We Now Disrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Almanac...

When I found out that a dear friend of mine was getting married, I knew I had to knit her something.

Anne Hanson had just released the Fernfrost pattern back in August and I was inspired. I decided to use the remainder of the silver silk from another wedding gift, and it gave the whole project a very frosty feel.

But while this is really a pretty pattern, I wish I’d picked one of her other patterns that is just as pretty but with a little less fiddliness. Really, pattern on every row and twisted purls? It took me about two hours per repeat, depending on my level of attention. 

Imagine my surprise that the thing fit in the palm of my hand after washing! All that work for something so tiny!

I made 14 repeats, and the scarf is 55” long and 8” wide. And, for the record, I wish I had blocking wires.

I added a fringe of twisted yarn, knotted together artfully, about 10”. The twisting and fringing was fun, and a new experience for me. I found it hard to believe it would work at first, but it really does. Just double up the yarn, twisty twisty, and carefully allow it to double back on itself again, then knot the ends. Et voila, fringe.

And if you read any blogs from northern regions, I'm sure you are sick of hearing people complain about the lack of decent lighting all winter, so I'll spare you. But really, this was the only decent picture I got outside...

but pretty enough, and I hope the bride likes it.

Next up on this blog: the Knitter's Almanac year-in-review. Stay tuned!

Collar Fail

I was actually looking forward to October all year. My son had earmarked this pattern as one he would appreciate and wear, with the addition of a kanagroo-type pocket at the front. The yarn is the lovely Laines du Nord Cashsilk, paired with an old wool-silk blend that was actually one of the first yarns I ever bought in my second knitting stint in 1999. Yikes, 10 year old yarn!

I feel like I've made it through a lot of EZ's patterns, mostly without difficulty, sometimes with some head-scratching, but always made it in the end. She has a unique style of instruction (as many before me have commented), but once you get used to it, it encourages independence and intelligent consideration of each pattern. These things can only make one a better knitter.

The instructions for the top-down collared sweater in October, however, might as well have been written in Jaffa (kree!), for all I understood them. If this book wasn't older than I am, I would suspect some pattern errata... but I do see some people on Ravelry managed the top-down version, so it must just be me.

This is as far as I got before I realized something wasn't quite right:

That's actually the back view, and I managed to delude myself into knitting the rest of the body and a sleeves before I really faced the fact that the crazy pouch like thing on the front cannot be steeked in any way to resemble a open-neck placket.  The collar is knit from a provisional cast on, and you are supposed to pick up stitches to knit a facing for the collar and the placket. Yeah, it sounds reasonable like that, but look...

Here's that something that's not quite right:

I think it's salvageable, I can steek an opening in the front, and knit on a placket. Then I will probably frog it from the cast on (at the collar) and knit up a collar from a reasonable point around the neck (minus that crazy pouch thing). At the end of the month, though, I just shoved it in the basket and moved on to the November socks.

September Hot Pants

Ok, these are "hot" in the sense that they will keep little legs warm, and that they are hot pink, not in the B-52s sense of the phrase.

I knit the September longies for my daughter a) because she needed wool pants for recess at school and b) I did not want to admit how much yarn it would actually take to swath my post-3rd-baby behind in wool.

The yarn was a birthday gift from my mother-in-law, bought during our family vacation this summer in Stavanger. There was a charming little store called Bånsull close off the main square by the cathedral.

This pattern was a typical opaquely worded but highly customizable EZ design. Everything went swimmingly, except (in a typical move for me) I made two left legs. The increases above the knee are designed to hide discreetly on the inside of the leg, so the legs should be knit mirrored. Wait, it's just a tube, can't you just rotate it 180 degrees? you say. No, not with the charming calf shaping. Well, anyway, the increases are in the wrong spot and plainly visible if you look for them, but no one cares but me.

The pants still fit comfortable despite the wonky shaping, they are warm, and most importantly, they are pink.

Oh My God, It's Full of Stars...

August in the Knitter's Almanac is devoted to Christmas "fiddle faddle", and is probably the most enjoyably written chapter. It's like the original knitting blog, pre-internet. Aside from my general affection for this chapter and the endearing story of two old people tooling around in the wilderness in a canoe, I was not won over by the patterns. My tree turned out bloated and floppy (I won't even burden you with a picture of it), and I didn't even try the angel as it looked really too old-fashioned for my tastes. Stars, FTW, however.

I made a bevy of them, and sold them at the Christmas market at our children's school. They took about 15 minutes to make, took up very little yarn, and look quite charming two-toned.

PS. Yes, you caught me! I backdated this post. We decided to send our son to a school that is approximately a 1 hour commute away. Which, there-and-back-again two times a day, means I have had 4 hours less a day for knitting, blogging, and life in general. I know, "knit on the train!" is what you are thinking -- "not with a baby whose dearest love in life is to grab yarn" is my answer.

