Here’s another little cardigan from Martin Storey, originally designed for Rowan TrueSilk, a summer sweater called Peridot. (That’s a Ravelry link.) The pattern is in a book called the Rowan Truesilk Collection. Here’s Rowan’s picture of Peridot:
The only thing I didn’t like about this was the multi-coloured buttons, but that’s easy to fix. I knit mine in Patons Silk Bamboo in Sapphire. (Also a Ravelry link since the yarn is discontinued.) It’s a pretty simple sweater, which means I have no explanation for its lengthy time-out. I cast on in July 2015 and stalled after the back and one front were knit. (Sometimes Ravelry is a little bit terrifying in the information it provides. 2015! Gah.)
Recently, I picked up this project again, determined to finish it up. Here’s the completed back.
I really like this colour of the Silk Bamboo. You can see that this is going to be an a-line sweater – and the great thing about a traditional construction is that it’s easy to measure the pieces and check the fit before knitting the whole thing. This one is going to be a keeper. It has a lovely drape.
It obviously needs to be blocked after all its time in the project bag, but as usual when I pick up a stalled project, there’s less to do than I’d thought. I have most of one front done, and the sleeves are only 3/4 length. The plain knitting makes it great for TV knitting – even with the increases – so I’m working on this one again. I hope to have it done soon.
I’ve been making a lot lately for my girls instead of for myself, so my count of finished projects for myself is pretty low this year. I lost a bit of my making mojo this year, thanks to a lot of projects that made me say “hmmm”. The girls have helped me to recover a bit of that, so over the next few posts, we’ll have a look at a few of those stalled projects. Coming back to them with a fresh eye has given me some ideas.
First up, the knee socks.
I’m not sure why knee socks intrigue me so much. They’re a lot (a LOT) of knitting and I seldom wear them once they’re done. All the same, I can’t resist them. It’s inexplicable.
For example, I made these in 2009 and have never worn them. Not even once. I take them out of the drawer and look at them sometimes, though. I do like that they exist.
The current choice of knee socks is Quail, designed by Martin Storey to be knit in Rowan Fine Art. Those are Ravelry links, as the yarn is (naturally) discontinued. I’ve been eyeballing these since I bought the book when it was first released in 2013.
The pattern is in this book for Rowan Fine Art: Fine Art Collection. It should be available for sale individually, but Rowan’s buy links from Ravelry are a trainwreck since they updated their website (and didn’t update the links.)
Here’s Rowan’s pic of the socks from the book. Of course, it’s a lovely photograph as is always the case with Rowan, but one that doesn’t let you see the detail in the socks very well.
It turns out that they have bobbles, which I’m leaving out since I hate bobbles. I hate knitting them and I hate that they look like warts when they’re done. No bobbles for me.
This should mean that I need less yarn and I hope that’s true. The pattern calls for three skeins of Fine Art, which has 400m per skein. That’s a lot of yardage for socks, even for knee socks – usually you need 350 – 400m for socks and double that for knee socks, with lots leftover for knitting for the girls – even with a light fingering like this one. I have two skeins of Fine Art in a plummy colour, so right from my cast-on, I’m playing yarn chicken.
The colourway is called Rowan. (That’s a Ravelry stash link, because I think it’s fun to see pictures of a specific yarn in a whole bunch of knitters’ stashes.)
I’m knitting them in the round on 2.0mm needles. Here’s where I stalled:
The top looks huge, which is always the way with knee socks. What made me go “hmmm” was the pooling. On the cuff, it made a nice little stripe, but once the stitches were added for the cables, it made a big moving pool. I’ve started the decreases and you can see that the width of the pool is decreasing. It’ll spiral down to a narrow stripe again by the ankle. I’d rather have stripes or cables, but not both at the same time.
I made another pair of socks in this yarn, in another colourway, and they did a similar striping, just in short plain socks. Here they are:
I’m not wildly in love with this pooling, but I can live with it since the socks are just in plain rib.
Here’s the shawl I made in this same yarn, which also pooled:
The thing is that I like the pattern of the pooling in the shawl, even with the lace stitch. I think it’s because it falls into a regular stripe that doesn’t vary over the length of the shawl. It’s the changing width of the stripes that I find distracting in the socks.
So, these socks are going to Frog Pond, and the yarn is returning to the stash. I’ll use it on a shawl, I guess, or another project that has the same number of stitches per row.
Maybe one pair of knee socks to admire is enough. 🙂
This year, I have a plan to finish up some of the projects that are on my needles. Some of them have been waiting for my attention for a while. (Sleeve Island is a precarious location for me. Sweaters can be marooned there for years!) I had a look through all the project bags at the first of the year and chose this one to finish up first.
