A Sweater I've Already Worn a Few Times

Special thanks to Frieda, for again appreciating my art

I really haven't talked about it since November, but the Black Diamond cardigan is done, and overall I'm very happy with it. I finished it (or I should say, my mother sewed the buttons on it) before taking Frieda with me to Boston, and it looks good and fits well. I wish that the body was a little longer, but I've worn it several times without showing any unsightly flab as far as I know, and that's really good enough for me.

The pattern is really nicely written, it's the Lucy in the Sky cardigan by Laura Chau. It's the first time I've knit a sweater all in once piece, so the construction was new to me but it wasn't difficult at all. I was worried about getting the sleeves even and the right length, but knitting both at the same time worked well. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy, which had more variation between skeins that I liked, but is very nice to work with and goes a long way. I alternated skeins, and made sure I didn't change both skeins at once, but still feel like I can tell where I changed (even though not alternating would have been much more obvious). It's also surprisingly comfortable to wear. Most wool is itchy to me, but this yarn is tolerably itchy with short sleeves underneath, and not itchy at all with a long sleeved T underneath.

Although I've barely been blogging, I do have a few new projects on the needles that I'll post about soon. And I bought yarn today for another sweater, though I think I should finish another project (ANY other project) before casting on for that!

In non-knitting news, I'm still running. Since my last post, I've been back to Boston to see my friend S___ run the Boston Marathon, and to run the Boston Marathon 5K the day before. I got a medal (everyone who finished got a medal). It was cold and a little rainy the day that I ran (and some presumably more elite runners chose to support the 5K crowd by yelling things like "Way to go, run-joggers!"), but marathon day was beautiful. S___ ran in 3 hours and 17 minutes, which means that he ran each of the EIGHT 5Ks that make up a marathon a lot faster than I ran my ONLY 5K. Super fun day, super fun trip.

Black Coffee In Bed

The Black Diamond sleeves are almost done! Black stockinette sleeves hardly make for an interesting blog post,but setting up the photo (with tripod) was a pain so I feel like I need to share it. These sleeves will be joined to the body, so I'm assuming that they need to reach comfortably from my wrists to right under my arm. I'm hoping that the length works out, although I don't want to go too long because I think that this yarn will grow a little when washed.

I'm headed to the east coast for a long weekend on the 19th, and I'd love to finish the sweater by then, but I'll be surprised if it happens. I tend to think that the sweater is almost finished, but really there's still probably 15% left to go. Maybe it's more realistic to finish a second Appliance Mitten?

Hello, Darkness My Old Friend

A spooky sweater update on a spooky Halloween . . .

I've been very slowly working on the Black Diamond cardigan that I last posted about in April, and I've reached a major milestone--I started the sleeves! This cardigan (pattern link here) is knit bottom up in one piece to the armholes, then you knit the sleeves, and then join it all together. I'm knitting the sleeves two at a time because otherwise there's zero chance I will match up the increases. It feels like these are zipping along, because it's all stockinette for the time being--no pattern to worry about, and waaaaaaaay fewer stitches than the body has.

While I love knitting with this yarn (DIC Classy, Rav link) I am a little nervous about the color variation between skeins. I've been trying to mitigate this by alternating skeins, and I even switched one of the skeins at the halfway point so that I wouldn't end up switching both at once. I'm not sure how successful this has been--it appears that the first half skein was pretty dark, and I can tell where it changed. Fingers crossed it will be o.k. in the end, and my fingers are also crossed that the two skeins I'm using for the sleeves are not going to result in wildly different colored arms--one is a little bluer right now, but it's still early days. I didn't think I could manage four yarn ends at once, so I'm also hoping that one sleeve does not take more than one skein. Worry, worry, worry--is that what I'm really getting out of this sweater? I hope not!

The Note Would Say "When It Rains It Snows"

A friend came over on Sunday to watch the M's game (Hi, V____!), and while the game was good, the knitting was not. I was feeling all virtuous because on Saturday I finished seaming the Cables Baby sweater and fixed & finished the Green Chill sleeves. I even wove in the ends and lightly pressed the pieces of the Green Chill. And although I thought about starting a new project, I decided instead to carry on with knits already in progress.

