Cheater Stripes

Posted on December 8, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

Here’s another project that’s been hanging around for too long, without a very good reason to do so. This sweater was stuck on Sleeve Island because I was too lazy to cake up another skein of yarn for the second sleeve. The cakes I had didn’t start at the right point in the stripe sequence to match.

Finally, I got out my swift, caked the yarn and got back to knitting.

Here’s the finished sweater:

Stripes by Drea Renee Knits knit in Sugar Bush Motley by Deborah Cooke

The pattern is Andrea Mowry’s STRIPES!, (that’s a Ravelry link, although you can buy it directly from her website, too.) Instead of knitting it in a multitude of colours and creating stripes, I knit mine in a self-striping yarn. The yarn is Sugar Bush Motley in Peppered Teal. (That’s a Ravelry link, too – here’s one for Yarnspirations.) Of course, a self-striping yarn has a fixed repeat, which means that as the number of stitches in each row changes, so does the width of the stripes. I kind of like how this one came out anyway.

I first posted about this sweater in March.

Of course, I had my usual panic moment of being convinced I didn’t have enough yarn, and raced back to get another skein in the same dye lot. There were only two left so I bought them both, and (you saw this one coming) I didn’t need either of them, so I have a lot leftover.

Motley is a soft yarn made of an alpaca and merino blend. It runs thick and thin, which I always like better in the skein than when it’s knitted up. It’s a little bit itchy, so I’ll need to wear a t-shirt underneath.

Basic Sweater by Louisa Harding knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

I have this sweater which I knit of Rowan Colourspun a few years ago, which is a bit big for me and looks dumpy as a result. I never do the waist shaping because it always ends up in the wrong place, but this sweater would have benefitted from a bit of that. I do like the long ribbing on the cuffs and the collar. The yarn is soft and has a lot of other colours in the grey, which is pretty.

I wanted this new one to fit a little more snugly and it does. Here they are, dancing together:

It’s good to compare them, because it shows other differences. I think the sleeves are a bit skinny on this new one – which happened with my Comfort Fade Cardigan from the same designer, too, so I should have kept that in mind – and it feels a bit short. Just an inch! My bind-off is a bit tight, so I may pick that back and add an inch of ribbing at the waist. maybe another inch on each sleeve, too. I don’t love the round yoke – it has a bit of a ripple in it still – but then, round yokes fit me so seldom. I really should concentrate on sweaters with set-in sleeves.

Another one off the needles!

Edited to Add – I picked out the hem last night and added another inch and a half. That extra length makes me much happier. 🙂

Stripes!

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

I can never resist a new project, even when I have a lot of projects to finish up. There’s something very satisfying about casting on.

In November, Andrea Mowry published a new pattern called Stripes! which I liked a lot. (That’s a Ravelry link.) It’s a top-down pullover with lots of options to vary the results. It looked like a quick and easy project – plus I had the perfect yarn in my stash (or so I thought).

I bought some Sugar Bush Motley at Spinrite last year because I really liked how it looked in the skein. (That link goes to the Motley project page on the Sugar Bush site.) I was expecting it to create an all-over speckly pattern. Once it was caked up, though, it was clear that this yarn was dyed to make repeating stripes. (This colourway is called Peppered Teal.)

I set it aside then, but pulled it out again for this sweater. I’d have stripes without changing colours every 8 rows. Of course, the stripes would vary in width, depending on the number of stitches on my needles, but I thought it would be okay.

Here’s the sweater so far:

Andrea Mowry's Stripes top-down pullover knit in SugarBush Motley by Deborah Cooke

This yarn is a merino-alpaca blend, so it will be warm. I decided that I wanted a turtleneck on this sweater, so I did a provisional cast-on, then knit down the sweater yoke as instructed. When I had a few inches done on the yoke, I picked up the neck stitches and knit up in ribbing to create the turtleneck. I also inverted the colour sequence – starting from the other end of the skein – because I knew the collar would be folded down and I wanted it to match up with the body. I had a hard time assessing the depth to knit – I thought it was long enough because I tried it on before the yoke was done. Once I divided for the underarms, though, the neck pulled down a bit and I had to rejoin the yarn and knit a few more inches on the neck.