July Pi

Back in July, this:

turned into this

and I took it here

and once I got all those people to get out of the way, we were able to take some nice picutres

it does look like I had a little run there, but I think I just poked it too much with my fingers as I was flipping it around. Yarn: cashmere and silk from Colourmart. Yay colourmart!

June Round Up

Added to the June pile: Ganomy

Knit in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, a very servicable nice wool. I held it double to closer match the stated guage in the pattern which is rather large. I did run out of yarn for the last few yards, so I used a matching green bit I had left over from something else. I rather liked the method for making the little bobble at the top. It's a nice alternative to pom-poms, tassles, or just a bare peak. I didn't use a ping-pong ball as suggested, but just a little leftover ball of somethig-or-other.

I added a line of embroidery just above the brim in green, to match the top of the bobble. All in all: a simple, solid pattern that I would be happy to knit again.

---

Also knit in June, but not yet photographed: a mini fisherman's hat that is totally adorable on a baby head.

Pentagon Hat

By the same principle as the Three-Corner hat from the June chapter in the Knitter's Almanac, I devised this Five-Corner version. It was quite simple, just made a gauge swatch, and determined how many stitches around the headband should be. Then I knit up aways as instructed in the pattern (though with a deeper headband than in the pattern, which is quite shallow). I increased in the same proportion as the pattern, and then chose five points to decrease instead of three. I decreased at a slightly less-frequent rate to make up for the fact that I was decreasing more each round. Simple!

The yarn is Knit Picks Elegance in color Daisy. Silk and baby alpaca... heaven! The original pattern calls for a gauge of 11 stitches to 4 inches, so I held this yarn double on a 5mm needle to get a gauge closer to that. Way fatter gauge than I am used to knitting. But it was fast!

the best part: my son loves it!

May-June Mashup

After Ruby's mittens were finished, there was plenty of yarn, and when I was browsing the June hat patterns, the three-cornered tam seemed very similar to the construction of the mittens. So, I had the bright idea to make a matching 3-cornered hat for Ruby. Of course, with the Rauma 3-ply Strikkegarn the guage was all off from the pattern, but it's a fairly simple construction and I was able to translate it succesfully.

In my opinion the head band of this was way too shallow, and after the hat was all finished, I picked up the stitches and knit down another 5 rows or so. And as you can see, it's still rather shallow. I knit one other hat with this same pattern, different yarn (which was more to the guage of the pattern) and it was also too shallow.

the awesomeness of this hat is this big

I did not knit this

These were a gift for the new baby from a dear friend's mother. This is true Norwegian knitting mojo! I thought I should include them in my May Mittens Roundup.

The birds are Huginn and Muninn, Odin's ravens.

May Mitered Mittens

Daughter picked out the yarn, Rauma 3ply Stikkegarn. It's a finer guage than called for in the pattern, but the math is easy to adjust. I was impressed with the result of the i-cord cast on (easy and it looks nice) and the project overall was smooth sailing (unusual for me!).

Mayday!

from the Knitter's Almanac, Norwegian mittens; a fun and satisfying knit, once I got back into the swing of colorwork and started using 2 circular needles instead of dpns. I used Rauma Finullgarn which was fairly soft and not-scratchy compared to other Rauma wools. I chose oatmeal and brown, and the look is decidedly Norwegian. There's just one hitch, though...

"Mayday! Mayday! I wonder why it's 'Mayday'. The distress call. Why d'you say 'Mayday?' It's only a Bank Holiday. Why not 'Shrove Tuesday' or 'Ascension Sunday?' [Mimics] Ascension Sunday! Ascension Sunday! The fifteenth Wednesday after Pentecost! The fifteenth Wednesday after Pentecost!"

(10 points if you get the reference)

I knit two right mittens. Instead of pulling out the 2nd mitten, I'm just going to knit two lefts. At some point.

April Mystery Blanket

Ah, the April Mystery Blanket... not a mystery of construction as EZ suggests, but a mystery as to why anyone would want to knit this twice.

a maze of ends to weave in (at least two per square, plus perhaps 6 where I miscalculated ball endings, times 24 squares; plus 2 for each of the 15 corner-centers; plus 2 per each of the 38 sides to be woven, and at least 4 more for the border... more than 150 ends to be woven in)

a fuddle of fiddly little 4-round medallions

a devil of tiny pulling holes at each juncture that proves either I am not a good knitter, or EZ was an impossibly perfect knitter (perhaps both)

Knitting each square was oddly satisfying, and gratifyingly portable, but after the 10th square I found myself dreading the end of a square, knowing it meant that much more weaving (aka Kitchenering). I was not a fan of EZ's alternate weaving method described in this chapter (perhaps my yarn did not lend itself to this, and I'll be damned if I am going to "delicately steam" each little block.) I got fairly proficient at the two-needle method of weaving and I think I shall never forget it.

