Land of the Giants

Part of me feels I oughtn't to be allowed to wear a new knitted project until it's been blogged. My bubbly-sister-in-law once told me she had a rule that she couldn't use a gift until she'd written the thank-you note. Maybe that's where it comes from.

In any case, it's cold weather, and I have a warm cowl I need to tell you about, so I can wear it!

It all started back in the fall, at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival, in Berryville, Virginia, where I was a volunteer helper this year at the fleece sale. We volunteers were there all day to talk about raw fleeces with spinners and interested passers-by and to take payments from anyone who'd found a fleece to his or her liking. Pleasant work, and, best of all, we were welcome to bring our spinning wheels and sit there and spin. 

I had brought along Miss Muffet, my wee little portable Louet Victoria spinning wheel. I'd also brought some natural undyed wool to spin, thinking it would be good for demonstrating to anyone curious about what the natural undyed fleeces would be like to spin once cleaned and processed. Only -- funny thing -- there at the festival, surrounded by all the brightly colored wools and yarns, I began to feel just a bit dour about the good honest plain-colored wool I'd brought.

I cast my eyes around wildly and scurried across the aisle to the booth where the Barefoot Spinner, from Romney, West Virginia, had hand-dyed spinning fiber laid out. I found some Falklands wool, a breed I had not tried yet, and picked out an 8-ounce ball in soft, light colors, a change from my usual palette.  Falklands wool comes from the breed of sheep inhabiting those self-same Falkland Islands that were at issue between Britain and Argentina in the 1980s. Their wool, I later learned, is considered especially "green" because the islands are free of the usual sheep pests and so the sheep are not exposed to pesticides.

With that, I repaired happily back across the aisle to spin the day away. It was lots of fun to spin and chat with people coming by, especially small children who were mesmerized watching the wheel go around and around.

I spun the wool as softly as I could, trying for a lofty yarn, with moderate success. The colors mixed and become more muted, as they often do, but were still quite pretty.

When it was all over, I ended up with 8 ounces of soft, bulky 2-ply handspun.  Now for something to knit with it. I'd had my eye on a pattern from the Holiday 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting magazine for a while.  In that issue, there was a feature with several giant loose cowls that draped around the neck and even the shoulders, by designer Cathy Carron.

One in particular, with a pretty cable and leaf texture, appealed to me. (It's called Cabled Cowl #12 in the magazine, and I understand it's since been published in the designer's new book, Cowlgirls as "Candy Wrapper.") And this cowl was big! It was loose and baggy, about a yard around - very different from the modest little neck-warmers I'd seen in past years. It hung around the model's shoulders and looked it might fit Harry Potter's giant friend Hagrid.  It was shown in a strong, solid pink, but I thought it might look pretty in the variegated shades of my hand-dyed handspun yarn.  I set to work and soon had it done. It was a pleasure to knit in soft, cushy handspun.  Although the cowl is really just a giant tube, the cabled pattern was interesting -- varied enough to be fun but intuitive and not particularly difficult. It was fascinating watching the colors shift, and the changes were gradual enough to be compatible with the texture. 

But the giant cowl really comes into its own when worn, bunched around the neck and shoulders, colorful and warm.  It's a nice memory of the festival and an attractive piece with an offhand style all its own. I'm really pleased with the way it came out.

 And now may I wear it, please? :)

A Modest Output

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season. I did! In the rush leading up to it, I never know if I'm going to make it, but somehow just enough of everything all comes together just in time. And again this year, though I never seem to come close to matching the impossible dream in my head, I managed to get the tree decorated, cards out, presents bought and wrapped, and even a little Christmas baking done. 

And in the midst of all of this, there was time for just a very modest amount of Christmas knitting. I didn't do a lot, but I did at least make a sweet little scarflet for my tall-elegant-mom, and a hat and neck-warmer set for Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest.  The first was because I always try to make at least a little something for my mom, and the second by semi-request.  (My trim-athletic-dad didn't fare quite as well; his as-yet unknit socks were bestowed on him in pristine form, as a completely untouched ball of yarn. :)

Time was rushing onward, and I knew I wanted to knit something for Mom, but I didn't know what.  In the past I've made her stoles, scarves, shawls, gloves, hat, a sweater, and socks -- lots of socks -- all of which she makes valiant efforts to wear regularly. This time, I had no plan, but I did have a lovely skein of Jade Sapphire Mongolian Cashmere 6-ply squirreled away, in the Oceana colorway.  I'd bought it on a vacation a few years ago in Seattle and never quite come up with the right little project for it.

I'd always thought these colors would be nice on Mom, but what to make? One skein of worsted weight, however precious, would be of necessity a small project. I hit upon the idea of a  little scarflet that could give just a hint of warmth and color at the neck, where cashmere's softness would be most appreciated.

