blocking on this one. I’m just shy of 2 full pattern repeats. At 4.5 repeats, I get to decrease for the sleeves and start the sleeve and neck steeks.

Fair-to-Partly-Cloudy Isle

After second-guessing myself on gauge and monkeying around with needle sizes, I’ve decided to stick with the original size 3 needles called for in the pattern. Knitting loosely, I’m coming up with mostly 8 stitches per inch, and sometimes the specified 7.5.  I’m gambling that I can make this work in the blocking. If not, I’m going to find someone slimmer than me to wear it , because at this point it’s more about the process than the final product.

My tension is a little more uneven than it was on the swatch. I’m getting a bit more puckering around the diamond patterns, where several stitches in the same color occur. But I’m confident these will flatten out with the blocking.

Right now, I’m experimenting with weaving in ends as I knit. I’ve seen several examples, including techniques at the TECHknitting website and at Knitting Daily. But while I understand how these would work while changing from one color to another, my brain hasn’t been capable of expanding these two changing from two colors to two other colors. So right now, I’m kind of going with a variation of the “3rd stitch” that’s described in the Philsopher’s Wool video for catching yarn behind the work.  The trick that’s taken me a while to figure out is that you have to do this every other stitch, or it won’t work. I thought that doing it every stitch would be “better,” but it actually keeps the yarn from weaving in.

I’m not doing this for the main part of the vest, since I’m comfortable with 5-stitch floats (this maximum in this garment), but a variation of it seems to be working for introducing the new yarn 10 stitches before the round change and then also weaving in the old yarn for 10 stitches into the new round. It’s fiddly and really slows me down, but I think it’s working.

I’m also going a bit faster than I thought I’d be able to. Rather than constantly consulting the chart, I can usually break the 20 stitches of the pattern into multiples of 3, 5, or 7-stitch patterns that are pretty easy to memorize. About the time it becomes automatic, though, it’s time to change. I think that once I’ve gotten past the first 20 rounds of the pattern, I might not have to look at the chart much at all. Never a dull moment with this pattern, that’s for sure!

Swatcheroo

I spent a few evenings this week working up a swatch with the yarn I chose  for a Vaila Slipover. Reviews are mixed.

I like the overall pattern and don’t think it will be hard to follow. I’m a little concerned about the green sections. A darker green that I had originally wanted was on backorder until September(!), so I shifted the whole green family one shade lighter. I’m just not sure what I think of the main green color through the middle of that section – it’s called Celadon Heather, and is just a bit lighter than I’d like.

I’m afraid that the large X pattern that runs between all the crossed diamonds will fade out too much through the green sections. Could it be that when there are more brown and green striped sections that they eye will be able to follow the Xs better?

I’m also a little worried about gauge. Before washing, I’m getting about 32.5 stitches over 4 inches. The gauge calls for 30. I don’t want to go down to size 2 needles (I’m currently on 3s), and I don’t want to go down  size – that would be too drastic, I think. I could knit tighter. My gauge with the background colors, which I’m throwing with my right hand, is terribly inconsistent.

I’m going to take this to some experts this weekend and see what they have to say. I’m hopeful that it will all work out. I still can’t believe that stack of balls of yarn from my last post could turn into this.

Stranded

I’ve been thinking of doing a stranded knitting project, and I’ve settled on a pattern, yarn and colors. I think I’m pretty much committed at this point. And the yarn showed up in the mail today. Yay, yarn mail!

The yarn is Palette from KnitPicks. I’d gotten some of this a while back for a hat. I swear back then that they had only a handful of colors. Now they have over 80 – quite a choice! These are the 12 colors that I settled on. Clicking on the picture will take you over to my Flickr site where I have notes with all the colors names. Let’s just say the word “Heather” features in most of them. Oh – and to get free shipping I had them throw in a couple of balls of Felici sock yarn in the colorway Green Veggies. Yum!

All this Palette going to become, if all goes according to plan, a Vaila Slipover from Ann Feitelson’s The Art of Fair Isle Knitting. The original one calls for very muted browns and tans – and those will be in mine, but I wanted to feature green, too. Which is kind of predictable, I know.  The original pattern’s blue horizontal line will be replaced with a deep red. And don’t worry about all those deep pinks and bright oranges. They’re little accent colors that probably won’t register all that much. That’s what I’ll keep telling myself, anyway.

I can’t wait to see how all this comes together. Let the swatching begin!