Audrey is a cardigan designed by Martin Storey in Rowan Angora Haze. It’s on the cover of the pattern book, Rowan Angora Haze, which is now discontinued. (That’s a Ravelry link for the pattern book.) The yarn is also discontinued. Here’s the Ravelry link for Rowan Angora Haze yarn and here’s the Ravelry link for Audrey.
It’s a pretty cardigan in a very fuzzy soft yarn. I’ve blogged about this one before, since it’s been SEVEN years since I cast it on. Gah. It’s ten years since I bought the yarn and the pattern, which means it aged in the stash even before I cast on. (This little summary and a birthday on the horizon makes me give my stash a side-eye.)
Let’s look at those blog posts before we explore the why of the timeline. Here’s the first one, and there’s a mention of my Audrey in this post, then here’s the most recent post about (ha) the plan to finish it, dating from two years ago.
The big issue with this knit was that I didn’t like the shape of the sweater as designed. It’s kind of an 80’s shape, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, an inverted triangle. I didn’t originally realize that from the pictures – I saw it in the schematics and instructions. As a pear-shaped individual myself, I knew this wouldn’t work. I eliminated the increases in the upper body, which then meant that the armhole decreases and the shoulder cap had to be recalculated. I also changed the neck, so that there’s another button there instead of a ribbon threaded through a casing. Then I discovered that the sleeve instructions made a sleeve that was far wider than I wanted, so I frogged the sleeves back and started them again. Finally, the dark fuzzy wool was tough to read in the cable and eyelet pattern. This wasn’t television knitting at all, even though I soon memorized the pattern stitch.
This project was castaway on Sleeve Island twice – once for the recalculation of the sleeve cap and once for ennui – as well as having an earlier time-out or two. The yarn shed like mad at first, even after being put in the freezer (that’s an old tip for sheddy yarn) but when I picked it up this last time, it seemed to be shedding less. That’s a good sign for actually wearing the sweater and not having everything I own covered in purple fuzz.
Here are some in-progress pix of the body of the sweater from those older posts, one with a test button. I’m going with those faceted clear ones – they’re pretty but not too fussy. A plain button wouldn’t be right with this sweater IMO.
Now it’s done (finally!) and I love it. It’s very soft and fits exactly as I’d planned (yay), and oh, it’s warm!
And here it is FINISHED!
I bought 12 balls of yarn and used almost 10.5 of them, which means the sweater took 1438 m or 1573 yards. (I don’t even want to think about how many of them I knit twice.) Here’s my Ravelry project page.
If I knit it again (not a chance!) I’d make the armhole a little more shallow, maybe even an inch. I’d add that length into the body so the sweater overall was the same length. I bought 12 balls of black Angora Haze way back in 2013, enough to make this sweater, but I think I’ll knit it into something more plain than this cardigan.
Audrey is a cardigan designed by Martin Storey in Rowan Angora Haze. It was the design featured on the cover of Rowan Angora Haze pattern book (that’s a Ravelry link, since the book is out of print). It’s another project that I cast on very soon after the pattern was published – in the specified yarn – but then lost my mojo. As usual, it was the sleeves that got me. The book is now out of print and the yarn is discontinued.
I made a few modifications. In the book, the sweater is styled with a ribbon at the neck, like a bed jacket. The collar is actually a casing for the ribbon. I did a regular round collar instead. I omitted the increases in the body – the design is a bit 80’s with the shoulders being wider than the waist. Mine is just boxy.
This was my last progress shot of the sleeves:
And that’s pretty much where I stopped cold. I had a feeling the sleeves were too wide, so put the project aside to think about that. I took it out in January when my Starling Wrap was done and knew I was right. 5.5″ into the sleeves, they were 12.5″ wide, even though I was making the smallest size. So (sigh) I frogged the sleeves and cast on again. This pattern has a couple rows of garter stitch at the cast-on edge, then increases in R4. This time, I didn’t do the increases, but just switched to the larger needles and started the cable pattern. What a difference that made!
Here you can see the new sleeve, which is knit to the underarm. (Yup. There I go, tossing my knitting into the snow again. The light is so much better outside right not.)
I’m much happier with these proportions – the top of my new sleeve is about the same width as I’d reached in a few inches, following the pattern directions. Now I need to figure out the sleeve cap since my stitch count is much lower. I’ve ended on the same row of the pattern repeat as for the body of the cardigan, so the pattern will line up. It’s just a case of working out the decreases. I have a plan, and we’ll see how it goes – I’ll put in a lifeline, just in case.