I ended up choosing a style that's often called a bowknot scarf.  It has a built-in loop on each side, cleverly constructed by separating the stitches into two layers and then rejoining, so that either end can be tucked through the other, neatly and securely.  There are quite a few patterns along this general model, but the one I used is Marci Richardson's version, from Judith Durant's 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders book. Like the others, it's in humble garter stitch (which does make it springy as to length and not prone to rolling), but it also has some nice refinements, like a simple eyelet trim along the edges. 

I made some minor changes to make it suit my mom (I hope) a little better.  I lengthened the two ends of the scarf by an inch or two to give it a more substantial look. I narrowed the band around the neck slightly so it won't bunch up or fold over and will be a little better for full-time wear, rather than just for venturing out into the cold.  I hope she'll enjoy having a small soft accessory that's easy to wear casually. Cozy, but not so warm you'd hesitate to reach for it unless the wind is really howling.


As for the requested item, that one tickled me.  Once, I made a pile of thick hats in cheery school-spirit colors, and gave them out to the Yarnstruck nephews (among others).  Well, what do you know, they wore them, and it seems they quite liked having a warm thick hat to wear on really cold days.  Two years later, Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest had moved on to college and needed a warm thick hat in a new color scheme. Well, no knitter on earth could resist the call to replace an appreciated piece of hand-knitting with another when the need arises.  It was Auntie Yarnstruck to the rescue!

If the original hat fit Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest and he liked it, well, I wasn't going to mess with success. I was going to do my level best to replicate it, materials, fit, styling, and all.  Everything would be just the same but the color. I ran right out for the same yarn as last time, Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick, to knit with big US size 11 boat oars. 

The pattern was of my own concoction, but, no problem, I just needed to find the little scrap of paper where I had noted down the details. When I got a little time, I launched a search into the pile of little and bigger scraps and sheets where I've noted down lots of my original patterns but never written them up properly.  There sure were a lot of scraps and sheets.  This was taking longer to find than I thought.  In fact, I couldn't find it.  Uh-oh. I knew I'd written down the details on one of these scraps; I actually remembered transcribing them from an even smaller more tattered scrap of paper.  But I couldn't find it anywhere. I went through books, notebooks, drawers, and dug down to the deepest darkest bottom of my piles of yarn. I spent a couple of hours turning the place upside down.  I couldn't have searched more thoroughly if I'd brought a bloodhound with me. No scrap of paper. Oh, no.

Now mind you, my little hat pattern wasn't anything to set the world of hat patterns on fire, but I knew it had worked once, and I just wanted to knit it again.  I could have picked a pattern from one of the many (really! *many*) knitting books on my shelf, and adapted it for the yarn, and it probably would have been fine.  But it wouldn't have been identical to the original one, and identical is what I was going for. 

Hard times call for tough measures. At least I had taken a good picture of the original hat, a complete side view, smoothed out flat. I reverse-engineered my own hat design from the photo, stitch by stitch, and used it to knit the new hat.

There was plenty of yarn left over, so I made a ribbed cowl/neck-warmer to match.  I have to admit, this isn't quite how I pictured it being worn.  (It actually looked quite nice pushed down around Yarnstruck-nephew-the-eldest's handsome chin. :)  But, come to think of it, on a good freezing day, it's probably exactly the right way to wear it.

This time I wrote the whole thing down carefully.  And put it... somewhere. I'm sure it will turn up.

Field and Fireside

When I went tramping through the fields to the fiber festivals this fall, I had a pretty scrumptious new sweater to wear. It's the Fireside sweater pattern by Amber Allison.

There's a bit of a story behind this pattern. There was a cute little romantic comedy movie in 2006 called The Holiday. It starred Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett, as two strangers in the US and UK who, each unhappy and needing a change, swap houses for a brief vacation. The movie was lightweight and pleasant, but a buzz developed about the wardrobe worn by Cameron Diaz. One sweater in particular, extravagantly cabled and trim, really caught the eye. (It's the fourth one down the page on the preceding link.) Knitters ogled it, sighed over it, and tracked down the impossibly expensive source.

Amber Allison did more than sigh. She was so determined to have this sweater that she (dare I say obsessively?) studied pictures from the movie and recreated it as nearly as she could, stitch by stitch. She also, to the gratitude of legions of knitters, wrote out the pattern and adapted it for a range of sizes. It's remarkable, considering she'd never written a pattern before. On the other hand, I've never read a pattern written quite like this, either. There were a few directions like, "I suggest doing it this way, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life." Quirky.

I stumbled across the Fireside sweater through Chesley Flotten's Knitting Experience Cafe blog (named after her much-loved but now-closed knitting shop in Maine). Chesley, who has an immaculate eye for great sweaters and a welcoming heart, had picked out the Fireside and was preparing to hold a knit-along for her band of loyal knitters. I, despite living in Virginia -- far, far away from Maine -- decided to join in. It was the first time I'd participated in a knit-along, where lots of knitters work on the same pattern at the same time, in a variety of yarns, discuss their progress, and share their results. It was great fun.