For Me?

Someone knit something -- for me!

And that someone is my super-talented knitting designer friend, Snowden Becker. When Snowden is trying out new design, she often uses some of her fellow knitters as models/guinea pigs. I was lucky enough to be the recipient of her first design for men. It was inspired by vest worn by Jon Hamm in a GQ magazine photo spread some time back. She assured me that I would like just like him when I wore it. I'm not going to hold her to that promise.

Like all of Snowden's designs, this one is full of all kinds of neat little details, from the herringbone pattern that gives the entire thing a woven look, to the functional pockets with i-cord trim. The small rolled collar is a nice touch, too. I'm amazed that she was able to take a few quick measurements and then just whip this up. For me to try something like this for someone else, I'd be sleeping at their house, waking them up every hour to try something on, then ripping back....just ask Pona.

If it looks a little wrinkly, it's because I've barely taken it off since she presented me with it Saturday morning. I wore it to an event last night where I received many compliments, even though I had some competition in the stylish clothing department.

I just can't say enough nice things about this well-crafted design and this thoughtful gift. I'm grateful to be able to learn and bounce ideas off of talented knitters like Snowden. Her designs are really taking off, and she deserves all the attention she's garnered. I promise to take good care of this. I imagine this vest is going to be on a table in the front of a class someday, with awe-struck students fingering it gently, and whispering to each other, "This is the very first one."

Thanks, Snowden!

Herz Broken

Do you remember the third Star Trek movie? It was the one between Star Trek II, where Kirk yells the immortal "Khaaaaaaaaan!" and the fourth one where they go back in time to San Francisco to save the whales. I thought so -- hardly anyone remembers it. One of the plot points involves getting Spock's soul out of Dr. McCoy and re-implanting it in Spock's body during a very rare and dangerous Vulcan ritual. The point of all this is the outfit Spock wears during this process. You see, I just made a cabled version of it.

Get a load of those shoulders. Yep -- I made that. I read some time ago that when looking at the modeled shots of knitted objects, one should pay special attention to the parts of the garment you can't see in the photos. In the photos for the Herz & Baum Vest in Guy Knits, the model is always wearing a jacket over the vest. You cannot see what the armholes look like. That's because, unless you're a linebacker, these armholes are going to stick out. I mean really stick out. Ridiculously far.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I think I may just chalk this up to experience -- knit and learn. I put a LOT of work into this, but I'm not going to wear it if I'm going to look like a clown -- or a Vulcan going through fal-tor-pan. If anyone has any ideas -- besides donating this to Home for the Criminally Broad-Shouldered, please let me know.

To help get my mind off this colossal disappointment, I buckled down and finished the Sailor's Rib Socks that I made out of Malabrigo. Beautiful color, perfect match of yarn pattern to stitch pattern, and they fit wonderfully. So there.

Plus, I've got in mind another pair of socks that I want to knit for an upcoming special milestone. I'll share some of it, but I think I'll keep some of it back as a surprise. We'll see...

Steekcam

I know y'all must get tired of hearing about these damned steeks. I am too. So they are now gone. Snipped, cut and forever divided.

I started the final process yesterday with Jene. She took a few whacks at the neck steek and did a great job. Then we went and had awesome hot and sour soup at the Bamboo Garden, which I can definitely recommend. Today, I finished up at The Knitting Nest where Julia snipped a few stitches, too. Here she is in action. Look at that steady hand!






When Staci clomped in, I got her to shoot a little video of steek cutting with my point-n-shoot camera. Listen to Staci's and my witty observations as you watch the horror that occurs when scissors meet knitted fabric. Seriously, folks. Just knit up a swatch, make a crochet steek somehwere in the middle of it, and then cut it in half. It will work, it will hold, and then when you need to apply this to real knitting life, you won't be scared. Well, you'll still be scared, but at least you won't faint. One hopes.

I started the neck band at the shop and then finished it when I got home. There's a little weirdness going on at the bottom of the neck where the decreases bring things to a point. I may have to do some structural weaving behind it to make it all work. It's just a little gappy.

I tried it on at the shop, and much as I expected, I looked rather obscene and Brüno-esque in it. Those of you who were at The Knitting Nest are probably wishing you could un-see that. Definitely not a pretty sight. The effect brought to mind a giant green braided sausage. But it's been soaked and stretched and will soon be ready to go. I promise a modeled shot once it's dry.

