in which I recount my history as a sweater knitter
Somehow I have become a sweater girl, knitting them almost exclusively. I’m thoroughly surprised by this, but think it’s primarily due to a couple things: (1) my friend Kelly, who inspires me with her sweaters, and (2) a few successes. Here is my sweaterography:
- Peasy – successful on all counts (though now it’s big, since I’ve lost weight, and it’s not the most flattering style on me, I now know.) Love the yarn (Rowan Felted Tweed) and would definitely use it again.
- Dark & Stormy — successfully knitted but unsuccessfully sized. Will be frogging. Love the yarn (madelinetosh vintage) and didn’t have huge problems with varying colors, but the FO is heavy. Very, very heavy. And that’s probably one reason it grew a couple sizes in blocking (and yes, I swatched and blocked.)
- Mondo Cable Cardi — successfully knitted but the yarn sucked, to be frank. Madelinetosh merino let me down in every way possible. The colors were so variable between skeins it was shocking; the yarn base itself varied wildly from skein to skein; and it turned into a giant pill within minutes of finishing it. Fail, but not because of my knitting. This one really put me off madelinetosh yarns.
- Featherweight Cardi — ding ding ding! We have a winner. This one was a win in every possible way, and I wear it a lot. I enjoyed the yarn a lot (Spirit Trails Fiberworks, clotho) and would use it again.
- Wintry Mix — ding ding ding!! A second big winner! I wear this a lot. Berroco Blackstone Tweed is a luscious yarn, and so far it’s holding up well.
- Vodka Gimlet — ding ding ding DING! The biggest winner of them all, I struggle every day to decide whether to wear this, or my Wintry Mix. The yarn is amazing (Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted) but trying to get it is an exercise in such frustration that I probably won’t use it again, to my endless disappointment.
Laurayana, sweater front
ready to roll -- madelinetosh pashmina, in siltwash
Well, I did it. I unbound-off the too-long Peasy sleeve, frogged enough rows, and knitted/bound off once again. The sleeve is now the perfect length – it matches the other one, and it matches my arm length. I like that in a sweater.
What an accidentally perfect choice I made for my first sweater; the yarn – Rowan Felted Tweed – is very sticky so it hides errors and looks fantastic when it’s blocked, and since it’s so sticky, it’s easy to frog with abandon, without worrying that it’ll all come undone.
Continue Reading–16 words totally
Well, I did it. I unbound-off the too-long Peasy sleeve, frogged enough rows, and knitted/bound off once again. The sleeve is now the perfect length – it matches the other one, and it matches my arm length. I like that in a sweater.
surgery - knitting needles, stat!
What an accidentally perfect choice I made for my first sweater; the yarn – Rowan Felted Tweed – is very sticky so it hides errors and looks fantastic when it’s blocked, and since it’s so sticky, it’s easy to frog with abandon, without worrying that it’ll all come undone.
It’s always good to take the time to fix what’s wrong. Mister Rogers had a great song called “I Like to Take My Time” (remember, Katie? 
), but for this post, I just imagined him singing that he’s proud of me. I’m proud of me too, Mister Rogers.
i made you, and i can take you OUT!
So it’s cool, overcast, and breezy today – 67 degrees right now, and our curtains are blowing with the constant breeze – and I needed to walk over to the library to pick a book. Peasy! I’ll wear Peasy, awesome. So I put on my handknit Kai-Mei socks under my black high-tops, and Peasy over a black tank top (with jeans in between of course) and headed out.
And as I’m walking down the sidewalk, I’m being very bothered by the fact that the right sleeve is considerably too long. Much longer than the left, but beyond that, it’s just too too long. It hits the middle of my palm (how did THAT happen?!). And I’m thinking ‘eh, I’ll just live with it.’
Then I thought I don’t have to live with it! I AM A KNITTER! And the maker of this sweater! After all the time and pleasure of making it, I want a lot of time and pleasure in wearing it. Mission #1 tonight: frog all those extraneous rows, reknit and bind off. Oh so easy. Peasy, even.
EDIT!!!!! ADDENDUM!!!!!! I just got the shipping notice from madelinetosh, telling me that my tosh merino DK (byzantine y’all!!) shipped. That means I’ll get it next week and can finally start the gorgeous Eve’s Ribs Shrug pattern (here’s the link to my post that shows the yarn and the pattern). This weekend I’m clearing the decks. Finishing my Mondo Cable Cardigan. Getting things done so I can cast on the moment that luscious yarn arrives. OH how hard it is to wait….