Chesley had scoped out some suitable yarns for the sweater. I ordered some Cascade Eco-Plus wool in the Grape colorway, downloaded the pattern, and got to work. Eco-Plus is a heavy-worsted weight 100% wool yarn and was, I thought, rather lightweight for the gauge of 4 stitches per inch. To get gauge, I ended up with US size 10 1/2 (6.5 mm) needles, and the fabric seemed a little loose. But it worked out well with the heavy cabling. It shows those cables like nobody's business. And the finished sweater feels great.

I made some significant adjustments to the pattern. I checked out out a number of finished Fireside sweaters. (You can see some good pictures of one finished Fireside on the Posh Knits blog, here.) For sizing, I noted a few complaints about tight, skinny sleeves. I chose a fairly snug size but decided to make armholes and sleeves according to the next size up. I also used the length measurements of the next size up. Still, I felt the waist decreases and increases looked like they would be kind of abrupt (this may have been partly due to my row gauge), so I made them longer and more gradual.

For construction, I didn't much relish the recommended procedure of knitting the sleeves in the round and then fitting them into the waiting armholes, so I knit them flat and seamed more conventionally. There were also a few rough edges in the details of the pattern, and I changed some small things in the underarms and the back neck shaping to refine it a bit.

But the sweater came together well, and all the adjustments and changes worked out fine. And, let me be clear, I LOVE this sweater! It's a beauty. Warm, cozy, and cabled, but sleek. It looks great tramping around in the open with jeans or dressed up in a tailored outfit with serious earrings. I venture to say you might even get away with it, in this jewel-like color, as a funky companion for a big gathered silk sort of skirt, the kind of styling you might see in Vogue Knitting magazine. I love it from the top of its stand-up cabled collar to the tip of its purposely over-long sleeves.

And did I mention that it's sexy? From the back, without the bulk of the overlapping off-center fronts, you can see the overall shape, almost like a curvy jacket. And the way the cables swoop in and out with the waist and shoulder shaping.

It's a really good-looking sweater. When I wear it, I get a ton of compliments, some on the style, and some on the fit. And some, from knitters, impressed with the cabling (which, honestly, is simpler to knit than it looks). You couldn't ask more than that!

Oh, and thank you, Chesley. :)

Hand-Dipped Tappan Zee

(Wow, she's really let herself go.)
No, I haven't!

(She just hasn't been taking care of anything.)
Yes, I have.

(She probably hasn't been doing any knitting at all.)
Have too.

(Hasn't.)
I can hear you, you know.

(___)
I have I have I have!

In fact there are finished objects strewn all around the place. Here's one now.

Amy Spunky Eclectic King had a pattern in the spring issue of Knitty that seemed just about perfect for some spinning fiber I had on hand in a pretty, pretty color. Amy is well known as a wonderful hand-dyer and is also the author of one of my very favorite spinning books, Spin Control.

The Tappan Zee pattern is casual and breezy, designed for handspun yarn, and -- most importantly -- made with only about 6 ounces of fiber, at least given Spunky's expert spinning technique. Allowing for the difference between her results and my, ahem, somewhat less expert spinning, I thought I might just pull it off with the 8 ounces of fiber I had. It's from the very nice and encouraging Kate Bostek of Roclans Farm in Fairfield, PA. The colorway is called Heartfelt (awww...), and it was one of my finds at the 2008 Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival.

Still a bit nervous about whether I could get enough yardage out of my 8 ounces, I came up with a back-up plan. At the same show, I had bought 4 ounces of another spinning fiber in a similar but slightly darker color, called Raspberry Whip. (I remember getting it home and wondering what on earth I had been thinking!) It was, if memory serves, from a vendor called the Brazen Sheep. I think I was dazed by the fact that it had 10% cashmere in the blend.

I decided to blend the two colorways in gradually varying proportions to spin a range of yarns that would shade from light to dark. I measured out by weight how much fiber of each color to spin together for each color gradation. Then I got busy spinning 12 ounces of fiber, aiming for sportweight.

Here's how the yarn came out. See how the color changes from the top of the picture to the bottom? That's not an illusion!

I adore it. I want to try this trick again.

Still and all, I wasn't entirely sure how my idea was going to work out in the actual sweater. It could either look like a really cool custom design, or like I ran out of yarn and had to finish the knitting in a different colorway that didn't quite match.

Or like I sat in something. :p

But there was only one way to find out. So I got knitting. The yarn was light and springy, a pleasure to knit with, and a relief after all the careful concentration that went into the spinning. And Tappan Zee is a nice pattern to knit, easy and straightforward. It's knit top-down, with enough decoration at the yoke to be fun but not fussy. I changed practically nothing -- a rarity. I only needed to add a couple of extra rows here and there to lengthen the yoke because my gauge was a bit off.

