Almost Opulent

Sleeve adjustment completed, I now have a finished sweater to smile over.

It's almost but not quite Wendy Bernard's Opulent Raglan, from the Fall 2008 issue of KnitScene. I made the sweater in Patons Classic worsted-weight wool, in a color called Cognac Heather. I made it in a size with a little negative ease. As usual, I changed a few things. The original sweater is 3/4 sleeved, a longish length, and has a hemmed bottom. It's very attractive, but it isn't quite me. So I shortened it to hip length, added a ribbed edge at the bottom, and made the sleeves full-length. And changed the cuff design. I did very much like the big scrunchy central cable flanked with textured cable twists, so I left that alone. :)

I also like the square neckline, though that was the cause of some worrying. In the magazine, the neckline is so deep that it reveals a bit of cleavage. It's an attractive look, but it does limit a sweater's versatility for my daily working life. And for most of the time while the knitting was underway, it looked like it was heading in exactly that direction. I figured I would just have to wear layers under it.

This was my first time knitting a sweater from the top down, in the round, so that it could be tried on practically from the beginning. As soon as the neckline and armholes emerged, I was poking my head and arms through them to have a look. I threaded the stitches onto a really long circular needle cable and pulled the sweater on. (I still lost a few stitches off the ends each time and retrieve them, sputtering and grumbling, but that's another story. Eventually I learned that it was worth the bit of extra time to put stoppers on the ends.) The neckline looked voluptuously deep, and I wondered if I might actually have to worry about its falling entirely off the cliff, so to speak. But I did know that adding the ribbing would firm up the edge and would probably close it up a little. If not, well, layering.

I tried that sweater on over and over as it progressed. (I found that, for me, the good thing about trying on a top-down raglan in progress is that you can. The bad thing is that you might feel you must. Again and again.) I was especially careful about trying on and measuring to gauge the length for the long sleeves I wanted, since that frontier was untrodden by the pattern instructions. I made them longer, in fact, after a first try. I fussed over the cuffs as well, since the version in the pattern designed to be worn just under the elbow was a more dramatic look than I wanted to see at my wrists.

Finally, I had everything just the way I wanted it, and I picked up stitches and knitted on the neckband. And guess what that did? It tightened up the neckline. It tightened it a lot. Suddenly it was quite a ladylike neckline. I'm not sure why it's that much higher than in the pattern photo. It's the same number of stitches, but I must have knit the ribbing significantly tighter than the designer did. But that was fine; it worked in my favor and preserved modesty.

I wove in all the ends and tried it on again. Happily declared it done. Admired it in the mirror. Wondered why those shrewdly judged sleeves were an inch too short. Sighed deeply and realized the neckline's connected to the shoulder, the shoulder's connected to the sleeve... and the tightened neck must have hiked the whole thing up. So I unpicked all the carefully buried ends, ripped out those poufy cuffs, and added an inch to both sleeves. It was aggravating, but it's done, anyway.

And now I have a finished sweater that I like very much. It dresses up or down. For work, it looks good under a jacket, which frames the cable texture nicely. Those big cuffs peek out of the jacket sleeves and feel just slightly romantic, without drawing too much attention to themselves.

My verdict on the top-down, in-the-round construction is mixed. It's interesting to try a sweater on as you go, but, ahem, there could still be one or two little hitches. I've generally had pretty good luck with the fit on traditional pieced-and-sewn sweaters when I measure at the beginning, make a plan, and hope for the best. And I quite like that "ta-da" feeling you get when you seam it up and suddenly, pouf, there's a whole new sweater to try on. One other observation is that the sweater seems to want to twist a little bit. I've had seamless commercial t-shirts that do this, too. I think perhaps if it had the structure of seams, it would stay straighter.

So I'm not quite a convert to the method. But I know more than I did before, and it's another technique to use when it makes sense. And I love the sweater. And that can't be bad.

Ready for the Weather

I now declare myself ready for the colder weather that's just around the corner. Why? Because my hand-spun Stormwatch sweater is here! It's a big woolly bear of a sweater. A cozy rag rug of a sweater. When I spun this yarn, I pictured a big slouchy cardigan, and by gum, that's what I got!

I was seriously worried about whether there was enough yarn to finish the Stormwatch sweater. I'd bought some inexpensive roving at a festival, described rather generically as "medium wool," that turned out to be, well, not a lovely high-quality fiber to work with. It was lumpy and full of neps, and maybe the less said about that the better. I labored mightily to turn this homely stuff into some sort of usable yarn, blending three colors together, and making a virtue of necessity by tolerating the lumps and aiming for a coarse, rustic yarn. So when this was gone, it would be gone.