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wanna see my new sweater? it’s green….
After all this time, after all the initial excitement, after all the dragging-on low-level griping, after all the losing my mojo in the face of miles of stockinette, after all the whole deal…….Peasy.
Peasy in the park
what camera? I'm just standing here, like you do, wearing my sweater. Oh, you like it? I MADE IT.
there must be something interesting going on over there - i keep looking!
All is forgiven, miles of stockinette. All is forgiven, lost mojo. All is forgotten, minor-league grousing. I’ll be wearing this to Rhinebeck. Sure, I see a few things I wish I’d done differently – a little waist shaping, to reduce the boxiness; a little more attention to that right sleeve that’s a bit too long – and sure, I’ve lost several pounds since I started the sweater so now it’s a size too big, but it’s my sweater.
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my buttons look like Milk Duds. Is that because I’m dieting??
….and so I face the final button.
Peasy is in the last stages of drying; it’s just a little bit damp, but I don’t want to rush it. I took a little trip across town this morning (sidetrack: it’s so easy to go north-south here in Manhattan, which is good since it’s longer than it is wide, but it’s a real pain in the butt to cross town. Getting to the east side of Central Park either requires a cross-town bus, walking across the park, or taking the subway down to Times Square, transferring to another line, and going back uptown. Hassle). ANYWAY, since I had to be across town this morning anyway, for a dentist appointment, I took the chance to walk a few extra blocks to Tender Buttons, the charming little button shop at the edge of the button district, where I bought the buttons for Marnie’s wedding dress.
It’s so hard, picking the right buttons. It can feel like there’s so much pressure: must get the right ones! The wrong buttons would suck! Dizzy! And then I remember….it’s buttons. Geez. Pick some you like. So, after trying a few little wooden ones, and a couple of coconut shell buttons, I ended up with these oval woven leather buttons, handmade in Italy. At $3.50 each I want them to sing Nessun Dorma whenever I wear my sweater:
my little leather buttons....but don't they look like Milk Duds??
And here it is, nearly dry. The next time you see it, I’ll be wearing it. I’m going to take my tripod and remote control over to Riverside Park, so you can see it out in the world.
Peasy, so pretty
atsa lotta stitches my friend
I love it. All the boredom of all that stockinette, forgiven and forgotten. And now I’m super motivated to finish my Mondo Cable Cardigan too. I nearly finished sock #1 while I was waiting at the dentist office this morning. I haven’t had an FO in SO SO LONG, I’d forgotten what a high it is.
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OH MY!!! HALLELUJAH!!!! YIPPEE-EYE-OH!!
Peasy is mostly done.
Ends are woven in.
Continue Reading–1 words totally
OH MY!!! HALLELUJAH!!!! YIPPEE-EYE-OH!!
Peasy is mostly done.
Ends are woven in.
All that’s left: neck and front edge trim. Finding buttons.
I can put it on. And it looks good.
It appears I’ve knit myself a sweater.
I seem to recall something about hating all the stockinette – was that me? I don’t remember it being so bad now.
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so many WIPs, so little time. i know, you hear that ALL the time.
I thought that working from home would give me more time to knit. HA! Silly, silly me. I’m knitting less than before, for many reasons. I don’t have my subway commute time, which was a guarantee of ~45 minutes to an hour each day. I knocked out little projects during that commute. (NOT complaining about not having the commute, don’t get me wrong!) Also, another problem I’m not complaining about….I have a lot of work. Thanks to my Google Ad for my little business endeavor, I have more work than I can do, quite often. Just yesterday, I was contacted by 3 people wanting to hire me to edit their 100,000+ word novels. One is amazing, one has the potential to be amazing, and the 3rd is stupid. They can’t all be amazing, and at least the stupid one is not about Dracula and prairie schooners.
This work is of the type that causes (and requires) complete immersion. If I were just doing proofreading, I could pick it up and put it down. But I have to hold the whole novel in my mind, see redundancies, sections that would better fit elsewhere in the novel, gaps, inconsistencies, etc. Plus, I get in a kind of flow with it; I’ll open the file and start editing, and the next thing I know it’s 8 hours later and I haven’t stopped to pee or eat or anything. Poof! Eight hours have passed.