Actually, it's a miracle that the gauge was only a little bit off, because this was the first time I really tried to spin a sweater quantity of yarn to a specific weight for a specific pattern. Before, I've just spun whatever yarn the fiber seemed to make, and then found, adapted, or designed a pattern to work with it. For a first time spinning to order, I really didn't do too badly. :)

And look how it turned out!

Isn't it pretty? I had a hard time getting a picture that shows the color change. But look at the color striations in the main part of the sweater. That's one of the things I love about handspun. And, if you look closely near the bottom on the right, you can see how the color just blends imperceptibly into the darker shade.

Since the colors are so close, it does sort of look like a different dye lot of the same yarn. Or like I sat in something.

But I prefer to think it looks like a hand-dipped ice cream cone. So that's what I say it is!

Hand-dipped Tappan Zee. Delicious. :)

Eloise Gets Out

Eloise is a charming and inquisitive little girl, in a beloved series of children's books from the middle of the last century, who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Eloise is also the name of the pattern I've just finished knitting. It's a little cardigan from the book, Noro Knits, by Jane Ellison. The sweater is designed for Noro's Blossom yarn, a nubby textured silk blend in a chunky weight. I, however, had a couple of bags of Debbie Bliss Soho yarn and was looking for a suitable sweater to knit. Soho is a thick-and-thin wool singles yarn, multi-colored with short, busy color runs. (It's now discontinued.)

I searched for a long time for something to make with this yarn. With so much going on in the yarn itself, it doesn't suit an elaborate design. I swatched some cables and some openwork stitch patterns and, with few exceptions, it swallowed them alive. The Debbie Bliss patterns I found designed specifically for this yarn did include a few simple cables, but, honestly, you can barely even see the cablework. So, clearly, it needed to be something fairly plain. But I didn't want to bore myself silly.

I stewed over it, looking at patterns, thinking about designing something, for a long time. Months. At the same time, I'd admired the Eloise sweater regretfully every time I leafed through my Noro patterns looking for something to knit with a Noro yarn that wasn't chunky weight. It's a simple reverse stockinette cardigan, with a deep bottom ribbing and a knit-in edging. Finally, on the relieved and carefree day after Christmas, I put two and two together -- chunky simple pattern with no yarn? chunky multicolored yarn with no pattern? Why not give it a try? Ready, after weeks of gift-knitting, to start on something for myself, I went right ahead and cast on.

I actually don't know why I liked the Eloise pattern so much. You can't see much of it in the pattern book -- there's only one photo, and it's one of those artfully posed ones that, while stylish, leaves much of the sweater to the imagination. But like it I did. And, lo and behold, I like the finished sweater a lot, too!

I knit it on US size 9 (5.5 mm) needles and knit the pattern pretty much as written. I did decide to knit the small size for a snug fit, but using the lengths from the medium size so it wouldn't be too petite. I also added a couple of extra stitches when switching from the ribbing to the stockinette section, but as it turned out, it really didn't need them.

One of the things I like is the reverse stockinette surface that mixes and blends the colors in the yarn. I was surprised, though, by how little effect the thick-and-thin texture of the yarn had on the appearance of the stitchwork. You really can only see the variation in thickness in the ribbing.

There is one thing about the pattern that I would definitely change if I knit it again. It has no back neck shaping at all. Notice how that makes it bunch up in the photo? Maybe you can get away with that in the Blossom yarn, which probably has more drape from the silk and mohair in the blend. But Soho has more body than drape, and so it sits up there instead of hanging. It's not a big deal, and I have yet to block the sweater, which may help smooth it out. But I'd definitely add some shaping if I had it to do all over again.

My choice of buttons also gave me some temporary worries. I went hunting with my swatch and was happy to find buttons in the perfect color. (This was not a foregone conclusion, by the way, for a sweater knit in fuchsia, purple, and rust yarn.) The only hitch was that they did not come in a large enough size. I kept looking at other options, but I had fallen for these buttons and no others would do. As expected, they were too small, and, once on the sweater, wouldn't stay buttoned. But in the end, I was able to tighten the buttonholes up with an overcast stitch around the opening, so all is well.

So little Eloise has gotten out of the hotel, perhaps taking a taxi, and gone to Soho, where she has had a little adventure, been looked after fondly by everyone she meets, and then made it safely back home. I only wish she'd managed to use up about five more balls of yarn. (It was sale yarn -- I had a lot. :)

Knitting on the Darkside

No, I haven't suddenly gone moody on you.

It's just that I made a quick project on impulse called the Darkside Cowl, by Sarah Fama. It's a simple and straightforward free pattern, available here.

I had almost a full skein of Malabrigo worsted weight yarn in colors a friend had admired, and I'd been looking for a pattern to make her a little something nice with it. A single skein of yarn didn't give me a lot to work with, but I'd seen lots of nice cowl patterns that don't require a lot of yardage, so that seemed like a good option.