About halfway through the Stormwatch sweater, I was really starting to fret. But then thank goodness for Bess, the sweet voice of reason, who suggested in the comments that if I ran short I might be able to do something nice with stripes in the sleeves, to make up any shortage with another harmonious yarn.

As it turned out, I had enough yarn and a bit more. (I'm glad I didn't design the sweater to be a single inch longer, though.) But I can't tell you how freeing it was to realize that if I didn't have enough, I could just call it a design feature and still wind up with a sweater. After that, I clicked light-heartedly away. Thanks, Bess!

Whenever I design my own sweater, though, I have worries to spare. Stormwatch is a saddle-shouldered design, which I haven't tried before. I wanted a scoop neck, but I wasn't sure how big to make it. I measured and eye-balled against some of the other sweaters in my closet, but didn't have a good feel for how the saddle shoulder design would affect it. It's a big wide-open neck, that's for sure. I thought I'd blown it. But when I got the buttons on today, it started looking a lot better. When I realized I could layer any kind of collar under it, even a big cowlneck, it looked a little better even yet. When my mom-in-law, who happened to be here for a visit, singled out the big open neckline for compliments, it started looking so much better I could almost convince myself if was intentional. :)

The Stormwatch yarn did indeed turn out to be bulky. (Portly, I think may be the word I was looking for.) The sweater is knit on US size 11 needles, at a gauge of 11 stitches/4 inches. Because of its bulk, when I seamed it up, I tried out a tip I'd seen but hadn't done before, which is to use a different, lighter-weight yarn to sew the seams.

I happened to have a partial ball of Dale Baby Ull lying around from a past baby bootie project, in a medium gray that blended perfectly with the complex blue-gray of Stormwatch. (A good omen for the project, maybe? And all the buttons being on sale when I went to the local fabric store in search of something suitable. Clearly the planets were aligning for this sweater.) It's a fingering weight 100% superwash wool yarn, and it was very lovely to work with in the booties project, I might add.

So the Baby Ull is what I used. It worked out swimmingly. I just might have to use that trick again, when working on a bulky project. It added practically no bulk at the seams. It was an interesting contrast, as well, between the nubby, grabby handspun and the smooth commercial superwash yarn. I can now understand why people refer to superwash wool as slippery. It certainly slipped through easily when I pulled up a thread to tighten a seam, that's for sure. Because of that, I was very careful to anchor the ends securely, weaving in a longer length and changing directions a few times.

All in all, I'm very pleased. I made a mistake buying a penny-wise pound-foolish bargain, but persevered and made something I'm happy with instead of giving it up for lost. I'm stubborn that way, I'm afraid. But I may have learned my lesson. I'm not that stubborn. I'll evaluate more carefully instead of just getting carried away by a sale. And, spinning novice that I still am, I learned a lot about what makes a fiber good to work with and what kinds of effects you get when it's not ideal. So all that was lost is some aggravation, and some imaginary smooth svelte sweater that it might have been if it were other wool.

And it's ended well, I must say. This is the kind of sweater that is so comfortable that, once I had it seamed up and tried it on, I was reluctant to take it off even to sew on the buttons. Something tells me I'll be living in this one, pulling it on by default whenever it's chilly and I need a little comfort. I didn't really know where I was going with my bargain roving, but I'm glad I wound up here. Welcome, Stormwatch!

Hurly-Burly

Things have been awfully busy lately. Work has been pressing, and even my weekends have been spent thinking about it. This is something I do not normally encourage. If it weren't for a couple of chances to wear my new Crossed Laces tank with a natty blazer and collect a few compliments, I don't know what I'd have done for fun.

So life has been hurly- burly. One is only human, though, after all. Somehow I managed to get a chance to do some swatching with my hand-spun Stormwatch yarn.

It too might be called burly. Not hurly, though. That would just be unkind.

Burly, in fact, is quite a nice old-fashioned word. I seem to remember that, once, men who might now be referred to prosaically as overweight would instead have been called burly. (I don't think it was ever applied to women; it has such a doughty masculine air.) Stout or husky might have been in the rotation as well.

But the Stormwatch yarn, more precisely, has turned out to be bulky. By eye, I had thought perhaps worsted-weight, but my eye clearly needs more training. This yarn knits into a nice pliable fabric on US size 11 needles but cardboard on US size 9s. At a bulky gauge, it's husky, bumpy, and pleasantly not-quite-scratchy. And, by the way, I've figured out how to control the light balance on my camera, so the color in the picture is pretty close to reality.