I like the yarn, even though it’s a single-ply, loosely spun and a bit splitty. I like it because of the result. The knitted fabric is soft and light, with a really nice drape. I think this will be a sweater I wear a lot.

I can hear you asking why I’ve only managed this much since November. As is so often the way with “quick” projects, I made a mistake. I had knit this sweater well past this point, almost to the waist ribbing, when I took it off the needles to check the size. I find it hard to assess the size of a top-down pullover, even when I try it on, until I knit past the bust. It was huge, way too huge – because (ugh) my gauge was off. I figured out that I needed 50 less stitches in the body and would still have a loose fit, so I ripped all the way back to the neck. I could have changed to smaller needles, but I liked the drape of the fabric I was getting, so I followed the instructions for the next smaller size. That made a difference of 30 stitches in the body. Then I added 20 less stitches at the underarm, 10 less on each side, and carried on. I’m quite happy with the fit now.

And I figured out a new trick. Instead of transferring all the stitches to a length of wool to try on the sweater, then putting them back on the needle, I knit half the body on one 80cm circular, and the other half on a second 80cm circular. That means I can put the sweater flat to measure it, and also that I can (carefully!) try it on, without transferring the stitches. 🙂

Onward with this one. Looks like it will be a sweater to wear next winter…

Finished Nightshift

Posted on January 27, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

This was a project that I feared would never be done. It’s Nightshift, a pattern by Andrea Mowry, (that’s a Ravelry link) but I knit it in Koigu KPPPM – a fingering weight yarn – instead of the aran weight yarn specified. It took a while, but it’s finally finished – and here it is!

Nightshift knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

And here’s a detail of that left corner:

Yes, I threw it in the snow for the picture. I haven’t blocked it and the cast-off edge (on the left) is rolling a bit. It’s pretty big and has fourteen repeats of the 40 row pattern.

I’ve blogged about this one a couple of times – here (August 2019) and here (September 2019) and here (June 2020). A year and a half. I’m so glad it’s done!

Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

It’s knit in five colours of Koigu KPPPM and I used up all of the yarn – that’s why there are tassels. They used up the last bits.

Here’s my project page on Ravelry with all the nitty gritty details.

What do you think?

Nightshift Update

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

Nightshift is a gorgeous shawl pattern by Andrea Mowry (Drea Renee Knits). Hers is knit in a beautiful self-striping yarn called Spin Cycle Yarns Dreamscape. It’s an aran weight yarn, though, and I was worried about the shawl ending up like a blanket. I decided to use up some of my Koigu KPPPM, which is a fingering weight, for my Nightshift. Of course, using a thinner yarn means knitting twice as many stitches to make a shawl of decent size. I cast on last July with these skeins.

Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

I’ve blogged about this shawl a couple of times already: Nightshift in Koigu KPPPM and Navellia, Nightshift and Audrey.

I’ve been working on this while sheltering in place, and am making steady progress. It’s not done, but I thought I’d show you today how it’s coming out. Here it is on the needles – it’s big enough that I can’t stretch it out to its full width: Nightshift shawl knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke I’m on the 11th repeat and am hoping to do 15. I’ll see how the yarn lasts.

Here’s a detail shot: Nightshift shawl knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke I like how the colourways mix and mingle with each other, because several of the same reds appear in both my red main colour and several of the contrast ones.

How is your knitting during Covid-19?

Comfort Fade Cardigan Completed

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

In moving my posts over and updating their links, I found some gaps. Here’s one: I’d said I would show you my completed Comfort Fade Cardigan in Rowan Colourspun, but never did. Here are the older posts: Comfort Fade Cardigan 1 and Comfort Fade Cardigan 2.