The challenge was to find something that would work well with the contrasting multi-colored yarn while not being ho-hum and plain. I've certainly found that to be a tricky balancing act many times when trying to find an interesting stitch pattern for a beautiful skein of sock yarn in a busy colorway. I spotted this cowl looking soft and cushy in a solid color on Beate's Cloudberry Knit blog and tracked it down.

The yarn has short color runs of strong greens, purples, magenta, and a more muted plum. (The colorway, which I think is discontinued, is called "239 saphire magenta.") The Darkside Cowl uses a zigzagging rib/welt pattern, identical on both sides. Squinting appraisingly at the stitch pattern, and comparing it with my yarn, I thought it just might work. I was hoping it would highlight the color changes in interesting ways without making a muddled hash of the whole thing.

I crossed my fingers and cast on. (This complicates the cast-on process unnecessarily, however, and I don't recommend it. :) And wonder of wonders, it worked! The colors mix attractively and weave and dance around each other without tripping over their feet.

And, as I've experienced before, Malabrigo is some of the most unbelievably soft yarn to knit with. It's really hard to imagine what kind of secret could make wool feel like this. It's luscious, and combined with the textured stitch pattern, it made a cowl that I just wanted to squeeze like Mr. Whipple with a roll of Charmin'.

All that fun for only a couple days' work. It almost doesn't seem fair.

A Snowy Realm

Snow on top of snow. It's been quite a winter. Beautiful to look out upon, though a little challenging to keep cleared.

And when you're snowed in, there's lots and lots of time for indoor hobbies like knitting. I took a little blizzard break and knit myself a new handspun hat!

When there's a good deep snow on the ground, it's fun to bundle up in hats and boots and go out stomping around. When the novelty of shoveling wears off, there's plenty of entertainment to be had in watching the plows, taking pictures, or just playing.

Somewhere along the way, I noticed that, for an enthusiastic knitter, I have a distinct shortage of hand-knit hats. In fact, only one: a petite little beret with a coordinating ruffled scarf. But everywhere lately, I've been seeing oversized, slouchy berets. And though big hats are sometimes not a good look for me, I thought I might not look so much like a mushroom in one that droops down. I suddenly wanted one.

I decided on a heavily cabled slouchy hat that I'd been admiring in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of knit.1 magazine. It's called the Relm tam and was designed by Jared Flood. On top of liking its tweedy good looks , I thought it would make a good handspun project for one of the smaller quantities of spinning fiber I have on hand.

I settled on the fiber from Puff the Magic Rabbit that I bought last fall at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival. When I visited Puff's site just now to make sure of the link, I got a surprise. While I thought -- and said in my last post -- that the fiber was her Electra Blue colorway in merino and mohair, from the photos on her site it's pretty unmistakably For Erika, instead. So what I have here is actually natural dark gray Border Leicester with a little silky mohair in pale blue and lavender!

It's beautiful stuff, either way. I spun it into a light worsted weight two-ply, trying for a decent amount of twist. It's not quite as twisty as I was aiming for, but I didn't do too badly. This was my first time attempting to spin exactly the yarn I wanted for a particular pattern. Up until now, I had just spun the fiber however it seemed to work best and then figured out what to knit it into.

The pattern calls for 100 grams of a yarn that adds up to about 300 yards. I thought I would be safe, since I had more than 150 grams of fiber. Well, I must have spun a much denser yarn than the one called for, because I ended up with only 230 yards of handspun. I crossed my fingers, hoping for the best, and pressed on. It was a big slouchy hat, after all, and if I ran short I could always regroup and make it into a smaller, less slouchy version.

The handspun yarn worked well in the pattern. The fiber's color variation gave it a heathery look that suited the cable pattern, and the mohair in the mix gave it some drape. The cable-work doesn't show up very clearly, because of the fuzzy bloom of the yarn, but it looks thick and furrowed and handsome nonetheless.

The pattern is elegantly designed, showing the signs of a perfectionist in the careful choice and placement of decreases as the cables narrow into the center. But it is big. As the knitting progressed, I did end up making it smaller. It wasn't for lack of yarn (though I actually do think I would have run out). No, it was because the way it was shaping up, it would have made a really giant hat. Enormous. Beyond slouchy. I think it would have been lounging on my shoulders.

I ended up leaving out two repeats of the cable pattern to shorten it up considerably. And it's slouchy, warm, and big without being overwhelming. I am all set now to venture back out, find a cafe, and park myself at a table with a book and a steaming double espresso.

Snow? What snow?

Wait, I Just Blinked

... and now it's January, for goodness' sake.

I really can't explain how that happened. Perhaps like Snow White I pricked my finger on a spindle and fell into an enchanted sleep. Well, if that's the case, let me show you a few of the things that have been going on all this time in my dreams.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving with a crowd at the home of my bubbly-sister-in-law. I was delighted to see my trim-athletic-dad wearing his sweater. He'd only been waiting for cold enough weather. And I'm so happy with how well it fits!