As the weather freshens, the heavy hot air of summer has lifted, the days are shortening, and the nights are cooling, this yarn seems quite the thing. The sap is beginning to run through me, demanding that I knit hearty cold-weather sweaters. I don't know if sap runs in the fall, but if it rises in the spring, then surely it must have to migrate somewhere else for the winter.

So I've sketched out plans for a big enveloping rustic cardigan, with saddle shoulders and a wee bit of texture. I don't want a stitch pattern that would bury that hand-spun nubbiness or be swallowed up in return. But on the other hand, pure stockinette, with its insinuation of sleek, even smoothness, doesn't seem quite right either. I experimented with a number of ideas, eventually growing a very large swatch, until I had something I thought might work.

I'm motoring up the back of the sweater now, with about 5 inches of length to go. The knitting is fun and going quickly, but the worries are starting to jostle in the back of my mind. I'm not too picky about fit on this one, but I don't know if I will have enough yarn. If I run out, there will be no more. Not only is this hand-spun, but it was a rescue exercise, making a usable yarn "with character," from some near-disastrous roving. So I will work with what I have, and alter the project, if necessary, to suit.

It seems like I'm burning through the skeins of hand-spun at an awfully lively clip. I'm pretty sure I'm on skein number five (of 17) already, even before finishing the back. But being hand-spun, they're all different sizes, and I think I'm subconsciously grabbing the smaller ones first.

So here's my plan. I've estimated that, in square inches of fabric, the back of the swebater is about 2/7 of the whole thing, front, back, and sleeves. (And of course, to keep it simple, I'm ignoring niceties such as the yarn need for button- and neck-bands.) When I get the back finished and cast off, I will weigh it. Then I'll calculate ratios to see if it looks like the rest can be done with the yarn remaining.

I don't know. It may be touch and go. I spun a pound and a half of this yarn. My Cannonball sweater weighs only about a pound, but it's not bulky. My Comfy Winter Turtleneck came in at a whopping two pounds, but it's bulky Cashmerino, which weighs a ton.

If it looks like I'm not going to make it, I will have to drop back and regroup. With a change of armhole, it could become a vest rather than a sweater, I suppose. But my mental image is firmly fixed, and it's not the mental image of a vest.

So I'll just plunge on ahead and worry. Well. For every sweater a gray hair.

Out of Sorts

But Getting Sorted Out

The last few days, I have not been feeling at all the thing. A headache, a fever, ripened into a stomach virus that led me a merry dance. The glorious weather all the long weekend lured others outside. To me, it beckoned in vain. I did not so much as venture here into the blog's front parlor -- the laptop stayed cold and silent. No, I retired to the end of the couch, there to await the return of better days.

Listless as I was, knitting and spinning seemed boring and stupid. That was just the virus talking, but I had no energy to argue. I wondered why I waste my time on this silly hobby and felt oppressed by all the yarn and wool around the place demanding attention. I couldn't think what I would do with the yarn I'm spinning from that neppy pennywise-pound-foolish wool, other than being obstinately determined to persevere with it. One of my local yarn shops was even having its annual sale, and I was resoundingly uninterested.

World's most patient husband, bless his sweet heart, worried because I wasn't eating, offered me chocolate cake, evidently thinking that might work when all else failed. But to no avail. I could only nap and read books and try to wait it out. Eventually, though, after days and days of this, I wandered back to the spinning wheel to piddle around a bit. It seemed pleasantly absorbing instead of boring and pointless. That was a good sign. Then, a little later, I knew I was truly starting to come around when food started smelling and tasting like itself rather than an instrument of dismay.

And I, in turn, am beginning to feel almost like myself -- or if not like myself yet, then at least like someone who could possibly be a nodding acquaintance of mine. I've been up from the couch, cautiously eaten a bit, done a little housework (too little), and have started having ideas about what I might do with this yarn. I think there's a big comfortable, scoop-necked cardigan somewhere in my future. With roomy modified drop shoulders and sleeves for layering over other things. It will most likely be all in stockinette but for the ribbing, since the lumpy-bumpy yarn is likely to work best in the simplest of stitches.

I keep feeling, though, as if I ought to work in a touch of a fancier stitch pattern or some kind of decorative fillip. However, that's probably just some subliminal terror instilled by Barbara G. Walker's rather strong-minded dictate, in the introduction to her Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, saying that any knitter who is capable of it must add some interesting stitch pattern to a project. Why? To distinguish it as handiwork and make it worth the knitting, which it otherwise wouldn't be. Of course, we have to keep in mind that she was probably just excited about her book of stitch patterns at the time (as am I; it's a doozy). But I think stockinette is rather beautiful, even unadorned. It's particularly good when you just want to emphasize the line of the sweater or the character of the yarn. And I think this yarn is going to be a character, all right.