I’m also teaching stats, and let’s be honest. None of the students love stats the way I do. They’re required to take it, some are very smart but some are incredibly stupid. That’s right, I said it. Some are mushy-minded people who seem to have been failed by the educational system. But anyway – also teaching stats. And also needing to do 6 research projects for the publishing house I worked for.
So when’s a girl to knit? I also worry about all the hours doing very finely-focused computer work (on a laptop with a cramped keyboard) and getting carpal tunnel. That would be just horrible. At the end of these very long days, I still need to eat dinner and straighten up, and the day is done. Last week I didn’t sleep one minute Tuesday night (thank you stupid waitress who clearly gave me full-caf instead of decaf, even though I emphasized and asked again twice before drinking it), and Thursday night I slept 2 hours.
So here is the current state of my WIPs:
there it is.
First up, the one that’s been sitting in my bag the longest: Mondo Cable Cardigan, with madelinetosh merino, in Graphite.
near the end of sleeve 1, body finished.
look at the beauty of the yarn
I realized some of my skeins were a drastically different color – blue black instead of charcoal gray – and it put a hitch in my gitalong. Thanks to ravelers, I was able to score a couple of skeins that matched better, but I’ve never recovered my mojo on this one. But it really is beautiful, and softer than a baby angel fairy’s bottom.
coming along - but not too quickly. FUN pattern to knit!
This is blanket-sized: It’s the Totally Autumn pattern by Anne Hanson, and it’s such fun to knit! The pattern is cool, and it remains so engaging as I work on it. The Cascade 220 is hard, though, and my index fingers starts to feel raw after a while, as the yarn runs over it. It’s never as hard as I remember it, so whenever I do pick it up to work on it, I’m always surprised. Still, I’ve got a long way to go on that one.
Peasy - after I finish the current ball, I'll be ready to do the collar and button band!! WOO-HOO!!
Peasy, of course, though I couldn’t photograph the color accurately today, for some reason. You’ve seen it so many times on my blog, so you know the color is a rich avocado. I’m getting there, and cannot wait to wear it at Rhinebeck. One good thing that’s come about as a result of this sweater: I don’t hate the purl row as much as I used to. The collar and button band are simple, and not very wide, so I really am getting near the end with this one. Just one more ball of Rowan Felted Tweed.
this one is suffering from no commute time
The Sockhead Hat, in a Regia yarn that I’m not all that crazy about but it was a gift so I love it for that reason. This one stays in my project bag in my purse, and whenever I’m in the subway I feverishly work as much as I can, but I’m only in the subway once a week now.
I don't know; I'm not feeling it. The yarn is just so special - may just frog this.
This snowflake hat pattern is fun to work, and of course the yarn nearly makes me cry, it’s so soft and lofty and such gorgeous colors too. I suspect I really want something different for the yarn, something I might wear against my skin – a little shawl or something, to wrap near my neck. I do suspect I’ll frog this.
close to the toe on sock #1
And my socks, out of Tosh Sport (colorway tweed – this photograph does capture the color pretty well, which I think should be called bronze. But they didn’t ask me.)
the beginnings of bag #1
And a new project I cast on yesterday – the Monteagle bag, using the Louet Euroflax yarn string yarn I recently got from Paradise Fibers. I’ll be making two of these, if I can tolerate it. The linen is kind of hard to work with, especially with these tricky stitches (the next one of which I cannot begin to figure out: “*Knit into the back of the second stitch with a double wrap, but do not transfer to the right needle; knit the first and second stitches together through the back loops with a double wrap and transfer both stitches to the right needle; repeat from * around on each following pair of stitches.”) WHA??? And the linen wants to be straight and hard and pop off the needle mid-stitch.
For now, though, many other less-pleasant tasks are calling my name. Shut up you less-pleasant tasks! I’d rather be knitting.
i don’t know what to do. really. please help me solve my knitting problem. AND DON’T LAUGH.
Colossus of Rhodes
I guess I fall on the process side of the process/product divide (here’s an aside for any reader who isn’t a knitter: we are process knitters if it’s really the process we enjoy [and some of us are even pre-process knitters], otherwise we’re just after the end result). Of course I also adore the products, and love having my handmade work as part of my daily life. I guess I’m like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the harbor – one foot firmly planted in the process, the other firmly adoring the product.