As you can see, the poochie knows who the soft touch is. She's rightly judged that any treat my Dad has, she will soon get to share.


Like half the East Coast, we got buried deeply in snow, a week before Christmas.

I'm glad to say this is not my car buried in a snowdrift, but this is what it was like. We weren't going anywhere for a few days.

That took a real bite out of my Christmas shopping time and I had to run hard from then on to catch up and be ready in time.

We had a lovely time celebrating the holidays, though. It's always wonderful when the frenzy of preparation is over and we can just relax and enjoy some time together.

And, though I didn't have time to go all-out, I did manage to eke out a few knitted presents.

After the Fall Fiber Festival, in Montpelier, I got busy right away on spinning my finds. So as the holidays approached, I had half-pound batches of worsted-to-chunky weight yarn spun from two beautiful colorways of a 50/50 wool-mohair blend from Kid Hollow Farm, in Free Union, Virginia. The dark one is Northern Lights, and the gray-lavender one is called Violet-Turquoise Spot.

I knit each colorway into a scarf, one for my tall-elegant-mom and one for my trim-athletic-dad, using a simple mistake-rib stitch pattern. Those scarves turned out to be nicer than I could even imagine. Before I had six inches done, I was noticing what a beautiful drape the knitted fabric had, thick as it was. The mohair in the blend really gave it a lovely fluid quality.

Unfortunately, in my rush to get them done and wrapped, I neglected to take pictures of the finished items. I have high hopes, though, of seeing them in use at some point. If so, I shall immediately pounce with my camera.

I also knit a hat and gloves for my Mom, in Noro's Cash Island. It's a double-knitting weight yarn of wool with 30% cashmere, strengthened by just a bit of nylon. And of course, it has those amazing color transitions that make Noro yarns fascinating to knit. The hat is a simple beret, which I also forgot to photograph, but I did get a picture of the gloves.

That was exciting; it's the first time I've knit a pair of gloves, with all those little fingers. I was relieved that they actually came out the right shape. In fact, I was unsure enough that I wrapped them and put them under the tree without first weaving in the ends. That was just in case, once they were tried on, I needed to ravel the ends of the fingers to adjust the fit!

And I knitted the wool I dyed with Kool-Aid into a bright, cheerful scarf for my little niecey. This is the first project for which I dyed the locks, hand-carded the wool, spun the yarn, and designed and knit the scarf. And when she wears it, she can point to the stripes and say, "this is Tropical Punch, this is Kickin' Kiwi-Lime, ..."

I really had a good time with it. But don't say anything, it will just encourage me. :)

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.

On the Bright Side

I do this because I love it. I do this because I love it. Just a couple more times, and I'll be convinced.

For our recent road trip, I needed some knitting to do. I was in a rush and needed to pick out a project quickly. (After that, I packed clothes. Most essential things first.)

I've been trying to use up some of the yarn already sitting around the house, and I had a pile of Patons Classic worsted-weight yarn in a pretty heathery color. I needed a skein of something basic to do homework for a class at Stitches last year, grabbed it from a local big-box store, and found I liked it. Rather than waste what was left over, I bought several skeins more so I could make something out of it. This seemed as good a time as any.

After a hurried flip through a couple of books and magazines, I settled on Opulent Raglan, from the Fall 2008 issue of KnitScene. That issue had several beautiful sweaters that are on my want-to-knit list. The particular one I picked is a top-down raglan by Wendy Bernard, with a big cable decoration down the front and 3/4 length sleeves with ruffled cuffs. I decided to make it with long sleeves instead.

Things went along smoothly as we drove around western North Carolina. It was pleasant, easy knitting for the car, and I had this much done by the time we got back.

I've generally knit sweaters in the typical bottom-up-and-seam style in the past, and it was interesting seeing a whole sweater emerging in my lap as I knit.

Since we got back, amongst spinning and sock-knitting and festival-going and a quick overnighter out of town, and Halloween, I've managed to get the rest done.

Taking full advantage of the top-down construction's try-on-ability to check the fit, I made some adjustments, and did some re-knitting here and there as needed. This morning, I confidently wove in the last of the ends, feeling very pleased to have it done, tried it on one more time in preparation for getting a good photo, and...

The sleeves aren't long enough. This isn't a knock on Wendy Bernard's pattern, of course, since I was modifying it for full-length sleeves. It was my own doing. I adjusted the sleeve length carefully as I went. I'm not sure trying it on while in progress worked in my favor. At that point, the neckline was a lot looser and deeper. What I failed to take into account is how much the last step of adding the neckband would tighten up and raise the whole works, sleeves and all.

So I'm not done. I have to rip out the belled cuffs, lengthen the sleeves, and re-knit them. On the bright side, the rest of the sweater is very nice. It could be worse. It's just the sleeves, after all.