And here’s the finished cardigan: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke I’ve worn this a fair bit. It is odd that it doesn’t have a front fastening, although I’m sure I could add one. I do think I mucked up the sleeve decreases as they’re narrow – fine for wearing but less fine for pushing up to the elbow as I’m inclined to do with my sweaters. They’re also a bit long for me. And I know that I somehow did too many short rows on the collar: it’s quite substantial! That makes it snuggly, though – and is one of the hazards of knitting anything other than plain rows while watching tv.

It is a pretty cardigan, though, and a warm one. It’s a complete bonus that I knit it out of stash yarn! What do you think?

Navelli, Nightshift and Audrey

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I didn’t post about my knitting last week, because I didn’t have anything finished to show you. I’m knitting along on some projects that are taking a while. So, let’s have a progress report today.

You might remember that I was going to frog the stockinette of my Navelli because I didn’t like the way the variegated colourway was pooling. Well, I have a sweater-quantity of a semi-solid Koigu in my stash, and since it’s a generous sweater quantity, I borrowed four skeins from that to use for my Navelli. This colour is working out much better – here it is:

The trick is that now I don’t love the blue in the fair isle section. It matched perfectly with the variegated colourway and is okay with this one. I’m not frogging back again. Que sera sera.

I’ve also been knitting away on my Nightshift shawl in Koigu KPPPM. I showed you the beginning of it here. My plan is to include the red – leftover from my Lunenberg cardigan – as one colour in each stripe. Here’s where I am now:

At this point, I’ve started the sixth repeat of the 20-row pattern sequence. (I’m calling a 20-row repeat a stripe.) The first one has a red background and the lightest purple as contrast. The second repeat has the lightest purple as the background and the red as the contrast colour. The third repeat has the darkest purple as the background and the red as the contrast. The fourth repeat has the middle purple as background with the red as the contrast. The fifth repeat has the red in the background again, and the first purple as the contrast. The sixth repeat (which I’ve just started) has the red in the background and the darkest purple as contrast. It is interesting how the purples, which look so different from each other, are difficult to distinguish from each other once they’re knitted up with the red.

I like this pattern a lot. It’s clever (it has i-cord binding on both edges that is knitted as you go_ and the pattern is easy to memorize. It’s a great way to use up different colourways in the same yarn, which means I’ll probably knit another one (or two).

I’ve also started to spend some time on my Audrey cardigan, which has been waiting on its sleeves for a while. Not only is it a cable pattern, but the dark purple means I need to knit it in daylight to see what the heck I’m doing. I have to have an hour in the afternoon of a sunny day, which doesn’t happen that often. The yarn is fuzzy and sheds – I keep it wrapped in a teatowel, which I spread on my lap when I’m working on it – and it makes my nose tickle a little. (It’s an angora blend, called Rowan Angora Haze. It’s also discontinued.) Here are the sleeves so far:

This yarn is so fuzzy that the camera didn’t know where to focus! The stitch pattern was reasonably easy to memorize but it’s not TV knitting. I put it aside because I thought the sleeves were too wide. I still think they are, even though I’m knitting a smaller size of sleeve. I’ll make them bracelet length and hope that does the trick.

I never showed you the body finished and assembled. Here it is, although I’m not convinced about the buttons yet. They’re a bit sparkly for me – that one is still on the button card.

I think my next project needs to be with thicker yarn!

I also went to the Woodstock Fleece Festival last weekend with a friend, which was a nice yarny fix. It was a beautiful fall day and there were so many vendors with wonderful yarn and fleece. Temptation was everywhere! In the end, I only bought two skeins of yarn – some sock yarn from an indie dyer and a skein of Spin Cycle Yarns Dream State, which I’ve been wanting to squish for a while. It’s actually the specified yarn for Nightshift. I’ll use this skein as the contrast colour on the yoke of a sweater I’m planning – the pattern is Fern & Feather (that’s a Ravelry link) and that ball of purple on the right will be the background colour.