ANYWAY. Geez, I get off track so easily. When I started composing the post in my head, I thought I’d open with the first lines of The Odyssey, about asking the muse to sing. I must be in some Classics/Ancient Greek head today.
ANYWAY. Good grief. OK, to my point. I am languishing in stockinette wasteland. (oh yeah – this is why I brought up process knitting. I do love the process, but I’m going really bored with stockinette! sorry for rambling…) I’m nearly finished with Peasy‘s 2nd sleeve, and have been randomly working body rows when the round-and-round-and-round of the sleeve starts to be too hypnotic. Yay! An alternating purl row! Variety! (sidebar note: I once had a knitting blog called I Hate the Purl Row but decided that was a little too harsh.)
ANYWAY. So if I’m tired of Peasy, I can work on …… my Mondo Cable cardigan. Also at the sleeves, and also all stockinette. OK, so that’s wearing a little thin and boring? How about my subway knitting……oh yeah. Stockinette hat, knit in the round.
So one project is sock yarn, and not all that soft and lovely a sock yarn either. One project is madelinetosh merino, o so soft and lovely. And the other is Rowan Felted Tweed – scratchy and rustic. I can focus on the yarns to experience some variety, but I think I’m coming down with a case of startitis. I suspect I’ve been infected by
don't you want to rub them against your cheek? 70% baby alpaca, 30% merino
Cascade Eco Duo. Two skeins – hazelnut and vanilla. Only 197 yards each, aran weight. Oh y’all….they’re so soft it’s like lying down in a field of puppies. Or bunnies. And having fairies kiss your cheeks, while dusting your nose with marshmallows.
SEE?! See how they’ve hypnotized me! The problem is that I need to make something with them, and now….but do I use them both, in some stripey scheme? Or make something precious with one of them – there’s the 198 Yards of Heaven shawl (dang, I have 197 ). But I don’t want to just pick something, anything, just because it’ll work with the yarn.
aaaaaargh!!!!!!!! The paralysis of a perfect yarn. All advice and recommendations welcomed.
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see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, everything but hearing it!
It’s sunny and beautiful outside, and a wonderland indoors. The coffee was brewing, blueberry scones were baking, the riotous armload of stargazer lilies filled the air with their dizzyingly thick smell, and the rough texture of Rowan Felted Tweed made my hands crave to touch my Peasy sweater that’s starting to look like an actual sweater!
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- a landscape of stitches, made one at a time
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- it’s starting to look like a sweater, y’all!
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- love the Peasy sleeve – no cuff, just a gentle rounding-in
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- blueberry scones – really delicious, with a mug of coffee
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- so many blooms – and a dozen buds still waiting!
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- such brilliant color
Happy Sunday, y’all -
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flowers. knitting. music. books. what else is there?
The other day, I got this armload of flowers; he’d been near the flower district, so he just thought to bring home flowers. Sweet, so sweet – no reason, other than that he thought of it, and he knows I love flowers.
stargazer lilies, our favorite
pretty yellow, especially nice in a squat arrangement!
So that’s one thing. Another is a bit of knitting content! I’m making some good headway on the first Peasy sleeve, which is thrilling now that I don’t have to watch my needles, because I’ve gotten quite far in Never Let Me Go, by Ishiguro – highly recommended, and review to come when I finish. Reading + knitting = happy, happy me.
it's really getting to be a sleeve!
all those stitches!
And since I’ve been in the subway a few times this week, some work on my little Sockhead hat, using the yarn Anna gave me for Mother’s Day (Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Galaxy, the Jupiter colorway):
my starry night hat, with yarn from Anna
And finally – a musical gift to you, courtesy of my daughter Katie. Katie has always loved The Beatles, with a kind of fanaticism. So adorable, little junior high Katie wearing one Beatles t-shirt after another, challenging you to name any obscure Beatles song, and she could tell you what track on what side of what album it was first published. She posted this video on her blog recently, and since my laptop has crappy speakers, I didn’t listen to it until this afternoon, when I had headphones plugged in. OH….you think you’ve heard every cover of every Beatles song, you think you’re bored of it, you think it’s not possible to do one of their songs with a unique voice while still being the song, and you’re absolutely 100% wrong. Listen to this – Because, sung by Melody Gardot. Be prepared to get chills.