I do this because I love it. I do this because I love it....

Oh, Nothing

Or, just what was that under that new shawl pin?

Oh, this, you mean? Well, why on earth didn't you say so?

Just my new Noro sweater that I've finished and am absolutely thrilled with, that's all. It's knit in Noro Silk Garden (silk, kid mohair, and lamb's wool) in color 221 on US size 9 (5.5mm) needles. It took ten 50-gram skeins -- a bag I'd bought from the Woolstock booth at the 2008 Stitches East event in Baltimore, Maryland.

It's a distant cousin of sweater number 1 in the Fall 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting, by Coralie Meslin. I borrowed the neckline and armhole shaping, but made a few changes. Just to the collar, ribbings, surface design, length, and silhouette. Nothing much.

Since every sweater needs a name, I'm calling this one Sassafras. I am so happy with this sweater, I can't even tell you. It fits beautifully, and the cut is flattering. I made it slightly a-line in shape so that it would hang instead of clinging. The colors somehow seem to go with every pair of pants in my closet. I love the drama of that big, extravagant collar.

When I got it done and sewn together, I knew I liked it, and I thought it looked pretty good. I went ahead and wore it before I had any way to fasten it. But with the overlapping fronts and collar hanging slack, it still wasn't quite what it could be. It needed a beautiful closure to reach its full potential. So I suppose I went to the Fall Fiber Festival seeking closure. :)

I really wanted to wear this sweater at the fiber festival itself, to wear my handiwork among fellow knitters. And maybe show it off, just a little, I admit. As it happened, the day was just too warm (and beautiful), so it stayed in the car. But the thing is a knitter magnet. I've worn Sassafras several times now, and wherever I go, knitters approach me and ask about it.

What more could I ask? A sweater I love to wear and get to talk to other knitters about!

That Elusive Stopping Place

I'll put the knitting down and take care of a few other things, as soon as I get to a stopping place....

First of all, thank you, everyone! for saying such nice things about the Chanel-ish jacket. I'm very happy and very relieved that it turned out so well. And as for a photo with jingly necklaces? Well, even if I piled on all my various necklaces, I'm not sure I could achieve quite the right jingly effect, so that may have to wait a while. :)

So what did I do to entertain myself once the jacket was happily finished? I knit. Yes, I pretty much immediately grabbed some yarn and got to work. The knitting urge is strong this time of year. I had a bag of 10 skeins of Noro Silk Garden yarn, of mohair, silk, and lambswool, and I just really wanted to knit it.

I settled in one morning with a cappucino at Starbucks and stitched away contentedly. To be honest, I wasn't even especially clear on where I was going with it; I just wanted to be going. That's kind of rare for me.

I don't think, generally, that I'm what people refer to as a "process knitter" at all. I do enjoy the actual knitting very much, but I don't do it just to enjoy the motion and the beautiful yarn running through my hands. I do it to be able to create pretty things.

That's assuming, of course, that all goes well. But after all the hand-wringing and problem-solving are over, I usually do come out the other side with something I can feel good about. The out-and-out failures are, thank goodness, few and far between.

This time, I was impatient with mapping things out carefully ahead of time. I had seen a pattern in the current issue of Vogue Knitting that I thought might adapt well to the Noro striping and my 10 skeins of yarn, and I had a loose idea of what I was aiming for. (It's "Long Coat," by Coralie Meslin, pattern number 1 in the Fall 2009 Vogue Knitting, if you happen to have a copy handy.) Of course, the pattern is for a long coat with a fitted waist, and a giant sunburst design in the stitch pattern on one side, none of which I wanted. But I was quite attracted to the neckline, collar, and asymmetrical closure, and I pictured the characteristic Noro striping running along the collar and making a nice diagonal contrast to the body.

I plunged in, making decisions as I went. I decided on a cropped, high-hip length. It evolved somehow that it would be an a-line silhouette. I changed the ribbing style and depth. I left out the short-row sunburst. (It's really rather nice, but wouldn't have been the easiest to adapt to the truncated length -- and with the striping yarn, there would already be enough going on.) At least the gauge stayed the same.

The last couple of weekends, I had a number of things I really needed to get done, though. House things, and pants-hemming things, and thank-you note things, and what-have-you. I planned to put aside the knitting. After all, I'd just finished a sweater. I did pick it up a couple of times, just to knit a row or two. Or maybe a couple more. Maybe just far enough to see the next color transition. Maybe to the top of the ribbing. Or until it's time to start the armhole shaping. Oh, I'm so close, I might as well finish off the back.

Yes, I'll put it down, just as soon as I get to a stopping place. Really.

... And Pulled Out a Plum

The Chanel-ish Cardigan Jacket is done, and everything has turned out better than I could have hoped.