Here's how the day went: I'd start knitting, then look down and see a mistake. So I'd put that project aside, knit for a little while on the ribbing for the Northern Lights socks, get bored, then pick up another project and start the cycle all over again. Note that with each of these mistakes were made the mistake recently, not all in a single day--I even picked up a pair of socks that I haven't worked on in a couple of weeks, with the same result. Here's a pictoral review of the carnage:

Purple Graffiti Cables

Started last weekend in DK weight yarn, the Purple Graffiti Cables seemed to be coming along quickly for 2 at a time socks. I wanted to NOT be tied to a notebook or sheet of paper while knitting, so I tried marking the cable row and then counting up from it. Bad idea--there's an extra row before the cable crossing. I will likely pull these off the needle and rib, as tinking back cables is not my idea of a good time and it should be fairly easy to get these back on the needles. That being said, if I find out that the first cable crossing was early (instead of the second one being late), I'm going to knit to the shorter length or rip out the whole sock and put the yarn away.

Blue Sea Socks

Next up-the Blue Sea Socks from the first Loopy Ewe Sock Club shipment. These haven't received much airtime because it took some time to decide what I wanted to do with the heel. I've opted to do the gusset increases on the bottom of the sock ala this pattern (PDF link) from Wendy Johnson (whose new book should be in my hands later this week). However, those increase are coming out now since I repeated some rows there at the top. The cable turns instead of waving. The loss will be about six rows, which isn't really so bad, but I'm not sure why I screwed this up because I can't even remember when I last worked on it.

Black Diamond

Lest you think that all of my knitting issues involve cables, behold a simple knit/purl mixup. Or two of them. In the larger circle, you can see that I missed a purl on the left side, so there's a break in the diamond pattern. Evidently, I put it a few stitches over. This is a pretty simple fix (akin to the problem with the Green Chill on Saturday), just ladder down and back up. In fact, it took just a couple of minutes, and then I noticed the problem in the top circle, which isn't clearly visible. Two purls on top of one another, so again off pattern, but again an easy fix.

Maybe a new project, something extra extra simple, isn't such a bad idea. Or maybe I should stick to weaving in ends and sewing buttons on the Cables Baby sweater? How much more damage can I do?


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The Note Would Say "When It Rains It Snows": They Might Be Giants, "When It Rains it Snows"

To See the Frog Eat the Goggle-Eye Bee

Clockwise from top left: Frieda can't keep her eyes open for this photo, Frieda with bag, Sweater sized bag, sock sized bag

Despite the dull, steady headache associated with staying out super late and getting up super early (the rock show on Saturday night was totally worth it, but I have no photographs), Sunday was a pretty productive day. A friend is planning to have a booth at Sock Summit in August, and I've been trying to come up with a sock project bag that she could sell. This is a proposition with a lot of "ifs", in my mind--if I can make more than one or two, if she does have a booth, if I will more than break even on the deal, etc. Then there's the obvious "will anyone buy this" question, of course.

I can sew pretty well, but my quality threshhold for things that I make for myself is decidedly lower than my quality threshhold for things that I would buy, and that's a contradiction that may mean trouble. Producing multiples of something that is sewn well enough that I would buy it myself may suck the joy right out of the creative process for me. Also, I think that my design idea is pretty good, but I've been mentally overcomplicating it and even my simple attempts today have some issues.

My basic idea is a bag that will keep two balls of yarn from tangling (as in two socks at once, or colorwork socks), but will let me remove the yarn without cutting it, and will hold the project and the yarn. No velcro, no zippers--I maintain that these are the enemy of yarn, just as mohair yarn is the enemy of my skin. I've decided to try button closures, so that the yarn can thread out the sides, but will tuck into the center & be buttoned up. Future enhancements (the part that I'm overcomplicating mentally) include inner dividers, pockets, etc., but I'm trying to remind myself that this is just a project bag--it's not a purse, or a full-on knitting bag, or a means to create world peace. Two balls of yarn, with room for one or two socks. That's it.

The prototype bag is made of denim with a little stretch that I had lying around, embellished with some Japanese frog canvas & a couple of scraps. I didn't line the bag, but am still on the fence about that--it's a balance between excess weight and better finishing. I zigzagged the raw edges so there won't be any fraying, but lining would still look neater. Also, I put in the buttonholes before sewing the side seam, and it would look neater to sew the side seams first and then turn the top edge down and put in the buttonholes (assuming that I could still mark the buttonhole positions straight). The embellishment took a long time--too long, really. A cute pocket (maybe big enough to hold a pattern) might be a better use of the space.