See? I told you. Thank you Katie. In the immortal words of The Continental, wowie wow wow wow.
announcement to texans and new yorkers: nobody likes you if you think you’re the best.
Maybe, in your life, you once had a relationship that was unsatisfying, but there wasn’t really anything wrong with the person. Everyone said Oh, s/he’s so great, such a nice person, funny, etc. I did once, and I agreed with them! Still, “perfect” as he seemed to be, it was not a good relationship for me. Around that time, I heard Joan Baez sing a song that included the line I used as this blog post title: a saint is hard to live with at home. It cracked me up, it felt very familiar and personally true, and obviously it stayed with me.
This line came to mind this morning when I saw the following article in the NYTimes:
we're perfect
Yep – that’s what it says. More city preschoolers are perfect. Test scores show. To me, that suggests that the tests are imperfect, or imperfect for assessing what they need to assess. Had I seen those data, I’d have written an article pointing out the problems with the test. But New Yorkers – you know how they are – instead say that we’re just perfect.
As a Texan, I really get that, and it’s one thing I find dear about New Yorkers. Well, dear and really irritating. Just like people get irritated (or worse) with Texans for their/our grandiose views of themselves (ourselves). NYers and Texans should either get over ourselves, or at least keep our mouths shut a little more often.
And look at this – what do we see in my gigantic knitting bag next to my place on the couch:
peasy and mondo, mixing it up together in the bag
That’s my Peasy sweater (I’m knitting a sleeve right now) and my Mondo Cable Cardigan (also on a sleeve). Two sweaters! But lost in sleeveland, the seemingly endless land of stockinette tubes. Yesterday I did a little Peasy sleeve knitting, then a little Mondo sleeve knitting, then back to Peasy. It didn’t feel like too much of a break, switching to the other. I don’t have a purse knitting project going right now, and I keep thinking I ought to cast on something small and quickly-finishable, but then I know I’d just do that instead of sleeves, and the sleeve-knitting elf hasn’t found my apartment yet so if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to do it.
Everything there is to do in this world has a bit that’s less fun than the others. I read an article by Jane Patrick in one of the first issues of Handwoven, where she talked about how much she hated sleying the reed (I think that was the detail). Then she realized that’s a necessary task, she’s always going to have to do it when she weaves, so she tried to reorient herself to the idea. That happened to me when I took my intro stats course as an undergrad – at first I hated it, but I realized it would be my essential tool so I found another way to think about it, and now I adore stats. So my mission is to find another way to conceptualize the endlessness of sleeves.
Happy Thursday, y’all.
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yikes i love this project
Kelly and my other sweater-knitting friends: I’m in. I’m totally in. I get it. It’s addictive. Knitting sweaters = f.u.n. Want to see where I am with Peasy?
look at that! I'm knitting a sweater!!
this photo has the most accurate color - green pea soup
the lacy front panels
Yeah. I’ll be doing this a lot more. And if you haven’t tried knitting with it yet, Rowan Felted Tweed is AMAZING. I’m just sayin.
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the last of the wedding details
What an emotional and wonderful experience the last several days has been. It’s really one of the highlights of life, when a child gets married. Marnie’s and Tom’s wedding was really beautiful. (here’s a link to the flickr set, with a growing number of photos)
Late afternoon:
me, writing notes for my toast. They put me last because they (rightly) knew that my speech would be the most emotional.
A silent auction of some of Marnie's prints, to benefit the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)'s support of gay marriage
Tom's friend Gwendolyn did Marnie's hair and makeup
FINALLY! It’s 7pm, time to head down to the prairie, where the ceremony will be held.
we all walked through the forest, past the sugar shack, to get to the prairie where we waited for Tom and Marnie to appear.
and here they come! We all broke out into applause when they appeared. Tom's niece Ella had gathered a bunch of prairie wildflowers for Marnie to carry, at the last minute.
This is SO THEM. Even in this moment, there was a lot of laughter.
married! Joe just pronounced them married, after the most beautiful ceremony and vows. And there was much applause, laughter, tears, and joy.
Then we all returned to the Lodge, for a wonderful dinner catered by a local restaurant. They don’t do catering – they just did this for Marnie and Tom. They bought all local ingredients for the menu, purchased the morning of the wedding.