It's good to have the ideas and plans starting to bubble at last. It's a sign that all will soon be well with the world again.

Beginner's Luck

The Cannonball sweater is finished -- woohoo! It's the first thing I've ever knit from my hand-spun yarn, and I can't believe it actually worked. But where once there were only bags of wool, there's a real live sweater now. A transformation right before my eyes, with nothing but a spinning wheel and some little pointed sticks. What a thrill!

I'm also amazed that, as a beginning spinner, I was able to (a) spin a sweater's quantity of usable yarn in a few months, and (b) end up with a wearable, attractive-looking garment. Once I got the general hang of spinning, the learning curve turned out to be not quite as steep as I expected.

Here are the particulars. I spun the yarn from five colors of natural, undyed Coopworth wool. It's about worsted weight -- on average, that is -- see "beginning spinner," above. I knit it with US size 7 needles for the main parts and US size 5 for the ribbing. It has set-in sleeves, a squarish neckline, and a bit of back-neck shaping.

Ideas for the sweater design came from here and there. I came up with the color-blocking as a way to use approximately equal amounts of multiple colors, inspired in part by the Michael Kors cabled turtleneck from the Fall 08 issue of Vogue Knitting (this one). I found the cable motif in Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting.

I'm so glad it's finished. I've been cheering for the unusually chilly spring weather we've been having here lately, hoping it would hold out until the Cannonball sweater was done. I wanted to be able to wear my new hand-spun sweater at least once before saying goodbye to woolly sweaters for the season. And now that Cannonball has made its debut, the warm spring weather is graciously invited to return, thank you very much.

I learned some good lessons making the Cannonball sweater. For instance, the finished sweater weighs only about one pound. Uh-oh. That means I've probably bought way too much wool for each of the -- hmmm, one, two, three... well, let's just say several -- sweaters-to-be that I've got stored up in my spinning fiber stockpile. Oh, my goodness. I know the weight required will probably vary with how lofty a yarn I spin, but I'd been thinking I needed two pounds for each one. That could add up to an awful lot of extra fiber. If I go to any more sheep and wool festivals this year, I'm going to have to try to look but not touch.

Another thing I learned is that the thickness of the yarn I spun varied, a lot more than I realized. Though all the colors of wool were from the same breed of sheep, each had its own characteristics that, especially given my inexperience, affected the result. The creamy white spun as fine as sportweight in spots, making the fabric a little open and airy compared to the rest of the sweater. The silver gray, by contrast, is a coarser fiber and made a beefier yarn, almost a heavy-worsted weight. And, given that the lightest and heaviest weight colors are adjacent, that made for a bit of suspense about whether this was going to work at all. Luckily, though, knitted fabric is pretty forgiving, one of its many lovable qualities.

The varying gauge did affect the sizing, in places. The medium grayish nut-brown color also spun into a lighter weight yarn, and so the arm just above the elbow has less ease than planned. It feels slightly snug there, but at least it didn't cause a visible case of Popeye-arms!

I'm so glad it came out reasonably well. As a new spinner, this really gives me the encouragement I need to keep at it, explore, and try things. Is it perfect? No, far from it. Am I happy with it? You bet I am!

Now, What Was So Scary About That?

I did it! I did it! I took the plunge and knitted some of my own handspun.

I had run out of delaying tactics. The Merino Lace socks were finished, and all the additional wool in the new gray color was spun. I told myself that I was not allowed to start any other knitting or spinning projects until I got started on the handspun sweater I've been sneaking up on all this time. That gave me just the little push I needed to get over the hump. I felt stymied, briefly, bottled up and frustrated. But in a couple of days I gathered my mental energy, got up a head of steam, and got going.

First I needed to get better acquainted with the yarn, which up until then I had only petted and admired. I tried doing the wraps-per-inch test, but I'm not sure I had that right, as it kept coming out as chunky weight, which it assuredly isn't. Next I painstakingly counted all the threads in the skeins to estimate yardage and wound them into balls. It felt alive and resilient in the handling. I carefully weighed each ball and calculated the yards per pound. That didn't really tell me much either. How many yards per pound should there be for a given thickness of yarn? I'm not experienced enough to say. The one thing this exercise did tell me is that, although it looks fairly consistent, the yarn varies quite a bit in thickness from ball to ball.