I finished my purple sweater this week. What a quick knit—even though I reknit the sleeves. The pattern is Barista, by Martin Storey, which is in the current Rowan magazine, #60. It’s knit in Big Wool, which I had in my stash in this great purple colour. Here it is!
Mr. Math photographed it near the end of the day, so there are some dramatic shadows. They show up the stitch pattern quite well, though.
There was a tiny mistake in the pattern, which was no big deal. There’s a chart for the stitch pattern, and the key for the chart showed two blank (identical) boxes. Obviously, the squares with nothing in them are knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side, and the squares with a dot in them should be purled on the right side and knit on the wrong side. I got a Sharpie and made a dot in the right square in the key. Fixed.
In the knitting, I made a couple of small changes. First, I kept a stitch in stockinette at each edge of each piece for easier seaming. You can see the side seams here:
Second, I cast on four extra stitches for the sleeves, since I found them a bit more snug than I wanted. I followed the instructions for the increases on the sleeves, but did two fewer of them, so I’d have the right number of stitches for the raglan decreases.
And finally, I made the collar deeper. It was a really wide crew neck when I tried it on and I wanted it to be more snuggly, so I knit until I ran out of yarn. Here’s what it looks like folded down. I like having a choice!
This isn’t the most flattering sweater I’ve ever made in my life, but it’s warm and it’s comfortable and it’s purple. I love it. What do you think?
When knitters unravel a piece of knitting, they say they’re “frogging” it. That’s because “rip it rip it” is the sound a frog makes.
Yes, it’s silly but it’s fun.
Another verb for the same process is “tinking”. If you spelling “knit” backwards, you get “tink”, so knitting in reverse is tinking.
Last night, I decided to frog the sleeves of a sweater, but I took a picture of it first to show you why. It’s knit in Rowan Big Wool, in a pattern called Barista. I had some Big Wool in the Wild Berry colourway, which I’d bought for a boxy jacket. I knit that jacket and frogged it when I didn’t wear it.
Because the yarn is thick, ripping it back and reknitting it isn’t that painful. There won’t be a mourning period—in fact, by the time you read this, I’ll probably have reknit most of what I pulled back.
Here’s what the sweater looked like yesterday afternoon:
It has a great stitch pattern and I really like how it was knitting up. I also love the colour of this yarn. But….I had a funny feeling, so I knit the side seams and basted the sleeve to the underarm, tied the shoulders and tried it on. My funny feeling was right. The body is wide for me, even though I knit my size and got gauge. It has more ease than I expected, but I’m going to leave it. I had wondered while knitting it whether I should make it longer, and I did make it a little bit longer. The length is perfect. The sleeve, though, is quite snug. I like to push up my sleeves, so I need a little more ease in them.
Of course, I was knitting both sleeves at once.
But, rip it rip it. I frogged the sleeves and cast them on again with four more stitches each. I’m excited about this sweater, though, and am charging ahead to get it done. The days are cooler and it should be the perfect weather for this sweater soon. If all goes well, I should finish it up this weekend!
I finished an afghan in the last couple of weeks. I was determined to get it off my needles. It was yet another bulky project that was crazy for me to knit in the summer. This was the Rowan knit-a-long mystery afghan by Martin Storey, which I started in 2014. I designed my own border for it, and had to knit it in a contrasting colour since I ran out of the variegated yarn. It’s been waiting on that border to be finished for a while.
The variegated yarn proved to be a bad choice, even though it was in my stash, since the different stitch combinations on the blocks meant that the colours pooled in different ways on different blocks. Oh well. (Interestingly enough, the pooling is much more evident in this pic than in real life.) I’m glad it’s done, and there’s 5 lbs less of Patons Decor in my stash. It’s now in the car and The New Girl loves it, so all ends well.
My big plan was to finish up the projects that are already on my needles this year, and I am making progress on that. I’m in the midst of knitting the last square for the ugliest afghan in the world, for example, which will then just need to be sewn together (ugh. The sewing is about half done) and have the border knit onto it. The border is about 1/3 done. It is, though, the ugliest afghan in the world, and not a project that fosters a lot of enthusiasm. It might be warm when it’s done. It’s destined to go in the car to keep the dog claws off the upholstery, which again, isn’t very inspiring.
So, I needed another project to keep me from losing hope completely. The winner was Audrey, a lace and cables cardigan knit in Rowan Angora Haze and included in the Rowan Angora Haze pattern book. This yarn was discontinued and replaced by Rowan Mohair Haze, so I bought two sweater lots of AH when it was discounted to clear. It was time to get one fuzzy sweater on the needles. Here, btw, is the Ravelry link for Audrey, and also the one for Angora Haze. It’s still out there in discount bins all over the world.