So what do I like about the bag? The craftsmanship is reasonably good, and I think that the size will work well (but I might make it slightly wider). I like the clutch-style handle, and I like the look of the different buttons. Denim is super durable, so needles shouldn't poke through. It will stand up (though is a little floppy) when empty, which means that if loaded properly it will stand up when full.

The only project I'm working on now that uses two balls of yarn is the Black Diamond (look at how big it's getting!), and this bag will hold two 100g balls of classy but not the yarn and the sweater. So why not sew a larger version of the bag? On the larger bag, I put two handles to the top of the bag, and a mermaid pocket on the front. Wider opening = 5 buttons, which I was too lazy to dig out and sew on before calling it a day. I'm not sure I'd want to make many of these, it takes longer and a lot more fabric, and getting the pocket square is tricky. If you could see it closer, you would notice that--trust me.

So now that I've made a couple of bags, I suppose I need to test them out--I have this fear of the yarn getting all tangled up on the buttons, and the only way to put that fear to rest is to knit a little!

You Probably Didn't Think that I was This Classy

Remember that birthday yarn binge I mentioned? The worst of it involved getting very, very Classy. I ordered blue Dream in Color's Classy from the Loopy Ewe for a February Lady Sweater on the Friday before my birthday, knowing full well that I wouldn't have it in time for the weekend. Since I stayed in the city overnight, on Sunday morning I went to a few Seattle yarn stores that I don't get to frequently enough, and ended up with another sweater's worth of Classy at the Fiber Gallery. I swatched on Sunday, and started Laura Chau's Lucy in the Sky cardigan the next day. I really like the way it looks so far, and love the feel of the yarn. Like Smooshy, it's sock-weight counterpart, this yarn is very smooshy and springy. The fronts, back, and button bands are worked at the same time, so the rows are really really long and the progress feels slow, but it will be really nice not to have a lot of seams to deal with at the end. I love the seed stitch borders, and I like that there isn't any pesky waist shaping in this sweater. I've been trying to alternate between this and the Green Chill sleeves, and yesterday I worked on the Blue Birthday socks and Blue Sea Socks in addition to both sweaters, but really it's the Black Diamond that's getting the bulk of my attention.

The yarn for the February Lady sweater arrived later in the week, and it's really pretty. The color is Midnight Derby, which is a dark, purpley blue. It's a little less dark that I expected, but that's probably because there's so much variation between batches of this yarn. Here's how it looks:

Pretty! But now sealed in a space bag in the garage, along with a lot of other yarn, in an effort to get the sewing room under control. This should also keep me from casting on a new sweater when I've got another one barely started and one very close to completion. I'm completely cool with 2009 being the year of the sweater, but I'd rather that it didn't turn into (another) year of starting and then abandoning sweaters.

Sock Summit News

Just as I was seriously considering signing up for another sock yarn club, the new Sock Summit website went up. Class listings, prices, and some non-class event info is up, and it's really going to be an incredible event. There isn't enough info yet to select classes and slot them into my own schedule, but it's enough to do some bare-bones planning & budgeting. Budget item #1: stop buying yarn until registration in May. You don't need it. That goes for patterns that you don't need immediately to start a project, too.* Budget item #2: watch other discretionary spending, too. It can't hurt.

Sock Book News

Cookie A's new book Sock Innovation arrived in the mail on Friday. It's really great--the first section talks about how she designs, and there are a ton of patterns. You can preview (and then immediately queue) the patterns in the book on Ravelry. The first pattern I'm going to knit is Kai-Mei, and I set aside this yarn for it yesterday when I was vaccuum packing yarn. Cookie is teaching at Sock Summit, and her class is high on my priority list. Although I should admit that right now the list is very non-hierarchical--it's basically just "classes I want to take" and "classes that I've already taken or that involve spinning".

Time to get cracking--I want to do more work in the sewing room, because I had an idea yesterday for a new project bag that I'd like to prototype!

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* exclusions apply, particularly if I get really stressed out. Wollmeise is always a free pass, as is yarn purchased with my Christmas gift card from Renaissance, and yarn that I've already committed to purchase (final Sundara seasons shipment, and next Loopy sock club).