Variations on a Rib and a Tail

I love swatching. Maybe it's because I'm a little commitment phobic, but I really enjoy playing with different patterns and getting a feel for the yarn at different gauges before deciding what I want to stick with. I've started on another seamless sweater, Zimmerman style, using a rust colored yarn that my mother in law gave me from her stash. It has some angora in it and is very soft with little wispy bits that somehow get stuck to my nose while I work with it. pfhe pfhe.

I'm playing with different types of ribbing to go at the edges. The body of the sweater has a big shadow cable in the center, and I want something that will echo the cable without being too harsh of a transition. I'm playing with some sort of fade...



I think right now my favorite is the one that starts with the 2x2 rib and fades to the little mini-shadows. But I dont' have to decide for a while!

Here's the body in progress. Tail not included.



Oh fine then -- be in the photo...

Blue Plate Special

I've been getting into color knitting, though still not quite ready to make the time commitment for a sweater on the scale of the Venezia Pullover I admire so much. Maybe in retirement. Or at least a long summer vacation...

Meanwhile, I had great fun with Brooklyn Tweed's Red Light Special Hat. Thanks for the free pattern! I worked this in blue, with some yarn that my mother in law passed along to me from her stash. Love free projects!!!!!!!

Here are some photos. My husband expressed an interest, and has been enjoying his new hat. He was kind enough to give the pig a rest from hat-modeling duty.



This is a close up of the fabric. Sadly, the camera phone is really not up to the task, but we muddle through. Suffice to say that the gradated color arrangement that I admired on BT's original in red, translated well to the blue and it looks really pretty. I went to see the Tiffany exhibit at the Met while I was working on this, and felt kind of inspired ;-)



FINAL SPECS FOR BLUE PLATE SPECIAL HAT:
PATTERN: Design by Brooklyn Tweed Red Light Special Hat
YARN: Various acrylic/wool/other stuff blends from the closets of assorted elderly ladies in Ontario as procured by my wonderful Mother in Law. Black background with forest green, teal, and aqua cc's.
NEEDLES: addi turbo US#3, and US#2 dpns for top
TIME: in between other projects I'd say 3/4 of a season of Netflixed Grey's Anatomy
MODIFICATIONS: I made a provisional cast on and simply turned the hem and sewed down loose stitches instead of knitting them together as directed. I used a much lighter shade cotton yarn for the hem and wasn't sure if it would show through that way.

Finished Sweater - Seam Free

I actually finished this a while ago and have been wearing it so much it's starting to pill already. Just soft little fuzz-pill, though, nothing horrible.

I love the simplicity of the sweater and the fact that it was knitted all of a piece (sleeves excepted of course). This is the interesting thing about knitting, and where I feel it has the most potential for elegance -- that you can shape the garment while creating the very fabric. Fabric and garment come into being together as one entity. Sewing is much more brutal. You start with a flat piece, cut it, stitch it, steam it, etc. and it finishes as a construction. Knitting is more like a shaping process.

Unlike many knitters, I actually don't mind seaming. I think my next couple of projects will be seamed. Nevertheless, this knitting, shaping, forming thing is nifty. I think short rows are the next step for me in that area and have been thinking about round items such as hoods, hats, bust darts...

Okay, here are some photos of the sweater.



The sleeves look really long here, but in fact they are the perfect length exactly. My mistake was in wet-blocking the sweater they got sort of heavy and stretched out in length as they dried on the mat. I should have realized that and scrunched them up into shape a little, but que sera and all that. I figured I didn't mind so much and would just wait until the sweater got its first washing to correct it, but actually they seem to have corrected themselves in the few days afterwards, scootching back up to rest at exactly the right place just an inch past my wristbone where I like them.



EZ is brilliant. The back decreases were totally easy and intuitive once I got to them. When I read ahead in the pattern I thought it would be much more difficult than it really was. Here is a closeup of the shoulder shaping. Also really simple.



I am already thinking about another seamless sweater in the round. I've got an interesting rust colored wool/angora/acrylic blend on hand that my mother in law gifted to me from her stash. I'm thinking of ribbing on the sleeves and bottom that pulls in just slightly, a big cable in the front, and some sort of floppy cowl neck, for a sort of 80's inspired slouchy look. We'll see if I can find the time for that one. This last semester of school is really hard!

