Birita is done! Huzzah. I am pretty sure I would have finished this sooner if I hadn’t been sure I would run out of yarn. To recap; this pattern calls for 2 balls {500 yds} of Icelandic Laceweight yarn. Including a fancy crochet border. I purchased 3 balls of the yarn well before 2018 {the shop closed in 2018!} and then an additional partial ball when it became clear I would not have enough yarn. I cast on this project in 2019 and completed my first ball of yarn @ row 30, my second ball @ row 65. Frogged the project and cast on again last month…. the third ball was completed @ row 110 and finished the other 100-ish rows with the fourth ball. All in all I used 995.2 yards with a scant 3 inch tail at cast on and 9 grams {49.2 yards} left of fourth partial ball. I neither crochet nor had enough yarn for the fancy scalloped border but if you want to do either a fringe or crochet border you will obviously need a 5th ball.
Currently my shawl is laid out on my bed drying. I didn’t pin it out with wires or anything. The yarn softened significantly although I did enjoy working with its scrunchy wool handle. It is thick and thin and I used spit splicing along the way. I was thinking of gifting this project to my mom but now that I am over the stress of finding a source for this yarn in this color I am super happy with the finished project.
I am participating in a secret swap-along for an online group I belong to and have cast on my next project which is another pair of Elegant Gauntlets from Sally Melville’s The Purl Stitch. I have knit this project numerous times as gifts and it is fairly quick and easy. There are errors in the pattern. Namely the sizing is due to gauge changes. XRX was using a chart method to depicting gauge, yarn, needles etc at the time. I think it was the beginning of using what was termed the Japanese method of pattern writing. XRX had a few articles on the graphic representation of not only the patterns schematic but also the information required to follow the pattern. On page 29 of the book we read:
The vitals column that accompanies every pattern is loaded with information, replacing a whole lot of words that can make knitting patterns look like no-fun text books…. Their most important function may be to make knitting a universal language.
As far as I recall, XRX and Knitter’s magazine was on the forefront of presenting patterns in this manner in the US.
There are two sizes S-M (L-XL) which corresponds to a circumference of 8 1/2 (10)”. The gauge is given as being 24 (28) per 4″ and the needles suggested are 2.75 for S-M and 3.25 for M-L. You can see the error in a couple of different ways. Usually one decreases the needle size if they want to increase the number of stitches but their chart shows the 24 sts being obtained with the smaller needles and the 28 sets being obtained with the larger needles. This is backwards. The second area an error stands out is in the gauge itself. If you cast on 60 stitches and are getting 24 sts per 4 inches you will get a finished circumference of 10 inches but that is the gauge required for the small size. And it follows that if you get the gauge required for the large size you will end up with the circumference for the smaller arm warmers. Many knitters at the time complained that the size small was too large and the large size was too small. The issue is not necessarily the sizing but more the transposition of numbers for gauge. If you have read reviews on sizing that kept you from knitting this project rest assured that all you need to do is switch the suggested gauge and cast on. It is honestly a lovely project and there were a couple of years where my coworkers asked me to make them ‘sock arms’
Zoe has not picked a baby name so this project, Baby Kylie designed by Ann Klimpert, was dubbed Baby X during the knitting. From swatch to wash about 2 weeks of knitting most of which was spent on the plain garter of the body. No buttons yet since the shops are closed and I am hoping to match either the yellow stripes or the orange splotches in the yellow which naturally requires an in person purchase.
A couple of months ago I was unable to find a pattern so started organizing the Yarn Room/Guest Bedroom/Office. It is really no surprise it is such a mess given that it wears many hats. My youngest stays in the room every other weekend so it really isn’t a guest bedroom and I try to neaten up the bed at the very least. However, as many others do, when I am searching for my next project I either purchase more yarn or look for a wayward ball aka ‘toss the stash.’ And then there are the books. Right now there is the knitting book on my nightstand, 4 Barbara Walker treasuries, and an assortment of 3 other stitch treasuries either by my desk or on the bed which are my two main knitting areas in this room. Oh and two knitting books and 1 magazine on my desk proper.
During this burst of energy I thought to myself I should make a goal to focus my knitting energy upon. Baby Knitting, which is a delight, does not feel much like a goal to me since goals require striving and pushing through but Baby Garments are so cute and quick and don’t really meet any of those icky bits. And while trying to come up with a goal I realized it was close to July and July means Year of Projects. This year being the 10th so a good time to join up again. Tho one can join whenever one pleases 🙂
YOP begins with the stating of highly mutable goals and I am narrowing my goal down to one box. This is a box of yarn that was at the top of a pile of boxes of yarn right inside the doorway. I managed to unbox the other yarns and put them away in a semi-sensible order but this one contained the yarns purchased for baby garments and a partially knit garment from almost 2 years ago. Witness the box:
YOP Goal Box
At the top of the box you see yarns purchased in bright cheery colors for baby. The Lisa Souza Deluxe Sock! Quartet I showed last post plus a fun multi I picked out for a specific baby project that calls for a wildly variegated yarn. I could use either of the quartet with it but want something sturdier than cashmere so will probably use something from another yarn cache.