Marnie watches Tom order his food - I love her gaze at him
a moment's pause. I think she looks so beautiful, even in this thoughtful moment.
Night fell as we were eating dinner, and then we had the speeches and toasts. Without exception, everyone talked about how much Marnie and Tom laugh together, how absolutely right they are for each other, and how much they mean to us all. Marnie and Tom had their dance, then Marnie had selected a song to dance with her dad, and then there was our song, one that has enormous meaning for Marnie and me – L.O.V.E., by Nat King Cole. It’s a long story …. but you can bet I cried throughout the whole thing.
the tent, lit up with little bits of starlight and a lot of joy
Marnie's gannetts hanging from the tent rafters
FLYING HOME SUNDAY
Only because I had to, I flew out on Delta. I hate Delta. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever taken an uneventful Delta flight; I’m sure it would be memorable if I ever had a Delta flight that was uneventful because it would be the only such experience. I flew from Madison to Detroit, where I had to change planes (with a 1-hour layover), for the flight home to LaGuardia. Like all my other flights on this roundtrip, I got to the airport to find that the flight to Detroit was delayed by one hour. There were no other flights that would get me home that day, no matter how I arranged it. So I just had to hope for the best.
While we were in the air, someone – one of pilots, we think – came on and said this: “Sorry we got a late start, and we know most of you are worried about making your connections. But look! Look outside, it’s a beautiful day! It’s still a beautiful day to be flying!” And so on. Mr. Mindfulness, trying to reorient us. It made me laugh.
So I got to Detroit, the connecting flight knew there were 19 of us on the now-late plane, so we ran off the plane, raced down the terminal, and raced onto the very VERY hot plane. And then I sat. And I sat. And I sweated in the heat, and I waited. An announcement was made that we’re waiting on the pilot, who was coming in on another flight that had been delayed. Later, an announcement: the pilot has just landed! We should be taking off in about 5-10 minutes! Later, another announcement: “Hi, I’m your new pilot with the replacement team. We have no idea what happened to the other flight crew. We should be taking off shortly.”
SO DELTA. I did finally land, only to face incredibly bad traffic. I got home considerably later than I dreamed I would. But I got a lot of knitting done; finished my Wowie Zowie socks, and got a great start on Peasy.
fantastic socks, taken against a backdrop of your standard Best Western bedspread.
Peasy! Easy! Fun!
the bit of lace on the front panels
And now, I begin my new life as (a) the mother of 2 married daughters, and (b) a freelancer. I’m finishing up the unpacking/straightening up details, finishing a lot of paperwork, and then I start my new life scrambling for work. Know anyone who needs (1) a manuscript developed, (2) a good writer, (3) a market research consultant, (4) a survey designer and programmer, or (5) a data analyst? If so, send them my way!
Thanks again for all your very lovely best wishes, they meant a lot to me.
why can’t i do this math?!
I just feel the need to say this – this subject must be threatening to my identity or something – but I’m very good at statistics. I can do a discriminant function analysis, structural equation modeling, whatever. But knitting math just makes my head hurt. Since I’ve written about this before, and you left such generous comments, I do know that I’m not alone; for some of us, the whole enterprise is just counterintuitive. I knit a swatch and have too many stitches per inch….do I use a smaller needle or a larger one? Even though I have already been through this, I still don’t know.
So after redoing my Peasy swatch in the wrong direction, I redid it last night in the right direction. The pattern gauge is 22 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. Going up a needle size, I get 21.5 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. Pretty dang good!
My problem is that I can’t figure out what that 1/2 a stitch difference is going to mean. In the gracious spirit of Amy Herzog’s Fit to Flatter series, last night I decided to just suck it up and take my real measurements, disregarding what the actual numbers were and just looking carefully at the relationships between them. Then I compared them to the Peasy pattern to see what size I really need to knit. Well, I’m exactly on the large. Exactly.
So does this 1/2 stitch difference mean the sweater will be ever-so-slightly larger or ever-so-slightly smaller? If it’s larger, that’s wonderful! I sit here and try to puzzle my through it and just get a headache.
note to self: you can do structural equation modeling! you are not stupid!
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2nd lesson in 2 days about knitting – i feel like such a grownup!