FINISHED SPECS FOR GREEN SWEATER:
PATTERN: seamless saddle shoulder sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman's KNITTING W/O TEARS and KNITTERS WORKSHOP
YARN: Plymouth Suri Merino color 687 (the perfect bottle green). 55% suri alpaca, 45% extra fine merino wool. I looove this yarn.
NEEDLES: US #8 addi turbo 24" circular for the body, and US#8 bamboo dpns for the sleeves
TIME: Started the second week in December -ish and finished approx January 15. (Lots of good knitting time over the Christmas holiday!)
MODIFICATIONS: None, really. The pattern is pretty straightforward. I did include a hem per EZ's method of picking up stitches from the bottom of the cast-on edge. This was dead easy and turned beautifully. In the future I am going to try a different method of increasing. I don't love the small holes that occur with her m1 method, even though to be honest they almost completely disappeared after blocking. I made short rows in the back twice (for 4 total add'l rows, right?) and would probably only do this once on a future sweater as the back dips down a little teensy bit too much for my preference. I made the body in a slight bell, though, decreasing by 4 total stitches at each side as I worked up to the armpits. I like the slightly swingy shape here and it came out exactly like I wanted (obsessive measuring pays off), but because the hem doesn't rest on the body I think it actually doesn't have the riding-up issue that the short rows are intended to correct - thus, a slight dip in the back. Again, because I was looking for a slight swing shape, I did not do the fake seams. I'm really glad that I made that decision, b/c the fabric has settled into a natural curve all the way around the body that I could never have artificially induced. It fits perfectly and keeps getting better the longer I wear it.

They Might Be Pirates

Here is the completed hat, We Call Them Pirates, from HelloYarn.



This was a study in yarn dominance. Often I don't really understand a knitting concept until I've tried it, and learning knitting is a very tactile experience for me. I have a hard time conceptualizing the process outside of my actual hands. I'd read about yarn dominance, but until I saw my little pirate heads fading into the background on the first few rounds of the pattern on this hat I didn't really GET it.

Some after-the-fact embroidery around the base of this hat obscures the issue somewhat, but close examination might reveal a change from first pirates to subsequent pirates after I switched the cc to my left hand. That's counterintuitive for me because my right hand is elsewise quite dominant.

All said, the pirates turned out swimmingly. Many thanks to Hello Yarn for the clever (and free!) pattern.

FINAL SPECS:
PATTERN: see link above
YARN: Classic Elite Princess (I love this yarn!) in black, and a white merino of similar weight I had lying around the stash
NEEDLES: U.S. #3 Addi Turbo circular
MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant. I did not decrease any stitches for the hem and instead just knitted, after the turning row of purls, an inch and a half or so of stockinette rounds in my super soft Princess and tacked down the live stitches two at a time.
IN HINDSIGHT: I noticed that even after correcting for yarn submissiveness in the first few rounds, the white still fades into the black in the middle of the border separations between the four pattern sections of the hat. In Hello Yarn's photo of her finished hat there are two white stitches followed by one black, whereas the pattern has two black followed by one white. I think in the future I'd try the former instead for a cleaner line

Fabric Therapy

A trip to my favorite fabric store cures many ills. I left NYC for a while in the early 2000's and the thing I missed the most -- I mean the very most, more than the Met, or the other Met, more than hot Greek platter in Astoria, more than getting drunk on cheap beer at the International, was my favorite fabric store, Paron Fabrics. I love Paron Fabrics. They have gorgeous dressmaker fabrics that range from tastefully understated quality wools and silks to more artful arrangements of glimmer and texture that I admire from afar but don't really have the lifestyle to wear. And they have a discount section where everything is 50% off. I always start out on that side, but about half the time I wander over and fall in love on the full price side nevertheless.

This time I got some lovely purple/rayon/silk boucle for a simple, sleeveless dress. A lofty pink-beige boxy plaid for a little shawl-collar jacket, and one yard of silk-linen blend in a luminous burgundy color that I've admired the past few times I've been in the store. I don't have the time right now to make the kind of structured blouse or feminine dress that I think this piece of stiff sheer really calls for, but I decided that a scarf would suffice and allow me to possess her.



I hope that everyone in the world will visit Paron when they visit NYC. Sadly, we never know how long our favorite fabric stores are going to last now even in New York. Rest in Peace P&S on Broadway below Canal, one of my near-work haunts the past couple of years, and the most recent of my acquaintance to fall.

This is something that makes me worry about the future. What will I do when there are no more good fabric stores left? I used to think as they closed in Boston or Maine or Pennsylvania, that at the least there would always be good fabric stores in New York, but now the ranks seem to be thinning out even here and it makes me very sad. Whence goes Home Ec...

Brioche No. 2 Complete

I finished the brioche watchcap for myself. Just in time now that the weather's turned chilly. It's bulky, but I like it. Unlike many hats I've knitted before, it covers my ears...



SPECS
Pattern: brioche stitch watchcap from Knitting without Tears
Yarn: Paton's UpCountry in olive drab and charcoal grey along the cast-on edge
Needles: U.S. #13 bamboo straight needles
Modifications: none

Saddle Up

Work on the Zimmerman seamless saddle shoulder sweater continues. I've joined the body and sleeves and am working the saddles up to the neck. The sweater is almost done, and it is very exciting! I am so in love with this fuzzy green alpaca blend yarn. I can't wait to finish this so I can start wearing it.

Here is the sweater so far:



Here's a close-up of the left saddle:



Fun, fun, fun!