Lisa Souza Deluxe Sock! Quartet
TBH I am struggling with the orange since I personally do not like the color. I have tried it doubled at a semi tighter gauge, which produces a really luxuriously squishy and buttery soft fabric, but how heavy of a sweater does one need in Alabama? The orange is most definitely a goal knitting kinda project instead of a Baby Knitting project.
Woodsmen Socks
Bartlett yarns 3 ply for a gift. I started those yesterday while watching Hamilton with The Beloved. I am pretty sure his eyes were glued to the television instead of his future gift. And I believe he doesn’t actually read my blog. Either way Thank You Disney for providing us with a chance to experience Hamilton. Very enjoyable.
Rowan Felted Tweed
&
Not actually in the box…. am I already cheating?
=
Marie Wallin’s Fair Isle Club 4
This will end up to be Magnolia by Marie Wallin. I purchased the largest size kit at the time but there is something like 10″ of ease built into the pattern. Maybe more since there are size ranges involved so am making one size smaller. If you clicked on the link you will see it is kimono-ish.
Meanwhile, in non YOP news, I saw a garment on instagram with a call for test knitters. I instinctively submitted myself as a tester and here I am waiting for yarn to knit something which has a deadline and I cannot show. Which I suppose is semi-YOP related because sometime next week I will be swatching followed by pretty dedicated knitting with nothing to post other than ‘working on secret project no pics & no progress on The Box.’
For the record, regarding this Box, I was using it as the repository for new yarns since last November. I buy yarn much like I organize said yarn, that is to say, in spates. This is why the bottom of the box contains yarn I purchased almost 2 years ago and the top of the box contains yarn I purchased a few months ago. I went practically a year and a half without purchasing anything! Wait! No, that’s me being delusional….
Sadly this onslaught has lasted a few months and yarn is still incoming with plans to purchase more. The box will hopefully be emptied of its current contents and refilled with other yarn. It is not a very tall box, 6″ or so high, so it shouldn’t be hard to empty. In case you are thinking I have been strong in my knitting from stash the truth is I haven’t been knitting much. AND if I buy yarn that is for an entire adult sized garment I tend to squirrel it away elsewhere. Somewhere along the way I do hope to hit up other yarn caches. Are there caches or is it always just a cache of yarn? I am not foolishly cold sheeping, shopping from stash, or otherwise vowing to not buy yarn. I always fail at such goals.
Looking forward to yarny days and knitterly evenings
My dearest Zoe is expecting on September 7th. Luckily, having been raised by a knitter, she knows it takes some sort of time to finish a garment. First there was the picking of colors. I was very surprised that she chose springy pastels. Zoe wears blue jeans and gray or black or white almost exclusively. Plus the baby is due in Fall but the colors are not the least bit autumnal. We went with Lisa Souza Dyeworks.
I have known Lisa online almost as long as I have been a mother. In the early days if knitting community via yahoo groups or list servers we met in a couple of groups-most notably FiberTraditions. I chose to go with a dyer I ‘knew’ because I trusted the colors would be repeatable amongst various yarn bases and her bases are yummy! She generously spent time sending us various color combinations to go with the color Zoe and her partner both liked: Jonquil. I purchased 4 hanks of the super squishy and sproing-y Deluxe Sock! on March 15th.
Deluxe Sock!
We also went over pattern selections. I suggested the usual Baby Surprise, Bog Jacket etc that I had knit for her when she was a baby but I ran into a problem. Zoe likes color block patterns-again a mystery since she herself wears solid colors- and I do not particularly care for them. She even picked out a color block poncho >.> I suppose if I were a better mother I would have cheerfully knit the item however I am not any better than I am and with my neck, arm, and hand problems knitting time has become somewhat sporadic and precious. AND I had gotten rid of most of my baby and children pattern booklets as well as unfavorited baby items on Ravelry years ago in an effort to streamline my life.
Another speed bump is that Zoe claims to not have much color sense and did not want to arrange these 4 colors, which she picked, together in one garment. I too do not particularly feel comfortable combining colors unless one of the two happens to be a neutral. All of this after having the dyer suggest the colors as going together in the first place! So I did what any sane person would do. I set the yarn aside to marinate in my stash. Not a deep dark cool corner marination either but right there on top of my desk where I couldn’t help but see it. And knit something else entirely.
Then one day, June 6th, while searching for cute baby patterns on Ravelry I stumbled upon Baby Nicole designed by Kate Oates. With this lovely pinkish color, Tuberose, staring me in the face and a nice lace and garter-ish combination for a springy ‘tee’ on my screen I hit buy, downloaded the pattern, wound my yarn, and started swatching immediately.
I did get gauge easily enough and did the first official cast on the next morning. The pattern calls for a crochet cast on and I am not very handy with the crochet hook. It took a YouTube refresher to remind myself of how to do the cast on and by now I should be a champ. This pattern calls for a whopping 144 st cast on-for the 6 month old size- which is then joined, increased to 189 stitches, and worked on lace pattern downwards to hem. This is why I say ‘tee’ because the empire shaping and wider lace body gives me the impression of a dress. I guess it is what one calls BabyDoll Top and I have yet to encounter a babydoll T-shirt. Anyway I somehow managed to be well into lace pattern before realizing I had twisted my stitches and had to restart. Twice. On the third try I transferred my cast on to 9 double point needles and laid them out into a nonagon and joined that way.