Well, aren’t I glad I did this – I dutifully completed my (first) swatch for my beautiful new Peasy sweater. Last night I wet blocked the swatch, and I just unpinned it, got out my measuring tape, and checked my gauge. Using a 3.5mm needle, my gauge should have been 22 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. But I got 23.5 and 31 rows = 4 inches. Here are my lessons learned:
1) because I now know from my Wowie Zowie sock lesson that what seems like a small difference can actually be a very large difference,
2) I need to go down a needle size, and
3) the fabric is going to be absolutely gorgeous, with the most lovely hand and drape ever.
Madelinetosh is not in danger of being toppled from the top of my favorite- yarn- ever list — especially not with tosh merino light in this world — but Rowan Tweed has scootched immediately to a close second. I think I’ll knit a Manu with Rowan Tweed after I finish my beautiful Peasy and an Austin Hoodie with TML. I also have enough yarn for an Inaugural sweater.
Oh dear. I think I’ve just become a sweater knitter.* Good thing I live in a place with a long cold winter.
With a nice long weekend coming up, I have knitting plans that include finishing Marnie’s wedding shawl and getting it blocked, doing some work (you know, instead of saying work I’d rather say ‘fun’) doing some fun on my Wowie Zowie socks, and maybe I’m just sayin maybe getting going on my Peasy. Last night was the first major festivity associated with leaving my job; 20 people I work with came to a little party for me, and it was quite amazing. Much toasting and fete-ing and love; hugs and kisses from each one at the end. Tonight is a drinks farewell with my boss’s boss and my best work friend, Thursday night is my writing group. Not much will happen until the weekend but it’s all going to be fun. When it’s good, life can be really, really good, you know?
*disclaimer and acknowledgment: knitting a swatch does not guarantee becoming a sweater knitter…there is still the ability to be in it for the long haul, the perseverance to finish all the fiddly bits, and (for some sweaters) the ability to assemble pieces. The jury is still out on me with these parts!
in which I enhance my stash, one more time
Gosh – where to start. Maybe the color — they called it Avocado, I call it lush and gorgeous. The softness? OH yeah, it’s soft. The depth, those little flecks of yellow and red and navy? Oh so beautiful. [click the photos to biggify]
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- oh so tweedy
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- in a Peruvian reed boat
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- lotsa balls
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- s-o-f-t
I bought it to make a Peasy sweater [rav link here] – the very first time I ever bought the specified yarn for a project. Usually I don’t think that far in advance; I just get an itching to make something, I pick a pattern and check what weight yarn is specified, then see what I have in that weight. But I saw Saffron‘s Peasy, on her fabulous blog Mooncalfmakes, and she uses a lot of Rowan, so I was hooked.
I couldn't leave that Rowan Felted Tweed alone....
Not that I’ll be starting the sweater any time soon, unfortunately. For now I’ll have to comfort myself by petting the yarn a lot. You know what that’s like, I’m sure.
If 2009 was the Year of Cowls, I’d have to say that 2010 was the Year of Socks plus the year I got into sweaters. Let’s see them (for complete project details of all the 2010 FOs, see the rav page here).
Begun at the end of 2009, these were my first FO for 2010: Fools Rush Socks by Cassie Thoreson. I’d always wanted red and white striped socks, so I used two colors of KnitPicks Risata – buttermilk and spicy. I didn’t enjoy working with the Risata very much, and they’re not soft to wear. But dang if the color and stripes don’t make me happy! Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass, is one of my favorite books and red and white are important colors in that book, so I call these my Tin Drum Socks:
Continue Reading–234 words totally
If 2009 was the Year of Cowls, I’d have to say that 2010 was the Year of Socks plus the year I got into sweaters. Let’s see them (for complete project details of all the 2010 FOs, see the rav page here).