Yes, I stuck in my thumb, all right. It all began with some dubious wool bought in a triumph of bargain-hunting over judgment. I'm stubborn, though, and the colors were pretty. So during last year's Tour de Fleece spinning event, I forged ahead and spun it into an attractive but not very touchable 3-ply yarn.

Though from humble beginnings, this yarn was eager to put on airs. Its nubby, tweedy look reminded me from the beginning of those thick, hairy, multicolored tweeds that are made into boxy Chanel-style jackets worn by polished-looking women with jingling necklaces and freshly touched-up lipstick. While the polish and jingling are not my typical style, the yarn did seem like it would work well in that kind of jacket. It told me so from the very first skein, once I saw the plies of charcoal, turquoise, and lavender twisted together.

I knew exactly the pattern I wanted to use, too. It is a trim, nice-looking design by Mary-Heather Cogar, published in Greetings from Knit Cafe, by Suzan Mischer. Mary-Heather's design is in worsted weight yarn, worked in a two-color stitch pattern reminiscent of a houndstooth check.

The Yarnstruck version, on the other hand, needed to be in a bulky weight yarn, on US size 11 (8 mm) needles, in one busy color. Just a bit different. A minor obstacle. I swatched and charted and converted, decided on a double moss stitch for texture, and launched the knitting.

(In the photo, you can see the eye-popping pocket lining peeking out. Christina suggested giving the whole jacket a lining, which is an interesting idea, especially as it would free me from always wearing long sleeves underneath for protection against this somewhat itchy wool. But that's more work, and, for now, I just want to declare it done. So for the time being, following the suggestion from Puff, I'll just consider it whimsical. :)

The bulky-weight knitting ate up the skeins of handspun at an alarmingly fast clip. After a while, it looked as if I wouldn't have enough left for the long sleeves. After knitting the body , I weighed the yarn that remained for the sleeves, and things did not look optimistic. OK, three-quarter length sleeves? Or even shorter? The only way to find out was to dive in and knit the first sleeve. Well, so what if the second sleeve has to be shorter. Asymmetry is in! Fashion magazines are trying to convince us to wear one-shouldered tops. Ha!

I was nervous, though, I'll say that much. As sleeve #1 grew longer, and the remaining skeins dwindled, I started thinking fondly of 7/8 length sleeves. I started the shoulder cap shaping a couple of inches early, hoping it would help just enough to let me eke out the other sleeve. And what a relief when it did. Barely.

I sewed up the seams (with other yarn, less bulky and more plentiful), and tried it the jacket on, holding my breath. What do you know? It fit, and it had full-length long sleeves! My theory is that there's enough spring in that stitch pattern that the fabric lengthens a little once it relaxes a bit. Whatever it is, it works for me.

With a light heart, I went ahead and worked the edging in a contrasting color of worsted weight yarn. (Lamb's Pride, from Brown Sheep Company, in Deep Charcoal. Lovely, lovely, single-ply wool with a touch of mohair, left over from a successful and happy past sweater project.)

It's all done, almost exactly as I pictured it, and I'm just waiting for cool enough weather to wear it to work and show it off.

And I had all this yarn left over. Three rags and tags. It would have been enough, I estimate, for about one more entire row across both sleeves.

What, me worry?

Up to My Armpits

... in nubby, tweedy knitting.

I've been busily working on the Chanel-ish Cardigan in bulky-weight handspun. It doesn't look like much yet, but on the whole I think it's coming along fine. My gauge seems to be pretty much as predicted from the swatch I knit, which means the jacket will be more or less the size I'm aiming for, all good news.

The jacket is knit from the bottom up in one piece until it splits to make the armholes. I've just about reached the splitting point now. There are pockets knit in along the way -- you can see the pocket flaps in the photo. (To help sort out what you're looking at, other than a generally messy blob of knitting, the north of the jacket is the upper right of the picture.)

The pockets did pose a minor dilemma along the way. They are not anchored like patch pockets to the inside, but hang loose inside as separate pouches. I'm guessing this is to keep from interfering with the way the jacket hangs smoothly in the front. But it does mean that where each pockets is, there are three layers of fabric -- the jacket front itself, and two layers of pocket lining. With a bulky-weight yarn, I thought this would add up to quite a thick wad, which might in itself interfere with the smooth line of the jacket.

After pondering this for a while, I decided to make the pocket linings out of a lighter weight yarn to slim them down. Since the pockets are knit in instead of sewn on, that meant an interesting little challenge of changing stitch counts to match the width at the opening, but all worked out, thank goodness. Of course, there was not the ghost of a chance of finding a worsted-weight match for this crazy tri-colored marled handspun yarn. So I used a contrasting but (I hope) sympathetic solid color left over from a long-ago sweater project. I did think about using black, especially since the plan is to finish the sweater with a contrast edge in black or charcoal. But where's the fun in that?

Still, I hope the jacket won't gape open too much at the front, because a glimpse of that wild pocket inside could be eye-popping. :) Back to work now.