A Call to Armholes

I didn't realize it until just now, but my last post was my 200th. Kind of hard to believe.

I'm still waiting to cut the neck steek, but I had a bit of time on my hands and I'm itching to get this thing done. I went ahead and added one of the armhole bands. I was anxious to see how the crocheted steek would hold during the process since I would have to pick up and knit just two stitches over from the crochet chain. No problems that I could see. It went fast, even if it was uncomfortable knitting with this thing on my lap while it was 100+ degrees outside.

While knitting, I watched a strange little movie called Fido. It's about an alternative 1950's America in which, after the end of a worldwide zombie war, zombies are used as personal servants. Quite strange and quirky -- kind of Night of the Living Dead meets Pleasantville. The 50s-ness is awesome. It's a little gory, but not as much as your average zombie movie.

But I digress. The picture on the left shows the inside of the armhole. The lighter color yarn is what I used to make the crochet chains between which the steek was cut. It's bunched up in a few places -- I think that's where I skipped a few stitches to make the number come out even around the armhole. Originally, I was thinking I would need to tack this down in some fashion, but it sees to naturally fold flat -- possibly because I picked up the stitches for the armhole band along a purl gutter in the pattern. I'm not sure if that was the intent, but it seems to have worked for me.

Although this looks like regular 2x2 ribbing, there are actually two small sections that for a few rounds are 3x3. Then that is decreased back to 2x2. These are are both down toward the bottom of the armpit. Why would you do that? Perhaps to give some ease or keep something from puckering, but it's just four stitches decreased over a total of 160. Could it really matter? Click on the top picture and see the note at Flickr that shows where this occurs. Go ahead -- live on the wild side.

A Steek, Well Done

If I say so myself. No problems at all. There are two little strings at the cast on edge, but, as I hoped they would, they just tightened into the crochet stitch above when I gave them a little tug. Whew!

I know that some people expressed interest in watching this from the knitter's version of an operating theater, but I just couldn't wait. I wanted to try one of the armholes first -- for some reason, that seemed "safer" than cutting the neck. Since it's evening, I couldn't get enough good light for a video from my point-and-shoot camera, but there are still two steeks to go.

Really, people, you should try this. It's kind of fun. Like you're getting away with something. And I have -- so far!

Steeks and Geeks

I decided to go with the 3-needle bindoff for the shoulders of the Herz & Baum Vest, which you can see to the right. It was just a matter of using a set-up row to cast of the stitches that wouldnt' be included in the shoulder seems (paying careful attention to the math), and then doing the bind-off. It's not super-tidy, but it does offer the advantage of making the patterns on the front and back meet perfectly. If I'd sewn these seems, I'd have had to play that game where you're always half a stitch off. That would have made my brain hurt. No brain pain for me! It looks like a corner on the left side of the bindoff, but there are actually four cast-of stitches across there for the armhole steeks.

Now, to the steeks. You know how you read the pattern instructions carefully, and then get started, and then, three weeks later when you actually get to some important new structure (like a steek), you think you know all that already? Can you imagine the problems this might cause? I thought so. I forgot that the instructions required twisting two rows in the steek so that the crochet run through those rows would be tighter. This method went up the center of a column of stitches, and not across the halves of two neighboring columns. Not so stable without twisted stitches. Well, that was out -- maybe I could try it without the twisted stitches, but I was scared. Then I thought, "No problem, I'll just use Eunny Jang's instructions for crocheted steeks, which I'd used before on a tea cozy." But that method requires an odd number of steek stitches. Grrr...

So I waited all week until I could consult with the geniuses at knitting. One option we came up with was unbinding the bindoff, then laddering the two rows down and twisting them with a crochet hook and then rebinding off. Tedious, but do-able. Then, knitting genius Staci pointed out that if I just turned the vest (and that frown) upside down, I'd have an odd number of stitches across the steek -- 4 would become 3. So simple, so easy. All I had to do was start the crochet chain at the opposite end of the steek I'd planned. The picture to the right shows in red the "V"s of the three stitch rows (with a little left over on each side. The blue lines show the neighboring halves of stitches that will be bound together by the crochet chain, and the green dotted line shows where the final act will take place.

I've begun the chain already. I was going to use the same yarn, but then I chickened out and found some similar Cascade 220 green yarn (I know you're shocked that I had this), and got started. Ideally, I'd have a little more wiggle room. When I'm done crocheting each side, I'll have a knit and a purl stitch left to fold under. I'm hoping this will give me enough sturdiness for picking up the stitches necessary for the neck and armhole bands. I'm knitting the chain fairly tightly with a pretty small hook, so I think I'm good.