I find it difficult to rate a pattern when one makes changes to it. There is a part of me that calls knitting patterns recipes -no I am not that old!- so whenever I deviate I feel it is unfair to say any negative results are due to the designer. But I do have my own quirks and they went into play here.
The lace pattern set up row calls for purling so many stitches to set up the ‘deep garter’ and the instructions for deep garter call for purl round one, knit rounds two and three. In my head the set up round should be the final round of previous repeat so that on round one of the lace pattern and the garter fall on same round. Therefore, I didn’t do the purl round on the set up and happily did my purl rounds on round 1 and 4 of the 6 round pointelle lace pattern. This means that on the final round of body I had just worked 2 rounds of stocking stitch and the picture clearly shows a round of purl before the cast off. Sensibly so to help combat curling. If I had just looked at my knitting and seen the set up row was in purl and then done the next two in knit my purl rows would have fallen on row 3 and 6 of pointelle lace but I didn’t do that mental adjustment of written out rows of pattern until the very end when faced with those two rounds of knit. I think I maintained pattern by casting off as if to purl.
Cast Off Edge
Then on bodice the pattern calls for the decreases at armhole and neckline to be slanted towards the opening. I automatically had my decreases going away from opening. I have done fully fashioned decreases as the designer specifies and it is good for maintaining the body of a patterned garment since the bulk of design stays uninterrupted and the decrease eats away towards the edge but this is stocking stitch and made no sense to me. Plus it is general habit to work a SSK to the left of an opening and a K2tog to the right of an opening. The openings for sleeves and neck both curl quite a bit and this is easily seen in the photographs for pattern put out by the designer. I do not believe my changing the decreases made any difference to the curling that comes from a minimal edging. I also started the front of bodice on WS as the back portions had been started & started my neckline 2 rows earlier than called for. This ended up being fortuitous because the pattern calls for a single crochet finishing of armhole and neck and I ended up riffing on my usual substitute; pick up stitches and bind off. On the neck I picked up on lower edge of buttonhole band all around neck and down button band, knit one row, then bound off creating a mini purl section. This lifted the neckline by two rows and offered a bit more oomph to fight stocking stitches tendency to curl.
Neckline treatment
For the armholes I did my usual Pick Up and Bind Off instead of single crochet and for those who are unfamiliar with it this is what it looks like as an edge treatment:
I will add that this method of treating an edge does tighten it up quite a bit especially if you are picking up one stitch per slipped stitch or half the number of rows. If I had planned I would have not bothered slipping the edge stitches and had more leeway which would have left the armhole openings more open.
I hated the buttonholes and kept losing stitches working it. Yes in addition to casting on three times I picked up my stitches to work the bodice twice to make sure my count wasn’t off due to that portion, redid the buttonhole, got to division row and was off again so went back again. This is, I am sure, entirely my fault and in no way whatsoever a reflection on pattern clarity. I ended up working Montse Stanley’s 3 row reinforced buttonhole from Knitting Handbook which involved minimal maths to calculate where to place them. I also lowered the top buttonhole. Nowhere in the pattern does it call for any finishing of buttonhole or button bands-not even tacking down the bottom edges which I did. The bonus of working the reinforced buttonholes instead of the 1 row suggested is I got to pick out bigger buttons. For some reason I think it makes the pattern a bit less fussy. Not that the pattern itself, designed for a cotton slub blend yarn, is in and of itself fussy but in a pink cashmere blend uhhh yeah twee even for a baby. The buttons give it a modern touch that was lost when I switched yarn base.
Big Buttons to counteract Twee
I read about jog-less garter in the round after having finished the body of top. If you choose to make this design, which really is not difficult and totally adorable despite my changes, you may want to read up on the various techniques. I have practiced none of these.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago Tyler had requested a cap for Christmas having lost the one I knit for him in 2010. The pattern is, sans color work, the swatch cap from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Workshop. I ignored her cast on numbers since she doesn’t provide a gauge and I was figuring on what seemed appropriate given the yarn and needles I felt like using. Yarn is Sundara Silky Merino, a gift many years ago, from Catherine aka 3C whom I haven’t heard from since 2012 so deep stash diving here. Lovely yarn. Simple pattern. The reason I prefer this pattern as a template over the Hat in a Knitters Handy Book of Patterns is that the depth is so much shallower. Tyler wants a Watch Cap not a Slouchy Cap. Slouchy Caps being very popular tend to influence the depth of every other cap pattern I have seen. 4-5″ deep before beginning decreases works for him.
As I suspected this wasn’t much of a digression from my yarn cache clearing goal. I wound the yarn on Thursday morning before work, cast on and did the ribbing on Thursday evening, knit the bulk of cap Friday, did the decreases today and am done. So now to figure out which of the other two yarns that had been living in my dresser to work on next. Until next time