All in all: a learning experience, a good gift for the arsenal, and no regrets... but this pattern is definitely on my black list.

March 2.0

The Chainmail Sweater and I  duked it out for 5 epic days of knitting every second I could, usually 3 - 4 hours during the day (hey, I've got kids, that's an impressive number of day-time knitting hours), and 5 or 6 after bedtime.

During the knitting of this sweater I was a little obsessed with time, hoping to get it done by the end of March (full confession: I didn't, but I did get it done.) I timed myself. Each body row took almost exactly 10 minutes. Doing this reminded me of the slip-stitch color work technique where you only knit one color at a time. You knit each row twice, though. So I experimented. It was certainly faster to knit the row with just one color, slipping the other color, but then you have to knit the row again, knitting the second color stitches this time. So each row took about 16 minutes to finish by this method. Ultimately, wrangling two strands of yarn was worth it vs. the extra time the slip-stitch method took.

After the 5 days of marathon knitting the body was done, and I moved to the arms at a slower pace. By the time I realized I wasn't going to make my goal of being done in March, I only had the steeking and sewing up to do. I took my time on this, not feeling the deadline pressure, and wanting to do a good job.

 

My previous experience steeking this Colourmart merino was a little scary, as it is a very slippy yarn. I used the crochet method to secure the steek and steeked away. I'm going to use the word "steek" a few more times, just out of nervous energy. Steek, steek. Because steeking makes me nervous, even though I've had three successful steeking experiences so far... it just feels like the potential is high for it to go disastrously wrong.

But it all went ok, and I am very pleased with the product. It's a well-constructed sweater that fits me and has lots of visual impact. One of my all-time favorite knits. Thanks, EZ!

In case you care: Colourmart Merino 15/44 nm (burgundy and black) and Kauni Effektgarn. If you really care, go to Ravelry.

Remember When?

When I knit up the Knucks, I was so obsessed with what to put on them, and I still have a lingering obsession with 8-digit phrases now. Recently I ran across the Knuckle Tatoo Project, which would be a great resource for anyone considering some hardcore Knucks.

...or try some some hardcore knitterlyness 

...but I think these ones are only for knuckles, though, and the awesomeness would be lost in translation.

March 1.0

Mid March: project still in the early stages.

*

February projects bled over into March, but I was confident I would have time to finish the Chainmail sweater, which I was really looking forward to. I decided to use stashed Colourmart merinos, in black and burgundy, and went searching for  a harmonizing yarn. I found a Rowan yarn in  pink. Not usually my color, but the yarns seemed to match ok in the store so I bought it.

I went ahead with the pink/burgundy color combination, partly to try new things, partly reassured when a search through Ravelry for this project turned up this  beautilful sweater with similar colors.

Ultimately (though not until after about 10 inches of the body was done) I decided against this and ripped it all out. I wish I could have made up my mind faster, but I still don't regret it.

Instead of pink, I chose a burgundy-green-purple-blue Kauni Effektgarn. This was a very different type of yarn than the merino. It was very hairy and sticky and really sorta scratchy. But the colors are gorgeous, and I do like the effect of color change in the pattern.

Next time: a finished sweater!

March: Beta Testing

 

March: "Chainmail Sweater"

As directed, I tried the pattern in a swatch cap first. It's the lovely Mirasol alpaca and a random green yarn I bought second-hand. The colors meld beautifully and I love it. Except I don't have the suggested medium color to match these, and the guage I got from the swatch cap indicated I would not have nearly enough yarn. So back to the drawing board.

And it's kinda pointy... which wouldn't be a problem in the sweater, really, but still. Otherwise this is my favorite hat I've ever knit!

March is the New February

I just couldn't resist finishing one more February project, even though it bled over into March. This, of course, made me behind on the March project, but more about that later. For now: Longies! 

Knit with Filatura Di Crosa Zarina. Usually I don’t choose varigated colors like this, but the yarn was so soft and squishy I was temporarily blinded. I ran out of the yarn on the longies and the store didn’t have any of the same dyelot, so I chose a pink varigation that matched the green of the blue/purple varigation, and used them in stripes on the legs and straight pink on the feet.

with matching BSJ

 The feet turned out really huge, but I think she’ll grow into them (given the genetic evidence).

like a little easter bunny

All in all, I liked many qualities of the yarn. It's soft and smooth, mega squishy and springy. It stretches to accomodate huge diaper butt. The color I chose is just a little loud.