If I can get up the nerve, I might post a video of the slicing. Don't worry, Jene, I'll be sure and save some for you to see live and in person.

Then Refresh His Heart

A few years ago, the men's chorus I sing with performed Brahms' Alto Rhapsody with Rose Taylor. It was a totally enjoyable experience, my first with singing Romantic music like this. Kind of hard to describe -- bleak, yet uplifting at the same time. I only remember snatches of the German lyrics, but as I've been working on this Herz & Baum vest, the phrase so erquicke sein Herz has been going through my mind -- "then refresh his heart."

And I suppose I have been a bit refreshed. This vest languished for a short while, but I got back up to speed recently and today I finished the last of the 24 neck decreases which take place every third round. I have only a few more rows to go until I've got the sleeve holes knit to the requisite length. Even then, I might add a bit more. Most of my height manifests itself in my torso, so I want to make sure this is long enough.

It's clear from the instructions that I am to bind off once I get to the top and then sew the shoulder seams after cutting the steeks. But I'm wondering if it would be possible to bind off just the stitches along the back of the neck during the last round, and then use a 3-needle bindoff on the live stitches between the back and front. Would that work? Which would provide a firmer shoulder seam -- 3-needle bind off or sewing up after a regular bindoff? Right now I'm leaning toward seaming, but it's not going to be easy with all these cables...

On an unrelated note, I somtimes get asked about the title of my blog. It comes from the lyrics in the number Some People from what is arguably the best Broadway musical ever, Gypsy. Just a relevant sample:

Some people can get a thrill
knitting sweaters and sitting still.
That's okay for some people
who don't know they're alive.

Despite the fact that these lyrics knock knitting, this really is a great musical. The original movie version with Rosalind Russel is bland. The made-for-TV version with Bette Midler is better. But nothing beats the original Broadway production with Ethel Merman. Gypsy is 50 this year, and they've just released an anniversary version of the original cast album. If you've never seen this musical, do so. And if I haven't convinced you, listen to this review that aired on Fresh Air a few weeks ago.

Busting Out All Over

June's here. I feel like knitting, but it's awfully hot for it. Especially with this bulletproof wad of wool on your lap. Even the AC blasting doesn't help. This thing is getting seriously hot. I didn't knit on it at all this week. I was so excited to finally get to the steeks, but a few rows in, I kind of lost my mojo.I'm a little paranoid that I'm not doing the decreases correctly. The pattern doesn't say specifically where to make them. but based on the pattern the steeks grew out of, I think I've got something workable and mostly symmetrical.

It's a little hard to describe, but working out from all the edges of all three steeks I've got a purl, a knit, and then another knit row where the decreases are worked. If you know what you're looking for, you can kind of see this at top center of the picture at the top of this post, near the orange stitch marker. I've consulted with knitters more knowledgeable than myself, and they've given me the go ahead. But as soon as I got it, I stopped. I'm going to try and get back to it today before I totally lose my momentum on this.

Unlike the vest, I'm going gangbusters on the Sailor's Rib Socks. I finished knitting the first one last night and wove in the ends this morning. I cast on the second one right away (sock knitters know why), but it took me three tries. I kept making dumb little cast-on mistakes. That's what I get for trying to knit while watching mindless TV. The mindlessness is contagious.

I think I've gotten closer to balancing the sock pattern to yarn color ratio than I have with previous pairs. The striping is quite subtle and doesn't fight the ribbing pattern at all. I've yet to get a picture that properly represents the deep purpleness of this Malabrigo sock yarn. I've never been a huge purple fan, but this I like.

So I'll be plugging away at these two projects while I eagerly await the weekend. I've never taken a knitting class in my life. I'm pretty comfortable with learning from books (a fortunate occupational hazard), and I'm blessed to know several very talented knitters. So I'm a little nervous, but very excited, to be taking a lace knitting class that will be taught at the Knitting Nest on Saturday by Franklin Habit. It's going to be a blast!

Vest Out West

Finally figured out a wireless connection in the park. Today, we walked 13.5 miles and several thousand feet in elevation. But the most exciting thing that happened today? Getting surprised by a very snarly black bear on the trail! We're both intact although still a little shaken...