Finally, there was nothing for it but to actually knit some of the stuff. I took a wild guess and grabbed a pair of US size 7 needles, jumped in and started swatching. It worked up in the neighborhood of a worsted-weight gauge, a little loftier than I realized.

And you know what? It's real yarn. Yarn that you can knit with. Rather nice yarn, in fact. It's crisp and eager to please. It doesn't drape lazily like the Cashmerino; it perches on the edge of its seat, ready to jump up and go, light on its feet. Right then, I told it, let's get to work! I still had some work left to do to sort out the details of the sweater design, but set to it with a will and soon had it done.

I needed something that would use the five different natural colors of Coopworth wool that I had spun. I didn't actually set out, originally, to make a multi-colored project; it just happened. It all started with a half-pound of dark brown Coopworth that I bought to practice on when I first got my spinning wheel. Then, wondering what to do with the yarn, I found other colors to combine with it. Of course, I don't think I'll end up actually using that first bit for the sweater. It's the yarn I learned on, and it shows, though I love it all the same.

I settled on a color-blocked design, with set-in sleeves and a square neck, and swatched to see how the colors would look. The warm tan really seemed to jump out from the other colors. So instead of graduating all the colors from dark to light, I moved the to the bottom as a sort of edge accent. I tried out the cable motif I want to use down the front, to make sure it would work. And since it needed a name, I dubbed it the Cannonball sweater.

So now I'm happily on my way. In fact, I took it with me on yet another trip this week. Normally, I take socks for portability, instead of a bigger project, but I think I've had enough of socks for now. So I packed circular needles for the plane and straight ones for the hotel room and, optimistically, five balls of yarn, one in each color.

I did get quite a bit done by the time I got back, thankful to be home again. Here's most of the back, and I'm partway up the front as well. Of course, stockinette stitch in worsted weight does go quickly -- a welcome change after a stint of lacy patterns in tiny sock yarn. In any event, I'm awfully excited to have this project underway and see how it will turn out. And I'll never again be quite so hesitant to dive in and knit with my handspun.

Thank goodness, the Cannonball sweater is finally rolling!

All the Sleeve a Girl Could Want

... and maybe more.

A cold front and big gusts of wind have driven away last week's ridiculously warm weather. That's fine with me. It's February. It's allowed to be cold. And warm weather is a serious threat to my sweater-knitting. My enthusiasm for knitting cozy wool pullovers dwindles quickly above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. But now we've fallen back into the twenties, and working on a toasty warm sweater seems just the thing.

So I've been able to buckle down with my needles and finish both of the sleeves for the Pine Bark sweater. I get very determined as I get near the goal line, and knit long and doggedly for the satisfaction of finishing each piece. I probably should have taken more breaks to give my hands and wrists a rest, but, you know, that would have slowed me down.

So here's my reward. All the pieces of Pine Bark are done, back, front, and both sleeves, awaiting only their neckband and seams. On the whole, I like the looks of it. In the doubleknit weight, it's pleasantly not-overly-bulky.

Of course, now that can I see how long the sleeves are, once they've come to life instead of existing only as a figment of my graph paper, my worry level is on the rise. (Maybe it's a barometric thing; I can't remember, does the barometer rise or fall when a cold front is coming in? Maybe my worry level follows the atmospheric pressure. Or maybe not.) Are the sleeves too long? Is the body too wide? Is the neck too baggy? Will the lumps from that stitch pattern block out?

Everything, of course, was measured and plotted to a fare-thee-well. But that hasn't always saved me. The last dearly loved sweater that I slaved over came out accurately to my planned dimensions, but they don't seem quite right, in the end, for the style. Sigh. But it shouldn't really hurt if I've built in too much ease on this one, as I'm going for more of a relaxed, boxy style. The neck and sleeves are the danger points. Too loose a neck might make it look just plain droopy. The neckband should let me adjust that a little, if need be.

The sleeves, though.... I calculated them based on my wingspan, less the width of the sweater's body. The big question is what will gravity do? With the weight of the sleeves pulling against the width of the shoulder, will they hang too long? I certainly didn't want them too short, but I also don't fancy having to turn them up when I wear the sweater, as it would rather ruin the effect of the edging I chose.

So I'm worrying. Is this what designers do? Plan things out, hope for the best, and then try to grin and bear it if the results aren't quite as expected? Or do they have time to knit several samples of a sweater until all the proportions click into place? Or does it just come easily with more experience?

Well, here's what I do. Worry worry worry!