Phew! Lots of purple on my needles. What have you been knitting lately?

Nightshift in Koigu KPPPM

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

Nightshift is a shawl pattern by Andrea Mowry, designed to be knit with six colours of a gradient yarn. Two colourways are used at any time, resulting in bands of colour with dots and dashes in the contrasting colour. It’s a striking piece, and quite substantial since the yarn is worsted weight. I cast on with worsted weight yarn but felt that the result was too thick for me to actually wear. I dove into the stash and came up with an alternative – Koigu KPPPM.

Here are my colours: Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

This photo was taken in bright sunlight. The colours are a little deeper than they appear here, and a little less pinky. The red is the leftover from my Koigu Lunenberg cardigan – there are almost four balls (just over 600 yards) of 329P left. This will use it up. (This is one colourway I bought the first year I went to the Koigu tent sale in 2016: the second was the grey mix I’m using in my Juicy Gloss cardigan. If I ever knit the sleeves on that, there probably won’t be much of that colour left.)

Charlotte's Web Shawl by Maie Landra knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke For my contrast for the Nightshift shawl, I chose four purple colourways. In 2017 at the Koigu tent sale, I bought a pack of ten different shades of purple. I knit Charlotte’s Web with five of them – there it is, in progress above, but still have the other five. You can see all of the colours in this photo: two are already knit up in the shawl, with the three balls that I planned to use (and did) lined up on the right. The five skeins below are the ones I have left now. One of them – the far right one – doesn’t go as well with the others, to my thinking, especially when combined with the red. I chose the other four to use with the red for my Nightshift.

This (inevitably) reminds me of the Jenny Joseph poem:
“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple,
with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.”

I’ve never understood why anyone had to wait to wear red and purple together.

This stash-dive gives me (4 x 160) 640 yards of purples and about 610 yards of red. I’ll knit until it’s gone. The pattern calls for 6 skeins that are 150 yards each, so I have more yardage. This yarn is thinner, though, so I’m hoping the shawl still comes out a good size.

Because Koigu KPPPM is fingering weight, not worsted, as specified in the pattern, I also cast on with smaller needles than specified in the pattern. I’m using 3.75mm. It’s a bit loose, which gives the yarn room to bloom, but I could have used 3.5mm.

Also, the red will appear in every band of colour in my shawl, although it will switch from being the main colour to being the contrast.

Here’s a close-up of my progress so far. Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

The first repeat had a red background and contrast in the lightest purple. The second repeat was inverted – lightest purple background with red contrast. The third repeat, which is almost half done in this picture, has the darkest purple as background and the red as the contrast colour. My project page on Ravelry for this shawl is right here.

How do you like the beginning of my red and purple Nightshift?

Comfort Fade Cardigan 2

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve been working away steadily on my Comfort Fade Cardigan and have an update – it’s almost done!

The previous post on the sweater is here. I had finished the yoke and was comparing the fit to other sweaters in my closet. Here it is after I finished the body. (This one is top-down, so I did the bottom ribbing last.) It was tough to confirm the fit because the collar ribbing is so wide – at this point, when I tried it on, it seemed to be falling off my shoulders. Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke I picked up the stitches to do the neck next (before the sleeves) to manage my yarn. I didn’t have enough of all the colourways, so decided to do the neck, then use half of whatever was left for each sleeve.

When I picked up the stitches for the neck, I forgot that the right side of the cardigan shows the purl side of the reverse stockinette. I also followed the directions and picked up with the first colour, which is my lightest one. At the bottom is my pick-up from the wrong side, which doesn’t look good on what will be the right side. At the top is my pick-up from the right side, which looks better.

Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke I did decide to frog and reverse the order of the colourways on the collar, picking up with my last colour, which is the brown. It blends in better and looks neater. See?