Begun at the end of 2009, these were my first FO for 2010: Fools Rush Socks by Cassie Thoreson. I’d always wanted red and white striped socks, so I used two colors of KnitPicks Risata – buttermilk and spicy. I didn’t enjoy working with the Risata very much, and they’re not soft to wear. But dang if the color and stripes don’t make me happy! Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass, is one of my favorite books and red and white are important colors in that book, so I call these my Tin Drum Socks:
Fools Rush Socks by Cassie Thoreson, in KnitPicks Risata
Aren’t they cute? I made a 3rd pair of socks for my stepdaughter Anna, whose feet get cold in her dorm. She picked out the yarn and color – KnitPicks Felici, in the cochineal colorway, and I chose the pattern: Hedera by Cookie A. It was a nice mix of yarn and pattern:
a pair of socks for a cold dorm room floor
I realized I’d knitted a lot of socks for Anna, but none for Katie, my oldest daughter, so I presented her with a range of yarn choices and asked her to pick. She’s a pretty Irish girl, so both yarns had green bits. With the Lorna’s Lace Shepherd Sock Multi, I knitted Holes in my Socks! by Nicole Okun. It was a fun pattern to knit, and the fit was comfortable:
Holes in my Socks! by Nicole Okun (Lorna's Lace Shepherd Sock Multi, colorway Beverly 209)
Her other yarn choice was Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks, colorway meadow 1518. I returned to my old standby pattern, Monkey by Cookie A., which I could knit in my sleep. Katie liked these, too:
Monkey by Cookie A.
I made a new pair of socks for ME, using this beautiful madelinetosh sock yarn in the crow colorway. This pattern, Kai-Mei, is in her new book titled Sock Innovation, and it was loads of fun to knit. I just plowed forward, not quite understanding what was going on, but it turned out wonderfully:
Kai-Mei, by Cookie A. - madelinetosh sock, crow colorway
A pair of pink socks for my worm farmin’ power liftin’ badass daughter Marnie: No-purl Monkeys, knit with KnitPicks Felici (colorway Positively Pink, and they’re not kidding about that).
i call these Minkeys - pink Monkeys
These Circle Socks, designed by Anne Campbell, in a Kaffe Fassett colorway (I call them my Wowie-Zowie socks):
Wowie Zowie Socks (Circle Socks, by Anne Campbell)
A pair of very plain socks (no pattern used, just plain old socks) in madelinetosh Tosh Sport, colorway tweed. The yarn is fantastic, and I hope it’s hardwearing:
tweedie-pie socks
Inspired by this truly gorgeous skein of yarn by madelinetosh (tosh merino light, colorway tern), I knitted the Traveling Woman by Liz Abinante. I looked through the project notes of other knitters who made the pattern, but didn’t quite take seriously enough the caution to bind off loosely. If I make it again, and I think I will, I’ll investigate different bind-off techniques so I’m sure to make it elastic enough to be able to pull out the points. Still, it’s pretty!
Traveling Woman by Liz Abinante, in tosh merino light (tern colorway)
And this lovely little Baktus scarf, my subway knitting project knit with Noro Silk Garden Sock and a skein of KnitPicks Essential:
wearing the baktus scarf
A lace ribbon scarf in Rowan Felted Tweed – pattern and yarn selected by the recipient, my friend Susan Lee. She saw my Peasy and loved the yarn, and asked if I’d make her a scarf like my orange malabrigo sock lace ribbon. I wouldn’t have put the yarn with the pattern, but it’s ok!
lace ribbon scarf (Veronik Avery), in Rowan Felted Tweed
A very meaningful project – an heirloom project – was a wedding shawl for my daughter Marnie. I learned a lot, making this, and while I’m not sure how many more cobweb-weight shawls I want to make, I am very happy with how it turned out.
placeholder shot of blocking - will replace with full shot after I give it to her
I made this sockhead hat to donate to the BSD Project, using yarn that my stepdaughter gave me for Mother’s Day earlier this year. Although I got really bored with all that stockinette round and round and round with sock yarn, I did love the outcome:
a hat in search of a home
It took me long enough, but I finished a cardigan – Peasy, by Heidi Kirrmaier. I used Rowan Felted Tweed, in avocado, and bought some beautiful little Italian handmade leather buttons, oval-shaped. I love the sweater.
Peasy, in Rowan Felted Tweed. LOVE.
Peasy in the park
A second sweater finished on the heels of Peasy, even though I cast on for it Dec 26 of last year. One dilemma after another – it was the high of finishing Peasy that made me haul butt to finish this, the Mondo Cable Cardi – et voila:
At the end of the year, I had 2 sweaters on the needles (Dark & Stormy and Eve’s Rib), a scarf in progress for a friend, an afghan in the works, and a set of monsters coming together for Katie. Not as much knitting as I’d have liked, but that’s life.
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