The yarn is really soft and fuzzy. It does shed a bit but not as much as I expected. It’ll be interesting to see whether it sheds more or less once the garment is completed. My nose does tickle a bit after I’ve been knitting on it, but again, it’s not too bad. I did try a suggestion I saw on a Ravelry forum – I put a white linen tea towel on my lap when knitting this sweater. It gives nice contrast for those dark stitches and also catches any shedding hairs. I wrap the knitting in the tea towel when I’m not working on it.
Of course, my yarn is deep purple. 🙂 Here’s the left front so far:
This shot was taken with the flash – the colour isn’t as rich as it is in real life, but you can see the cables better.
The cable pattern is actually easy to memorize, which surprised me. It’s certainly not a television knit, but it’s not that complicated. I knit the left front first, because I’ve had sizing issues lately with Rowan patterns. A lot of them turn out big, and I didn’t want to knit these cables over and over again. I knit a size smaller than I thought I should, and it’s coming out perfectly. The fabric is a little bit stretchy, and I guess it’s acting like a rib. Although the left front laid flat is 10″ wide, as it should be, I can easily smooth it to be 12″ wide. I’m glad I didn’t knit a bigger size, as it might get sloppy in the wearing. I doubt this yarn has a lot of elasticity – it’s just too soft for that.
I’ve made the front 2″ longer because I don’t want it to be as cropped. Also, I’ve eliminated the increases between waist and bust, and just knit it straight. That means I had to modify the decreases for the armscye (since I had fewer stitches overall) but that wasn’t a big deal. I won’t make the rolled collar but just a regular one with a buttonhole, and it seems to me that the sleeves are a bit too wide. I’ll double check those counts and measurements before knitting them.
Naturally, knitting one of the fronts first has left me with a dilemma. I’m going to have to put it aside unfinished and knit the back before I can continue. Rowan patterns often have an instruction like the one in the pattern “knit the front until it is 26 rows shorter than the finished back”. Aha. (I have another sweater on the needles that’s in time-out because of this. I have knit the back on that one, but since I substituted a different yarn, my row gauge is off. I need to figure out whether the specified number of rows will make the collar too deep or not. Knitting math tends not to get done, so that sweater front has been waiting patiently in my basket since November.) This weekend, the left front of Audrey is going onto a stitch holder and I’ll cast on the back.
So, it’s been a while since I put this fair isle project aside, but I dug it out last week (after finishing my KSH Stripe cardigan) and have now finished the back. Here it is:It’s curling a bit because it hasn’t been blocked yet, but is really a big rectangle, decreased in to a point at the top in the middle. It’s supposed to be oversized and is big – the back is 26″ wide. I took this picture outside, and the colours appear a bit more zingy than they are in real life.
The pattern is called Roan from Rowan Magazine #56. (I posted about this project when I began it, right here.) The cardigan is like a kimono and is supposed to be knit in thicker yarn. I had this Kauni Effektgarn in my stash so recalculated and cast on in this instead. This is two colourways of the Kauni, and the yarn changes colour graduallly as you knit. (The original design uses a number of colours, and the knitter changes yarns as knitting.) Because the yarn is thinner, I had to do more repeats of the band with the diamonds to get the sweater to the right length – I decided to make it a bit shorter than the pattern, to ensure I wasn’t overwhelmed by the sweater.
The two fronts together are the same shape as the back, just split down the middle. Because I want the colours to change the same way on the front and the back, I’m going to knit the fronts as one piece, then cut them apart. This is called steeking. I’ve never done a steek before, and the prospect of cutting my knitting does freak me out a bit. I have a lot of knitting to do before it’s time for that, though.
I haven’t posted much about knitting lately, for two reasons: first, there’s been a lot of book news and I know you’re more interested in that, and secondly, I haven’t finished many projects this summer. I’ve been knitting a lot of stranded colourwork and fair isle, and that’s time consuming – though I love the results.
Here’s one that’s on my needles right now:This pattern is from the latest Rowan magazine, #56, and is called Roan. It’s a kimono style sweater and is knit in heavier yarn than the one I’m using. This yarn is Kauni Effektgarn, a yarn I love because of the way it gradually changes colour. This is the teal colourway and the pink/purple colourway. I had to recalculate things to ensure that the sweater fits – I’ll be getting more stitches per inch in both directions – so I’m knitting by the directions for the large size to get a sweater slightly smaller than a medium. I’ll need to add more repeats of the Celtic knot to get the length, too.
Alive & Knitting 