The collar is shaped with short rows for this sweater and it’s huge. In the picture above, you can see the wedges of short rows that add to the depth of the collar. It’s quite squishy and luxurious.

I cheated on the sleeves and knitted them inside out. (Ha. This makes me feel so clever.) This way, I could knit them in the round instead of having the purl them. The only thing is that I had to remember to leave the ends on the side facing me, not the opposite side as usual. Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

The sleeves are a little long and I didn’t finish all of the decreases as specified. Here’s the almost-completed sweater – I balled up the other sleeve in the shoulder and you can see one of my DPNs peeking out there: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

I couldn’t crop out that wonderful beam of sunlight. It’s so nice to see the sun again!

I’ll take some more pictures when the sweater is done. All I have to finish is that cuff. What do you think?

Comfort Fade Cardigan 1

Posted on January 25, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

There is a new(ish) knitting trend to knit with colours dyed in a progressing, fading from one to the next. For me, this started with Andrea Mowbry’s shawl Find Your Fade, which was published in December 2016 and is enormously popular. There are over 8000 projects on Ravelry! Andrea has designed other knitwear that features this kind of colour shift, and I’m knitting one right now.

Her Comfort Fade Cardi is an open-front, shawl collar cardigan, which is knit from the top down. It has raglan sleeves and requires four colours to fade into each other over the length of the cardigan. Since I always find it a bit dull to knit cardigans in stockinette stitch, I thought that watching the colours might motivate me. (It worked for my Hebrides cardigan, knit in striped KidSilk Haze.)

For this project, I raided my stash and chose my leftovers of Rowan Colourspun. I had knitted Mr. Math a vest in this yarn, then bought more to make myself a sweater when it was discontinued. Here’s a post about his vest. The pattern is called Skye.

So, in my stash, I have a russet, a brown, a green and a taupe in the Colourspun. This yarn has a gradual gradation and is kind of heathered. I thought it would be a good choice for a fade. I don’t have the right quantities that the pattern calls for – I have enough yardage, but more russet than I need and less brown. The yarn is discontinued, so I’ll work it out.

Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke Here’s the cardigan as of last Sunday. I’d just divided for the arms. You can see that the ribbing for the neckline has a good bit of space to fill – this sweater is designed to be worn open, so the fronts with the ribbing will just meet. It’s also designed so that the purl side is worn out, which makes it look even more blended.

I used the taupe first, then the green and have just started to fade into the russet. think it’s funny that the brightest bit of the taupe fell in the last two rows of it after fading into the green. 🙂

Here’s a look at the many colours in this yarn – I’ve been knitting more since the other pix were taken on Sunday, so it’s longer now: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

At the right is the taupe, fading into the green – which you can see is striping on its own – then into the russet. At the left, I’ve just started to transition to the brown.

I have a hard time getting a good fit with top-down raglans, but I think I’ve finally figured out why – which means I know what to do about it in future. I hadn’t finished the specified increases but it looked big, so I took it off the needles to try it on. (This is a very cool thing about top-down raglans – you can try them on as you go.) Then I compared it with a sweater I already have, which fits – in this case, one of my Hebrides in KSH. The Hebrides has a closer fit and is in a finer yarn, but you can see that it was definitely time to break for the sleeves. If I’d knit those remaining 12 rows, the sweater would have been droopy. Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

And here’s where I had my Eureka moment. See how wide the neckline is compared to the other sweater? Of course, the style is different, but when I try it on, it’s trying to fall off my shoulders. I’m narrow in the shoulders and when I sew, I always cut a smaller size above the bust to accommodate that. I should be casting on a smaller size than the one specified for my bust when I knit a raglan sweater for exactly the same reason. Aha!

I’m not going to frog this and start over, though. It’ll be a little slouchier than the original design, but I really like it. I have a feeling I’ll be knitting this pattern again, and will incorporate my changes then. In the meantime, I can fix another sweater that’s been waiting on me because I know what to do.

What do you think of this cardi so far?

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